It sure ain’t Easy being Green! About the Kangaroo Coalition coordinator!

By John Watson, Spectator News Magazine

PAT O’BRIEN became a greenie, and activist, in Condobolin 35 years ago when he saw kangaroos herded together, shot and clubbed to death. Until that moment, he had been “normal”.

The meatworker, who was working his way around Australia with his wife and three kids, did not think about the environment, probably dropped paper on the ground and just lived his own life. However, because of that sight of kangaroos being slaughtered, he has spent the next 35 years fighting for animals and the environment.

Along the way he has spent $30,000 of his money saving the water supply at Shoalwater Bay and Byfield from sand mining; been shot at twice; had his letterbox blown apart by a shotgun, had dead kangaroos hung on his gate at night, and listened to many death threats.

“Death threats don’t all come from men,” he said this week. One woman threatened to ‘cut my effing throat and bury my effing body in the sand dunes’.” Apparently, most death threats involve shooting although Pat recalls one novel threat back in the days when he opened and ran Yeppoon Butchers in Arthur Street. “One bloke threatened to blow up my shop with me in it,” he said.

Pat was in town in Yeppoon today to attend a meeting about flying foxes. He had come prepared to face the people opposed to flying foxes, the ones who write letters to the editor. But they didn’t show for the educational night to learn about them from an expert attending the meeting.

Today, Pat O’Brien is a “professional activist”. He works for the Wildlife Protection Association of Australia whose patrons are the Irwin family. They own Australia Zoo on the Sunshine Coast and Pat now lives at Landsborough. Pat receives a “stipend” from the association, which makes him a “professional activist who runs his own business”. Asked if he is rich he replies, “How can you be rich and be an activist?”

These days, he lobbies governments to do better with wildlife management. He urges governments to take “non-lethal options such as netting and fencing” when handling animals. Also, when governments make a “bad decision” the Wildlife Protection Association (WPAA) takes court action. They don’t often win in court but they force change.

The last case in 2006 was a plan to commercially kill possums in Tasmania and wallabies on Kangaroo and Flinders Islands. “The government has outlawed dog and cat fur imports on clothing but has offered wallaby fur as acceptable,” Pat said. “We appealed the case but lost, but we did force some changes”. The wallabies and pademelons skins are to be sent to Italy to make fur coats.

“This year 2007 we are challenging the Federal Ministers decision to approve the 2007 to 2012 Kangaroo Management Plan. “This time we have a formidable legal team, and we expect a much better result. The Adminisrative Appeals Tribunal only has limited powers, so a bad decision means we will take that decision to the Federal Court,” he said.

He also works with 31 other groups to co-ordinate activities to protect wildlife. “All of those groups are actively campaigning to protect wildlife,especially kangaroos” he said.

Every four to six weeks he travels to meetings in places such as Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart and Darwin where he networks with wildlife groups. It is a quieter life because it has been more than 12 months since he has received a phone call from someone threatening to shoot him. But it is still a life of confrontation.

“It sure ain’t easy being green,” he laughed when asked was he ready for confrontation at the flying fox night. Aged 65, he looks fit and has a ready laugh, except when he recalls that Condobolin kangaroo slaughter.

“I had heard what was going on and I was invited to go along and see what was happening,” he said. “I wasn’t asked to shoot, just see what was happening. “It was a grain-growing area and the farmers had cleared a huge area and planted wheat, without any fences, and did not want the kangaroos to come in and feed. “The hills were covered in red and grey kangaroos, big six-footers and taller. The surface of the hill was moving as they hopped toward the wheat fields.”

Then men on motorbikes rounded them up and herded the ’roos toward men with shotguns and rifles. The men were arranged in a wide V and the ’roos were driven into a hail of gunfire. “They were shooting and shooting and shooting and the kangaroos that were wounded, and the young ones, were beaten to death with lumps of wood,” Pat said.

And at that moment, an environmental activist was born. “I only saw one drive,” he said. “That was enough. I had wanted to see what they were doing. It wasn’t legal but they (the farmers) all did it. They still do it. “In time, they slaughtered many millions.”

Pat started researching legal issues and the background of the kangaroos then started campaigning in Condobolin to stop the slaughter. It wasn’t the enlightened 21st century. This was 1970 and Pat was a boner at the local meatworks. He set up a network of wildlife carers to rear young ’roos and release back into the wild away from where they would be slaughtered.

He went to newspapers and the media but did not get much of a reception because everyone was for the farmers. He had no trouble at work because his workmates knew he was rearing and rehabilitating joeys and regarded him as fair dinkum. “The farmers regarded me as just another bloody wanker,” Pat said. “There was little sympathy for kangaroos in that area.”

Because he was moving around Australia, especially outback areas, he saw sights that live with him today. “I remember seeing huge flocks of Major Mitchell cockatoos that aren’t there any more, because of habitat loss,” he said. "The rivers were clean, flowing, and full of fish. The sights of wildlife and birds used to be amazing, and its all changed in just a couple of decades.”

Through transfers within the meatworks he wound up in Rockhampton at T.A. Fields at Nerimbera and eventually took a redundancy payout instead of moving on to Western Australia, as had been offered. He bought a property at Lake Mary and grew organic small crops, before building a butcher shop in Yeppoon.

His first “green” campaign in this area was to protect magpie geese that were being shot at Lake Mary. A nearby farmer had been given a permit to “shoot at, but not kill” magpie geese. Pat said many were being killed.

He enlisted the aid of Denis Hinton, the National Party candidate for Broadsound, the seat that then covered the Capricorn Coast. “He was looking for election support and waded in and had the shooting stopped,” Pat said.

(In 1989, Pat stood as a Green Independent candidate for the seat against National candidate Denis Hinton and said he was blamed when Labor’s Jim Pearce won with green preferences. Some people subsequently mounted boycotts against his business.)

After the magpie geese, the little bent wing bats at The Caves was the big issue and Pat was well along the way to resolving it when green radicals from the south stepped in and trampled over the solution. It wasn’t easy being green then, even with other greens, who said Pat was “too soft”. The radicals wanted confrontation.

“The language used in threats on your life is atrocious,” he said. Pat said the usual threats were “I’ll shoot you,” or “You’re finished,” peppered with foul language. He owned Yeppoon Butchers during this campaign and said he spent $30,000 taking visiting politicians on charter flights over the areas and in wages to people to replace him at work while he was fighting green issues.

“There was no government help because the government wanted to mine these areas,” he said. “There was fundraising to help but it didn’t cover my expenses. And while this was going on there were people mounting campaigns against my butcher business.”

Pat sold the butchery and “moved on”, as he put it. But then he became involved in a campaign against Tandem Thrust, a military exercise in Shoalwater Bay. “It was a US exercise with 50,000 troops, more than 200 planes and 200 boats and nine B52s (bombers) overflying Central Queensland and they were almost certainly carrying nuclear weapons,” he said. “That was the first time I got arrested.”

“We had a protest at the army base at Rockhampton airport and we walked onto the base to see the commander. “They would not let us on. “Two of us were arrested (the other was Dennis Doherty, from the Anti-Bases Coalition) and we were fined $600 each and had convictions recorded. “We had been charged with trespassing on Commonwealth property.” Asked why they had not simply been arrested and released, Pat said the government “wanted to make a point”. A collection was held to help with the fines but not enough was raised to cover the entire amount. “That’s the price you pay for being an activist,” Pat said.

The next time he was arrested involved Googong Dam in Canberra. “The Australian Capital Territory Government, which was Labor, decided to kill 1500 kangaroos they said were grazing around the dam, causing erosion,” he said. “It was a case of a Labor Government trying to look tough before an election and trying to get farmers on its side.....as if they’d vote Labor anyway” he laughed.

Pat said the area was blocked off and police would not let protestors get near the site that was supposed to be damaged by the kangaroos. “We walked in. The police said we couldn’t. I said, ‘I don’t care’ and they arrested me,” Pat said. “No charges were laid and I was released the same day.

“That was a funny one because there was this huge copper who blocked my path. It was a freezing day but he was in shirt sleeves. He was so big he didn’t even feel the cold! “Every time I took a step he moved and blocked my path. “Someone videoed the scene and it looks like a dance as I move one way and he moves in the same direction at the same time. “When the police put me in the wagon after the arrest the protestors would not let them drive away."

“The police had to get out through a farming property and it was inches deep in cow and sheep manure. “That’s what was going into the dam and the government was blaming it on the ’roos. “The ACT ombudsman looked into that matter, but didn’t take any action against the Government.” Pat said the government killed some of the kangaroos but the rest were saved because the issue became too hot politically. Local activists kept the issue alive.

For people who wonder whether protests achieve anything, Pat said that particular action against the dam had appeared on 400 overseas news web pages on the Internet. “People overseas love kangaroos and can’t understand why the government in the national capital wanted to kill its national symbol,” he said.

Asked did he ever get tired of the confrontation Pat said he could not afford to: “Things are now so serious with Australia’s wildlife that all species are in trouble because their numbers are depleted, and their habitat was disappearing.” “We don’t have the luxury of saying, ‘these animals are a nuisance, let’s kill them’. “We have to look at non-lethal options and management of any problems involving wildlife.”

John Watson, Spectator News Magazine.