Tasmanian Devil (17 page)

In the 1960s naturalist Jack Bauer spent long periods in the Tasmanian bush
observing the devil. One night encounter took place near Damper Inn on the Port Davey
track in far south-west Tasmania. (Photograph of Geoff Hood by Leo Luckman,
Hobart Walking Club, 1940. Courtesy TMAG.)

    They will tell you he is a ‘nocturnal animal' but strangely enough of the 11 I have seen in their wild habitat only one was out at night, at 2.20 am near Damper Inn, on the Port Davey track. If the devil preys on bettongs, wombats, potorus, scrub wallabies, etc, he must go hunting toward evening and in the early morning which are the times when these small marsupials are at their feeding or watering places.
    Whether or not the devil and his quarry continue to roam about the bush all night through I don't know. I have spent many nights sitting it out in the bush with a spotlight in order to spot game. All I have seen were possums, bandicoots, an occasional scrub wallaby. Except for that one devil I have mentioned.
    Observing three captive devils I noted that they spend a great part of the day slumbering in their cage. These devils are a mother and her two young, a ‘gal' and a ‘boy'. During the day they
always
sleep bunched up together or even one on top of another but never separated. Toward evening they wake up and begin to prowl around the cage snarling and growling. Each is a prime animal and eats one rabbit a day . . .
    Devils don't make good pets, but they aren't dangerous animals either. The friend of mine who keeps three in captivity has never been able to chum up with the little devils. He can handle the females. They'll never attempt to bite him. But they don't show any affection either. But he is quite unable to put a hand on the male. He's a real tough guy. As soon as my friend enters the cage, the devil snarls and shows his fangs. But he is a small animal weighing at most 12 lb (this is the weight of a prime specimen) and he can be put out of circulation with a well-placed kick if he decides to attack.
    Devils smell. I have struck two devil lairs (just a scrub-bed under a log) and the smell coming from them was appalling. Like all the other Dasyurus, the female devil's pouch is oriented backwards, that is, contrarywise to the kangaroo's. She seems to have a usual litter of two young which she carries in the pouch for perhaps three months or so. In the pouch there are two pairs of teats.
    In the old days, devils were killed by dogs, shot by hunters, poisoned, and trapped. As you can imagine, shooting a devil is no great shakes as a sport but you do have to shoot quickly because although he is a slow runner, he can move plenty fast in the scrub. He moves in a lop-sided, shambling gait reminiscent of a bear.
    In the kangaroo-snaring boom, some years ago, many devils were caught in the snares but they didn't stay caught for long. They chewed up the string and got themselves free again. They couldn't, of course, get away from a dingo trap, in which many were caught.
    To see devils in their native habitat is not easy. Much depends on luck but a great deal depends on bushcraft also. First off, watch for droppings. A devil's droppings are about the size of a possum's but when crushed the devil's always contains some bones, feathers or hair, the result of eating flesh, whereas the herbivorous possum's dung contains only vegetable matter. The droppings of native and tiger cats are smaller. However, you may find droppings and still be far from finding a devil. How far does he range? I don't know. He may be here today and ten miles away tomorrow.
    Hunting kangaroos with dogs is perhaps the easiest way to see devils. The dogs often flush them out of their hiding places. That's just what happened a few weeks ago when our dogs roused a devil from under a log in Central Tasmania. We let the little chap get away then I went to inspect the log. Just under it and completely hidden from sight, was his lair, a scrub bed badly matted with droppings and badly stinking. Nobody had ever taken pictures of a wild devil in his native habitat and here I had the chance.
    A week later I was back there. I chose a hiding place about 250 yards from the devil's lair and watched it with a pair of binoculars. About 6 o'clock in the evening just at sunset, I spotted the animal emerging from his ‘home' and hitting the hunting trail. I spotted him again at dawn the next morning. That afternoon—my second day there—I made my first preparations for pictures.
    With the wind blowing against my face (just the way I wanted to make sure that he was still in those parts, the devil's nose) I approached cautiously his lair and began building a hide. I was cutting a pole with my jungle-knife when I heard a noise and looking saw the devil legging it away from those parts. He'd heard or scented me and decided to beat it. That was okay with me. I built my hide from natural vegetation about 20ft away from the devil's lair under the log. Then I shouldered my pack and made tracks for home.
    A week later I went back there. By this time I hoped that the devil had recovered from the scare I gave him and had become familiar with my hide as well. However, I wanted to make sure that he was still in those parts. So that evening found me in a hiding place with my binoculars. Sure enough, roundabout sunset the animal emerged from the log and hit the hunting trail. As soon as he'd gone I took my camera with tele-lens and tripod, a thermos of coffee and some sandwiches and sneaked into my hide.
    I had no intention of photographing him with flashlight because I was sure I'd spook him away from those parts. So I made myself comfortable in the hide and went to sleep. I am sure I heard him return to his lair some time in the night but it might have been the noise of a roo or of the wind I heard instead. The wind, by the way, was blowing hard into my face.
    It was exactly 6.10 am by my watch when my heart almost skipped a beat as I crouched over my camera tripod inside the hide. I could just see the devil's head peering over his log. I made a telephoto picture. The click of the release button didn't seem to spook the animal. Perhaps he hadn't heard it. The wind was making plenty of noise.
    Gingerly he clambered over the log and for a few minutes moved restlessly about the low scrub, his sharp-pointed nose sniffing the air on which he perhaps detected some suspicious smell. Mine. But the wind was being a great help to me. I made 17 pictures of the animal showing his various reactions before he finally hit the hunting trail, moving away in that bear-like gait that makes him look so clumsy and slow. So I had obtained the first pictures ever taken of a devil in his native habitat.
    From my observations it looks like that animal—at least when I was there—left his lair at dusk, returned some time during the night and went hunting at dawn again. He probably returned shortly after sunrise. These times coincide with the feeding times of most ground marsupials. However, I should have had to spend several more days in that spot to gather more accurate information. But I couldn't spare any more days.
    Let me hope that my great-grandchildren will also be able to see and to photograph this fascinating little animal, which represents one solitary species living on this earth. More than any other member of our fauna does the devil need to be wholly protected. So let us hope that the Tasmanian wild life authorities will not allow farmers to destroy these animals and let us also hope that all sportsmen and outdoorsmen who know of farmers who kill devils will report them to the game inspectors or police officers. A person killing a devil can be fined up to £100 [stg] and that is really a cheap price to pay for this offence.
⁹

7

FROM ANTICHRIST TO AMBASSADOR

In the late 1960s years we saw very few Tasmanian devils at the shack but then their population increased greatly . . . We were frequently accosted as we went out to the toilet. The children used to be quite scared of them and would come running back inside for an adult to accompany them . . . The devils became bolder and would remove items from the back porch: on one occasion they took a box of six-inch nails and we followed the trail of nails down to the beach where they had dumped the box.

J
ENNY
N
URSE
, H
OWRAH

I
n the early 1960s there weren't many Jack Bauers, or Eric Guilers. It took the stubbornness and certainty of their kind to recast the Tasmanian devil, as Mary Roberts had half a century earlier, as an animal quite unlike the popular perception of it. At Granville Harbour Guiler and his colleagues worked in tough conditions, camping in rough terrain for up to ten days, setting baited, drop-door wire cage traps in rainforest, gullies, cleared farm paddocks, coastal scrub and dune formations. The rainy, soggy, windy, cold locality had been chosen for its inaccessibility and lack of human activity; just three people lived at the harbour, with the nearest township, Zeehan, a day's drive away on a rough track.

Among Guiler's findings over the ten years of the survey: devils have a home range but do not defend territory; they use well-defined tracks and livestock trails; they travel extensively in search of food; despite the adults being solitary, they may develop some form of social intercourse at a ‘general mixing area';
¹
few live beyond six years; a population may fluctuate rapidly and substantially, linked to both high juvenile mortality rates and the degree of immigration of animals into an area; devils in the west are smaller than elsewhere.

A sharp, sustained increase in numbers was recorded in the latter years of the survey, beginning ‘very substantially' in 1973, with the boosted population showing ‘a good balance between the old, mature, and juvenile weight groups'.
²
That balance had disappeared by 1975, and many animals, when captured in 1975, weighed less. Guiler speculated that this was due to a food shortage, although ‘there was no field evidence that this was in fact so'.
³
An increased population in one area would surely mean less food for all, and animals would soon lose condition, negatively affecting reproduction ability—a possible mechanism for self-correcting population imbalances.

Guiler had earlier concluded that the rising devil population might have peaked by 1969. Devil numbers and population dynamics are still not understood, despite decades of study. This lack of knowledge is hindering efforts to second- guess and possibly contain the disease that has spread across the island.

Anecdotal population evidence, in the form of newspaper accounts, is one source of information, but it is patchy, inconclusive, and open to interpretation.

In the winter of 1966, possum hunters across a small area of the midlands reported great increases in devils robbing their snares. This was put down to a rise in their numbers. The devils ‘appeared to be very ravenous, according to hunters'.
⁴

That behaviour suggests either a lack of food, or more vigorous competition through an increased devil population, a natural winter result of weaned juveniles. To muddy the picture further, possums were apparently more plentiful than usual in the eastern area but scarce in the western area. What, then, caused an apparently isolated outbreak of atypical behaviour?

In 1972 the same area appeared to be afflicted again, though this time farmers were the victims. ‘It is believed that the animals have increased so much in the timbered country that they are venturing into the open lowlands in search of food. Some farmers are becoming concerned that they could eventually attack stock.'
⁵
‘Evidence' for this included the discovery of a devil hiding behind a deep-freeze unit in a garage in Oatlands.

A dramatic report then declared:

Devils loom as menace . . . Tasmanian devils had recently attacked chained farm dogs, a spokesman for the Tasmanian Farmers, Stockowners and Orchardists' Association [TFSOA] claimed yesterday. They had savaged domestic animals and had been found inside at least two farm houses. ‘The build-up in the population of this dangerous pest is alarming', the president of the TFSOA (Mr R. J. Downie) said. ‘We are getting reports which strongly suggest a population explosion among devils. They are being reported from places where previously devils were unknown, or at least, not a problem. They are readily attacking stock, prowling around and in farm buildings, and fighting with chained farm dogs,' Mr Downie said.
⁶