At 12:30 AM 10/10/99 +1000, Walter wrote: >The Thorpdale - Narracan district was free of rabbits in the early days >because of their inability to negotiate the swamps and forests of West >Gippsland. My uncles have told me that the first rabbits arrived suddenly in >1914 (by which time their "distant" cousins had crossed the Nullabor :-)). I >had assumed that they arrived from the west by a fairly direct route (from >Geelong). However, after reading your message I have my doubts. Do you think >that they may have arrived from the east - via NE Victoria, the Great >Divide, Maffra, Traralgon and Morwell? It should have been easier for them >to cross a river than a swamp. Hi Walter and List, I think this would have been the case. Rabbits were definitely later in Gippsland, and people did think they would not cross the divide as they would not survive above a certain temperature. They ended up coming down the river valleys such as the Macalister, Avon and I think the Tambo. Around 1914 is when they were in plague proportions. People also believed they could not cross rivers, and the building of the bridge over the Barkly River above Licola was opposed for quite some time as people believed there were no rabbits on one side, and rabbits on the other, and they would use the bridge to cross and colonise. The spread was sometimes a little bit leapfrog, as there were cases where rabbits would be caught in one area and taken to another for release, The thought was that this would then be reported, and land values in that area would fall, and the rabbit carrier would be able to buy land cheaper there. I did hear one story of someone from Woodside (north of Yarram), that his father saw an animal, and went home and described it, and worked out that it must have been a rabbit, as it could not have been anything else. We have to realise that this spread happened in a time when the ONLY form of communcation (apart from word of mouth) was newspapers, and that many people did not get them, or could not afford them, or even could not read them. Must go - I've been rabbitting on Linda Barraclough Briagolong List Owner: AUS-VIC-GIPPSLAND email: kapana@netspace.net.au http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~surreal/AVG/