accessed and like a spider’s web, this
place draws you in and captures you
with a strange charm.
Jim, a ‘dogger’ that patrols this
stretch of the fence, plonked him-
self down, beer in hand and started
asking questions. Was Jim his real
name? It mattered little, his stories,
well stretched, were interesting, add-
ing to the myth of the ‘dog fence’. I
could see others listening, the divide
was widening.
“Of all the dogs you kill, how many
are real dingos?” I asked, not sure I
wanted to hear the answer.
“Mate,” Jim stared at me. “Mate,
98% of all dingos I shoot are 100%
pure.”
I sat in disbelieve as Jim explained
that all dingos killed must be DNA
tested, to track something scientific
or other. He continued with a grin,
that the dogs that managed to get
through the fence into New South
Wales were in fact protected by the
Sturt National Park. I tried to com-
prehend what I was hearing. The
dogs risked their lives to get through
a fence designed to keep them out,
if they made it they were actually
protected in a state that didn’t want
them. My mind wandered, this
seemed all too similar to the ‘leader’
of the ‘free world’ building a wall on
TRAVERSE 106
his southern border … keeping Mexi-
cans out or Americans in?
Our northward passage took us to
Poeppel’s camp, now the township of
Innamincka. Europeans had reached
the area as early as the 1840’s as a
number of explorers tried in vain to
open the interior of the vast land.
The Yandruwandha aboriginal people
had been here for who knows how
many millennia.
Twenty-two years before Innaminc-
ka was proclaimed a settlement
through the establishment of a police
outpost in 1882, Robert O’Hara Burke
and William John Wills had laid their
names to the area. Their ill-fated ex-