Real Men Don’t Kill Koalas: Gender and Conservationism in the Queensland Koala Open Season of 1927

Abstract

In July 1927, the Queensland state government declared an open season on koalas, in which more than 600,000 koalas were shot, poisoned, or trapped. In the broad-based and emotional backlash which ensued, gender ideologies featured significantly. Concepts of authentically Australian forms of masculinity and femininity were mobilised in attempts to end the destruction; koala-killing was framed as a debasement of an idealised ‘bushman’ identity and koala fur wearing as a betrayal of an idealised category of inherently caring womanhood. The interests of parents and children came to the fore in a campaign concerned with preserving the popular ‘native bear’ for the enjoyment of future generations. This article draws out how gendered understandings of koalas and koala-killing contributed to the animals’ reclassification from an economic resource to an anthropomorphised friend and symbol, whose slaughter was conceived by many as unmanly and un-Australian.

I sincerely thank my anonymous reviewers and the journal editors for their generous and constructive comments on earlier versions of this article, the research for which has been supported by the ANU Research School of Social Sciences Director’s Award for Higher Degree Research and the Australian Government Research Training Program.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Francis Dickson, ‘To the Editor’, Brisbane Courier, 25 July 1927, 15.

2 Stephen M. Jackson, Koala: Origins of an Icon (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2007), 213; Australian Koala Foundation, Imagine Australia without Koalas (Australian Koala Foundation, 2022) 7, https://www.savethekoala.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Imagine_22.pdf (accessed 2 April 2024). In 2023, the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water gave an upper estimate of 628,010 individuals: Australian Government Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, ‘National Koala Monitoring Program’, last updated 19 May 2023, https://www.dcceew.gov.au/environment/biodiversity/threatened/species/koalas/national-koala-monitoring-program#:~:text=Our%20current%20best%20available%20estimate,of%20Victoria%20and%20South%20Australia (accessed 2 April 2024).

3 Histories tracing settler environmental destruction and the beginnings of conservation include A.J. Marshall, The Great Extermination: A Guide to Anglo-Australian Cupidity, Wickedness and Waste (Adelaide: Heinemann, 1966); Vincent Serventy, A Continent in Danger (London: Andre Deutsch, 1966); J.M. Powell, Environmental Management in Australia 1788–1914 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1976); William J. Lines, Taming the Great South Land: A History of the Conquest of Nature in Australia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Tim Flannery, The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People (Sydney: Reed Books, 1994); Drew Hutton and Libby Connors, A History of the Australian Environment Movement (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Geoffrey Bolton, Spoils and Spoilers: Australians Make Their Environment 1788–1980 (Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1981); Tim Bonyhady, Colonial Earth (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2000).

4 Jacqui Donegan, ‘Unfair Game: Queensland’s Open Season on Koalas in 1927’, Access: History 3, no. 1 (2000): 36; Alistair Paton, Of Marsupials and Men (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2022), 204–5.

5 Marshall, 26.

6 Hutton and Connors, 43; Marshall, 30.

7 N.L. Howlett, ‘The Bear You Couldn’t Buy. Shooting Koalas in Queensland: 1927’, Bowyang 1, no. 2 (September–October 1979): 10–11, 17–18.

8 Donegan, 36.

9 Flannery; Lines; Marshall. Bonyhady takes issue with histories like those by Flannery and Lines for perpetuating an unnuanced view of colonists as gratuitously exploitative and destructive: Bonyhady, 3.

10 Bonyhady.

11 Katie Holmes and Ruth Morgan, ‘Placing Gender: Gender and Environmental History’, Environment and History 27, no. 2 (May 2021): 187–91; Ruth Morgan and Margaret Cook, ‘Gender, Environment and History’, International Review of Environmental History 7, no. 1 (June 2021): 5–19; Andrew Gaynor, Susan Broomhall and Andrew Flack, ‘Frogs and Feeling Communities: A Study in History of Emotions and Environmental History’, Environment and History 28, no. 1 (February 2022): 83–104.

12 Donegan, 38; Glenn Fowler, ‘“BLACK AUGUST”: Queensland’s Open Season on Koalas in 1927’ (Honours thesis, Australian National University, 1993), 3. Koalas who survived the skinning died later from gangrene, starvation, or the cold.

13 Donegan, 39. Queensland’s koalas are smaller and lighter in colouration than their counterparts in Victoria and New South Wales.

14 Danielle Clode, Koala: A Life in Trees (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2022), 216.

15 Lines, 21.

16 Jackson, 201–2.

17 Ibid., 3.

18 Fowler, 5.

19 Hutton and Connors, 43.

20 ‘Slaughter of Bears’, Brisbane Courier, 18 July 1927, 13.

21 Fowler, 6.

22 Brisbane Courier, 22 July 1927; ‘Labour Disgust’, Brisbane Courier, 29 July 1927.

23 At other times during the controversy, Mines Secretary Alf Jones served as Acting Premier. Marshall, 27.

24 Telegram, 27 July 1927, AGS/J463, General Correspondence, Department of Agriculture and Stock, Queensland State Archives (hereafter QSA), Brisbane.

25 ‘Native Bears Slaughtered: No Mercy in Q’Land: And by Labor Govt., Too!’, clipping from the Sydney Labor Daily, 8 August 1927, AGS/J463, GC, DAS, QSA, Brisbane.

26 Voice of the North, 10 August 1927, 5; Brisbane Courier, 19 July 1927, 15.

27 ‘The Stupidity of the Decision’, Brisbane Courier, 29 July 1927, 15.

28 ‘NOT YET!’, Brisbane Courier, 27 July 1927, 15.

29 ‘SENTENCE OF DEATH. HARMLESS NATIVE BEARS TO BE MASSACRED’, Brisbane Courier, 28 July 1927, 13; Telegram from J.F. Lindley to W. Forgan Smith, 26 July 1927, AGS/J464, GC, DAS, QSA.

30 Sydney Gazette, 21 August 1803, 3.

31 Donegan, 37.

32 Richard White, Inventing Australia: Images and Identity 1688–1980 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1981), 6–7.

33 See for example Bill Jenkins, ‘The Platypus in Edinburgh: Robert Jameson, Robert Knox and the Place of the Ornithorhynchus in Nature, 1821–24’, Annals of Science 73, no. 4 (1 October 2016): 425–41; Louis J. Pigott and Leslie Jessop, ‘The Governor’s Wombat: Early History of an Australian Marsupial’, Archives of Natural History 34, no. 2 (1 October 2007): 207–18.

34 Jack Ashby, Platypus Matters (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2022), 307.

35 Eric Kaufmann, ‘“Naturalizing the Nation”: The Rise of Naturalistic Nationalism in the United States and Canada’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 40, no. 4 (1998): 666–95.

36 Scholarship on the entanglements of Australian nationalism and nature conservation continues to expand. Important accounts include Libby Robin, How a Continent Created a Nation (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2007); Libby Robin, ‘Nationalising Nature: Wattle Days in Australia’, Journal of Australian Studies 26, no. 73 (2002): 13–26; Tom Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors: The Antiquarian Imagination in Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Thomas Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), ch. 7. For more recent interventions, see Russell McGregor’s work on Alec Chisholm’s brand of nature-based nationalism in Idling in Green Places (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2019) and ‘Mateship with Nature: Nationalism and Conservation in the Writings of Alec Chisholm’, Environment and History 27, no. 3 (August 2021): 399–420. Chisholm was an active opponent of the open season: Fowler, 21–2.

37 Adrian Franklin, Animal Nation (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2006), 15.

38 Thomas Dunlap, ‘Australian Nature, European Culture: Anglo Settlers in Australia’, Environmental History Review 17, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 32.

39 A.S. Le Soeuf, ‘The Australian Animals: How They Stand Today, and the Cause of the Scarcity of Certain Species’, in Save Australia: A Plea for the Right Use of Our Flora and Fauna, ed. James Barrett (Melbourne: Macmillan & Co., 1925), 181.

40 The Telegraph, 23, January 1924, 8; ‘THE KOALA KIDS’, Sydney Mail, 15 April 1925, 57; ‘Mrs Koala’, Eastern Recorder (Kellerberrin, WA), 4 March 1927, 4.

41 Donegan, 44; Ann Moyal and Michael Organ, Koala: A Historical Biography (Melbourne: CSIRO, 2008), 36.

42 J. Penn, ‘Literary Letter: A Note on Books’, The Register (Adelaide), 2 November 1918, 4.

43 Norman Lindsay, The Magic Pudding: Being the Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1918).

44 Moyal and Organ, 144.

45 ‘Brisbane Lady’, ‘Save the Native Bear’, Brisbane Courier, 23 July 1927, 20.

46 J.F. Harding, ‘The Death of Bill Bluegum’, Queenslander, 11 August 1927, 3.

47 Matt Cartmill, A View to a Death in the Morning: Hunting and Nature through History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 162.

48 ‘Labour Disgust’, Brisbane Courier, 29 July 1927, 15. Page number for footnote 49: ‘The Koala's Lament’, Telegraph, 6 August 1927, 13.

49 ‘The Koala’s Lament’, Telegraph, 6 August 1927.

50 White, 114.

51 Dunlap, ‘Australian Nature, European Culture’; Ethel Pedley, Dot and the Kangaroo (London: Thomas Burleigh, 1900, 2nd edition).

52 Marylouise Caldwell and Paul C. Henry, ‘How Cultural Branding, Story-Telling, and Personification Can Save the Iconic Australian Koala’, Psychology & Marketing 37, no. 12 (2020): 1781–9; Dorothy Wall, The Complete Adventures of Blinky Bill (Sydney: HarperCollins/Angus & Robertson, 1990).

53 Dorothy Wall, Blinky Bill, a Quaint Little Australian (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1933), 13–15.

54 John Brandon, ‘Letter to the Editor’, Brisbane Courier, 21 July 1927, 9; Dickson, 15.

55 Handwritten poem by Amy Thornett, ‘The Betrayed Koala’, 24 July 1927, ‘Individual Protests’, AGS/J463, GC, DAS, QSA.

56 Koala teddy bears were popular in Australia and internationally by the 1920s. They were made from rabbit, mohair, kangaroo, wallaby, or koala fur. Clode, 215.

57 K.L. Simpson, ‘Gentle Native Bear’, Brisbane Courier, 18 July 1927, 15.

58 Clode, 188–99.

59 Brisbane Courier, 20 July 1927, 19.

60 See for example Frances Levvy, ‘Women’s Society, Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’, The Band of Mercy and Humane Journal of New South Wales 30, no. 7 (25 July 1914): 2; ‘Civilised’, The Band of Mercy and Humane Journal of New South Wales 36, no. 7 (30 April 1920): 4.

61 Correspondence from Isabel Perwick and ‘Schoolgirl’ to William Forgan Smith, 25 July 1927, ‘Individual Protests’, AGS/J463, GC, DAS, QSA, Brisbane.

62 Erica Fudge, Pets (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2014), 8; Monica Flegel, Animals in the Family: Pet Relations in Victorian Literature and Culture (New York: Routledge, 2015), 139–40.

63 Flegel, 139.

64 Correspondence from Alice E. Kash to William Forgan Smith, 22 July 1927, ‘Animals and Birds Acts Protests from Country Women Assocn's.’, AGS/J464, GC, DAS, QSA, Brisbane; Correspondence from Eva Wallis to William Forgan Smith, 18 July 1927, ‘Animals and Birds Acts Protests from Country Women Assocn's.’, AGS/J464, GC, DAS, QSA, Brisbane; Correspondence from K. Cunningham to E. Graham (Under Secretary), 20 July 1927, ‘Animals and Birds Acts Protests from Country Women Assocn's.’, AGS/J464, GC, DAS, QSA, Brisbane; Telegram from S. Cater, 20 July 1927, ‘Animals and Birds Acts Protests from Country Women Assocn's, AGS/J464, GC, DAS, QSA, Brisbane.

65 Correspondence from Margaret A. Ogg, 21 July 1927, Animals and Birds Acts Protests from Country Women Assocn's.’, AGS/J464, GC, DAS, QSA.

66 The others were representatives of the Royal Society, the Nature Lovers’ League, the Royal Australasian Ornithologists’ Union and the Boy Scouts’ Association, along with a farmer, Hector Dinning. Fowler, 19.

67 F.E. Collins (‘A Queensland Country Woman’) to Acting Premier, 25 July 1927, AGS/J464, GC, DAS, QSA.

68 Correspondence from Helen Corbett Taylor to William Forgan Smith, 25 July 1927, ‘Individual Protests’, AGS/J463, GC, DAS, QSA, Brisbane.

69 ‘Hugh K. Liptus’, ‘The Native Bear’, Daily Standard (Queensland), 26 July 1927, 6.

70 ‘Wearing Furs’, Brisbane Courier, 27 July 1927.

71 David Stead, The Great Slaughter: The Death Knell of the Native Bear (Sydney: Epworth Press, 17 May 1927), 11, 13–14.

72 See for example ‘Banned Plumage: Women’s Borrowed Feathers’, Sunday Times (Perth), 11 November 1923, 11.

73 ‘Cruel Slaughter of Wild Birds: Feathers Flaunted on Women's Hats’, Saturday Journal (Adelaide), 1 September 1923, 2; ‘Do Women Really Hate Cruelty?’, The Mercury (Hobart), 21 August 1937, 14.

74 ‘Murdered Mother Heron: Women and Feathers’, Sydney Stock and Station Journal, 13 August 1920, 2. Stead is thought to have inspired the character of Sam Pollitt, in his daughter Christina Stead’s novel, The Man Who Loved Children. Pollitt is presented as a nature-loving employee of the fisheries department whose narcissism, sexism, and unbridled utopianism damage the lives of his wife and children. Christina Stead, The Man Who Loved Children (London: Peter Davies, 1941). See Hazel Rowley, Christina Stead: A Biography (Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1993), 11, 15, 20–1, 33–4, 128, 260.

75 Howlett, 9.

76 ‘Koala Fur Coats’, The Argus, 23 June 1939, 3.

77 John M. MacKenzie, The Empire of Nature: Hunting, Conservationism and British Imperialism (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1988), 7, 21.

78 Ibid., 135, 143.

79 Rachel Weaver and Ken Gelding, The Colonial Kangaroo Hunt (Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2020). Between World War II and 1970, crocodile hunting ‘safaris’ in Queensland drew directly on older colonial traditions of African hunting to attract southern tourists. Claire Brennan, ‘Australian Safari: Hunting Dangerous Game in Australia’s Tropical North’, in Lectures in Queensland History 3 (Townsville: Townsville City Council, 2013), 91–101. See also Claire Brennan, ‘Imperial Game: A History of Hunting, Society, Exotic Species and the Environment in New Zealand and Victoria 1840–1901’ (PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, 2004), University Library Catalogue, https://cat2.lib.unimelb.edu.au/record=b2942796 (accessed 3 April 2023).

80 Ashby, 311.

81 Correspondence from George H. Haughton to William Forgan Smith, 30 May 1927, ‘Individual Protests’, AGS/J463, GC, DAS, QSA.

82 Voice of the North, 10 August 1927, 5; Brisbane Courier, 19 July 1927, 15.

83 Dickson, 15.

84 ‘No True Australian’, clipping from The Mail, 1 August 1927, AGS/J463, GC, DAS, QSA, Brisbane.

85 Malicia Demons, ‘Little Grey Brothers’, Brisbane Courier, 27 July 1927, 17.

86 Thomas Foley, ‘Open Season Defended’, Brisbane Courier, 21 July 1927, 9.

87 W.H. Symes, ‘To the Editor’, Brisbane Courier, 25 July 1927, 15.

88 J.J. Banks, ‘To the Editor’, Brisbane Courier, 25 July 1927, 15.

89 Chas. Chauvel, ‘Country Protests’, Brisbane Courier, 25 July 1927, 15.

90 Geddes Crawford, ‘Our Native Bear’, Brisbane Courier, 27 July 1927, 17.

91 Stead, Great Slaughter, 14; Chauvel, 15.

92 Kate Auty gives a new reading of the massacre evidence and the efforts to obscure it in O’Leary of the Underworld: The Untold Story of the Forrest River Massacre (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2023).

93 See for example ‘Ghoulish Native Massacre: Special Commissioner’s Report’, Truth (Brisbane), 29 May 1927, 15.

94 ‘Massacre of Natives’, Brisbane Courier, 10 March 1927, 12.

95 Foley, 9.

96 ‘Diogenes’, ‘Open Season for Bears’, Toowoomba Chronicle and Darling Downs Gazette, 2 August 1927, 9.

97 Jackson, 214–15.

98 Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, ‘Conservation Advice for Phascolarctos cinereus (Koala) combined populations of Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory’, February 2022, 5–6, https://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/threatened/species/pubs/85104-conservation-advice-12022022.pdf (accessed 5 February 2024).

99 ‘How Koalas Won’, Sunday Times (Sydney), 19 May 1929.

100 Donegan, 45.

101 Noel Burnett, ‘A Letter to Nature-Lovers in Connection with a Proposed Re-Establishment Sanctuary for the Native Bear at West Pennant Hills (Sydney): A Practical Effort to Save the Koala for Posterity’, 11 November 1929, FERG/6496, National Library of Australia, Canberra.

102 Bonyhady, 26–7, finding an instance of ‘conservation’ in the commands of Robert Ross, in 1790, to preserve the habitat of Norfolk Island’s petrels. As he points out, not until the twentieth century was such concern for nature labelled ‘conservationist’.

103 Lines, 171.