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    The Red Kangaroo in Central Australia: An Early Account by A. E. Newsome
    The Red Kangaroo in Central Australia: An Early Account by A. E. Newsome
    The Red Kangaroo in Central Australia: An Early Account by A. E. Newsome
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    The Red Kangaroo in Central Australia: An Early Account by A. E. Newsome

    By Thomas Newsome and Alan Newsome

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    The red kangaroo is at the heart of Australia's ecological identity. It is Australia's largest terrestrial land mammal, the largest extant marsupial, and the only kangaroo truly restricted to Australia's arid interior. Almost nothing was known about the ecology of the red kangaroo when Alan Newsome began to study it in 1957. He discovered how droughts affect reproduction, why red kangaroos favour different habitats during droughts from those after rains, and that unprecedented explosions in red kangaroo numbers were caused by changes to the landscape wrought by graziers. Most importantly, he realised the possibilities of enriching western science with Indigenous knowledge, a feat recognised today as one of the greatest achievements of his career.

    First drafted in 1975 and now revised and prepared for publication by his son, The Red Kangaroo in Central Australia captures Alan's thoughts as a young ecologist working in Central Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. It will inspire a new generation of scientists to explore Australia's vast interior and study the extraordinary adaptations of its endemic mammals. It will also appeal to readers of other classics of Australian natural history, such as Francis Ratcliffe's Flying Fox and Drifting Sand and Harry Frith's The Mallee Fowl, The Bird that Builds an Incubator.

    Recipient of a 2017 Whitley Awards Certificate of Commendation for Pioneering Zoology

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCSIRO PUBLISHING
    Release dateJul 1, 2016
    ISBN9781486301577
    The Red Kangaroo in Central Australia: An Early Account by A. E. Newsome

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      Book preview

      The Red Kangaroo in Central Australia - Thomas Newsome

      The Red Kangaroo

      in Central Australia

      An Early Account by A. E. Newsome

      Thomas Newsome and Alan Newsome

      This book is dedicated to Alan Newsome (1935–2007).

      The Red Kangaroo

      in Central Australia

      An Early Account by A. E. Newsome

      Thomas Newsome and Alan Newsome

      © Thomas M Newsome 2016

      All rights reserved. Except under the conditions described in the Australian Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, duplicating or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Contact CSIRO Publishing for all permission requests.

      National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

      Newsome, Alan Eric, author.

      The red kangaroo in central

      Australia: an early account by

      A. E. Newsome / Thomas Newsome

      and Alan Newsome.

      9781486301553 (paperback)

      9781486301560 (epdf)

      9781486301577 (epub)

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      Red kangaroo – Australia, Central.

      Kangaroos – Australia, Central.

      Aboriginal Australians –

      Australia, Central.

      Australia, Central – Social life and

      customs.

      Newsome, Thomas, author.

      599.2223

      Published by

      CSIRO Publishing

      Locked Bag 10

      Clayton South VIC 3169

      Australia

      Telephone: +61 3 9545 8400

      Email: publishing.sales@csiro.au

      Website: www.publish.csiro.au

      Front cover: red kangaroo (photo: Samantha Hopley)

      Edited by Anne Findlay, Editing Works

      Pty Ltd

      Cover design by Andrew Weatherill

      Typeset by Thomson Digital

      Index by Bruce Gillespie

      Printed in China by 1010 Printing

      International Ltd

      CSIRO Publishing publishes and distributes scientific, technical and health science books, magazines and journals from Australia to a worldwide audience and conducts these activities autonomously from the research activities of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of, and should not be attributed to, the publisher or CSIRO. The copyright owner shall not be liable for technical or other errors or omissions contained herein. The reader/user accepts all risks and responsibility for losses, damages, costs and other consequences resulting directly or indirectly from using this information.

      Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that photographs in this book may contain images of deceased persons which may cause sadness or distress.

      Original print edition:

      The paper this book is printed on is in accordance with the rules of the Forest Stewardship Council®. The FSC® promotes environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world’s forests.

      Foreword

      At 22 Alan Newsome’s task was to learn all he could about red kangaroos in Central Australia for the cattle industry. Tim Ealey was doing the same in the Pilbara, Harry Frith in western New South Wales and Tom Kirkpatrick in southern Queensland. The approach of all of them was to shoot samples of kangaroos at regular intervals and record all that was possible about their age, reproduction and health. Alan also used light aircraft to estimate the abundance and distribution of the kangaroos across the land, a technique that has since been widely adopted by others.

      On 16 trips between October 1959 and October 1962 Alan shot 2000 red kangaroos on the plains north of the MacDonnell Ranges in Central Australia. The data collected from these animals were published in 12 scientific papers between 1964 and 1980, which provided the first, and still the most comprehensive, study of the ecology of this quintessential Australian animal.

      By one of those quirks of fortune that smile on some scientists, Alan’s study began in the longest drought experienced in Central Australia since European arrival and ended as the drought broke in 1962. He witnessed the massive decline of the cattle from their pre-drought peak of 300 000 to less than a third of that number by the end of the study. In that process of decline the impact of stock grazing on the native mammals was made plain to him. The smaller species were disappearing and the red kangaroos were responding in their reproduction to the extreme conditions. He discovered the phenomenon of drought-induced anoestrus in this species and, after the drought broke, he witnessed the extraordinarily rapid response of females to breaking rains, ovulating within 10 days and long before any new shoots appeared. And he discovered that drought also affected the associated males; many had no sperm and reduced testosterone-secreting cells. As they recovered more slowly after breaking rains, many of the females that ovulated failed to become pregnant.

      Because of this, recruitment into red kangaroo populations is very uneven, with large numbers in good years and none in other years: in Alan’s study the major recruitment to the population had occurred 12 years before in the exceptionally good years of 1947–1949. He then examined the rainfall records for the previous century looking for similar exceptionally good years and found 17 favourable periods of longer than one year, from which he concluded that recruitment to the population is probably always episodic. A similar pattern has since been shown for rock wallabies in Queensland and may be a common adaptation to the uncertain climate by other species of animals and plants of arid Australia.

      These were all big discoveries in a field that was just beginning, but what was special about Alan Newsome’s study was his personal interaction with the Aranda men who were his helpers; they taught him Dreamtime songs and stories about their ancestral being, Ara, the red kangaroo that were grounded in a deep understanding of its adaptations to the land and the uncertainties of the climate; what impressed Alan was that 10 of the 14 totemic sites in the overland journey of Ara were places that he had independently identified as drought refuges to which the kangaroos retreated during the drought years of his study. These were stream lines and grassy plains near the main ranges, where new green shoots grew and trees gave shelter.

      The underground journey of Ara was more difficult to understand because it traversed the desert, which his informants said was never occupied by Ara. Alan interpreted the story to mean that no one knew how Ara could travel to the distant totemic site except by a magical underground route. And the reason that Ara could not travel across that country was because it was devoid of watering places and trees to provide shelter in hot weather. The first cattle brought into Central Australia after 1870 were likewise restricted to the flood plains and unable to graze out on the Mitchell grass plains until 1938, when bores were sunk to provide water for stock. This provided water for kangaroos as well, but more importantly, grazing by cattle stimulated the plants to put out green shoots. It enabled the red kangaroos to extend their range greatly and had led to large recruitment of kangaroos in the 1950s. But it also took them away from shade on the treeless plains with sub-fertility the consequence.

      What is strange is that none of us who were Alan’s colleagues and read his papers at the time knew anything about his wonderful encounter with the Aranda and the congruence of their knowledge and his until he published it 20 years later in the anthropological journal Mankind. It is now evident that Alan had wanted to share his formative experiences as a young biologist discovering the wisdom and knowledge of the first people of the land and had written much of it, but then it languished as other responsibilities took precedence.

      It is so rare for a practising scientist to write about the experience of discovery and how it is done, more especially in such a hard environment as Central Australia, so it is especially fortunate that Alan’s unfinished manuscript was discovered by his son, Thomas. Despite its unfinished state it invites comparison with the classics of Australian natural history such as Francis Ratcliffe’s Flying Fox and Drifting Sand, Harry Frith’s The Mallee Fowl, the bird that makes an incubator and Eric Rolls’ They All Ran Wild.

      Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe

      Colour plates

      Plate 1: Red kangaroo in Central Australia (c. 1960s).

      Plate 2: Aboriginal from Haast’s Bluff throwing a spear (August 1958).

      Plate 3: Aboriginals from Haast’s Bluff with red kangaroo (August 1958).

      Plate 4: The Burt Plain, with Limestone Bore and Mt Hay in the background (June 1978).

      Plate 5: Extensive mulga (green bands) north of the MacDonnell Ranges (November 1967).

      Plate 6: Satellite image of Burt Plain (c. 1970).

      Plate 7: Swarms of budgerigars at Delmore Downs (December 1967).

      Plate 8: Mitchell grass on clay soils adjacent to ranges on the Burt Plain (June 1974).

      Plate 9: Gilgai showing mature plants of the perennial grass neverfail, which, after grazing by cattle, provide green growth for red kangaroos to eat during drought. Nardoo colonises the deeper parts of the gilgai (c. 1970).

      Plate 10: Wild flowers on show after rains in Central Australia (c. 1970).

      Plate 11: Mulga woodlands on the Burt Plain (c. 1970).

      Plate 12: Spinifex grassland in Central Australia (c. 1970).

      Plate 13: Aerial surveying. A lone red kangaroo can be seen from the aircraft (c. 1960s).

      Plate 14: Red kangaroos in the shade (c. 1970).

      Plate 15: Example of a red kangaroo resting site, or hip-hole (c. 1970).

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