SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Australia) 06 September 08 The beady eyes that led to a crusade
Graeme Sawyer can trace his life's crusade back to a nasty fright. Sawyer - now the Lord Mayor of Darwin, but then a humble teacher - was camping at Bambirini Station near Borraloola, towards the south-west edge of the Gulf of Carpentaria. He crawled out of the cabin one morning, opened his bag and saw two black, beady eyes staring back at him.
It was a cane toad, the first Sawyer had seen in the Northern Territory. This was the late 1980s, five decades after the animal had been introduced to neighbouring Queensland where it decimated the state's native frog population. "It was really quite a jolt," he said. "I thought, 'what am I going to do about this?' "
Two decades later, Sawyer is known across the Territory as the founder of the local chapter of ToadBusters, a group of environmental vigilantes that is fighting to stop the menacing advance of Bufo marinus, toad by toad.
They hold regular toad busts, during which volunteers comb parklands and backyards for invading amphibians. "No gloves, just bare hands," Sawyer said. "I reckon I've probably picked up 15,000-20,000 cane toads."
His second, more recent claim to fame is as Darwin's Lord Mayor, a title won in the March council elections, largely because of his ToadBusting profile. In the Territory he is now affectionately known as the Toad from Town Hall.
But behind the cane toad crusade is a serious environmental agenda, which is bringing the new Lord Mayor into conflict with the Northern Territory Government and the developers who are driving a building frenzy in the once-sleepy town.
Like many of the most parochial territorians, Sawyer was not born there. He grew up in western Victoria and moved north as a young man on the promise of employment. He has lived in the deep north for 29 years - not quite long enough to be a local.
"I'll become a territorian next year," he joked.
Sawyer was attracted to Darwin's rough edges. "It had a frontier kind of atmosphere in those days. It was a big country town. It was bit raw. There were crocodiles, and buffalo. Nature was part of daily life," he said.
Sawyer grew to love the wildlife, especially the magnificent, delicate native frogs that often crawl into toilets and kitchens in the tropics. Alarmed by a fungus that appeared to be wiping out many of them, he helped set up a local chapter of Frogwatch.
When the cane toad began to pose a threat, Frogwatch launched Toad-Busters, a concept borrowed from Queensland. ToadBusters relies on volunteers spending hours in scrub, watching for and pouncing on every toad they see. Sawyer admits this method will never defeat cane toads but hopes it might help control their numbers. "We're certainly holding fairly well in Darwin," he said.
The usual way of destroying the toads is to freeze them to death. Sawyer admits he has tried other techniques, also pioneered in Queensland, such as cane toad golf, cane toad fireballs and Dettol.
"Dettol isn't very effective on big toads but it's dynamite on baby toads, although we use bleach rather than Dettol because of the environmental concerns," Sawyer said. "A spray of bleach kills a juvenile cane toad in about half a second."
Picking up the toads was not as unpleasant as it sounds, he said. "I've never seen one yet let its poison go. Toads are dry-skinned animals. There are lots of people who can't pick them up full stop, but it's not hard. They just sit there.
"We gas them with carbon dioxide, which puts them out in about 30 seconds, and put them in the freezer. The freezer holds about 500 toads."
Sawyer has grudging admiration for his foe. "As an animal they are amazing. They're so tough, so adaptable. They're not only surviving, they're flourishing, although they're not particularly smart. But I hate the impact that they have on Northern Territory ecology."
Sawyer relied on his Frogwatching and ToadBusting profile in the council elections. A native frog was pictured on his campaign literature.
He was also boosted by an endorsement from his predecessor.
But life as Lord Mayor is not all glamour. There are the rates, roads and rubbish, and regular debates over dog poo. He is also required to leap to Darwin's defence at every slur from the south, most recently last week, when a Quality of Life index ranked the city 467th out of 590 regions in Australia.
The city was changing, he said - busier than it used to be. "The look of it has changed a lot, from low rise to high rise. At the moment we've got about 15 cranes on the skyline in Darwin, and multiple houses and units and hotel accommodation.
"In some ways it is losing its character but it's developing new character. It's a much smarter, more with-it place underneath than you might think.
"But I still think that the people of Darwin want to keep something special about Darwin, something that shows we are different."
The beady eyes that led to a crusade