BBC Monsters we met: Australia
65 000 BC
A journey back in time, no human eye has ever seen this land or the extraordinary
creatures that roam here. When the first people reach this continent in prehistory they
found an immense wilderness ravaged by drought and scorched by fire. This is a land
where human survival will be tested to the very limits.
Imagine what life will be like for these first Australians. In this harsh strange world,
human ingenuity will be pitched against predators which are a throwback to the age of
the dinosaurs.
Aboriginal origins deep in the mists of time
Aboriginal myths speak of a time thousands years ago when the first ancestors came from
the sea. These beliefs are echoed by scientific theory claiming that humans came across
the sea from Timor, as much as six-five thousand years ago, arriving on the northern
coast of Australia – a new world.
What ever their origins the coast is where it all started long ago.
This family are people like you and me they have the same feelings and intelligence.
Highly skilled they have a complex language. They make fire and craft fine tools.
A nasty find on the beach
Jabarola is a great hunter. It must feel good the only people in a pristine world, an
ancient Eden but beach combing in prehistory can throw up nasty surprises.
Now Japangadi realizes they are not the first people here after all. Not only that but this
was the victim of a violent death but by whom or what. It makes them realize how small
and vulnerable they are in this unknown world.
For humans night is always a fearful time. Fresh from their discovery of the skull they
will not dare sleep without a fire and a night watchman.
Gathering food along the shore of a new land
The north of ancient Australia is cover in dense dry jungle but around the coastal fringe it
harbours a rich supply of food if you know where to find it. As these are a coastal people
they certainly experience to find all their needs from the animals and plants of shore and
coastal forest.
The women and child gather most of the family food supplies men hunt for bigger game
but over all they are rather less effective.
Although this is a new land many of the plants are similar to those of the islands from
which they came. This one is medicinal. There are many things that they do not know.
Australia is home to more species of venomous snake that anywhere else in the world.
As yet they do not realize the full dangers. A bite from a brown snake means a horrible
death. They learn by trial and error. Who first discovered that green ants taste of lemon?
One thing these coastal people know all about is the threat from giant salt water
crocodile. Despite their immense size seven meters long and a ton in weight these
predators stalk the water ways unseen. Their splashing might attract a crocodile’s
attention by waterlilies are excellent food well worth the risk. Jabarola the most sharp
eyed hunter takes guard.
The men go hunting
When cockatoos spot a threat they let each other know but are they startled by their first
sight of humans or by something else.
Although the hunting party don’t yet know this bird well they pick up on the alarm calls
and look out for possible dangers.
Ancient Australia harbours some of the strangest animals ever to walk this planet and
none stranger than Geniornus, the demon duck of doom. A over two hundred and fifty
kilograms with massively powerful legs, this is a threat but is it meat-eater or plant-eater.
Guess wrong and you are dead.
Whatever the dangers there is a pressing need to find food so they cautiously continue to
hunt. If they can make even one substantial kill it will provide the family group with
protein for days to come.
But others have already claimed this area. Over the years many waves of hunter gatherers
have made the same journey from the nearby coastal islands seeking new hunting
territory. Hunting rights are fiercely defended.
Out gunned Japangadi’s face a decision stay and fight and risk more losses or move.
A land scorched by fire
For at least two million years Australia has been a dry land where electric storms set
tinderbox vegetation ablaze. These fires rage across hundred of kilometers for weeks on
end and travel at the speed of the wind, faster than a man can run.
Forced from the coast Japangadi’s family move inland searching for their own hunting
territory. It is a journey into the unknown. They have never met anything on the scale of
Australian bush fire. Smoke the first sign of what is to come. Get caught down wind and
you are in big trouble. Their only chance is to find an area where there is less dry
vegetation. That is where the fire burns weakest and the only safe place to break through
the wall of flame.
Natural fires on this scale happen once only every thirty to forty years. The trees and
forest will grow back it will just be a matter of time.
Search for water in a parched land
Forced further into the unknown these early explorers have no idea of the immense scale
of the land they walk. Although they don’t know it yet fire will become a critical part of
there lives but for now they simply need to find water.
In this parched continent finding water has been a problem for all life for millions of
years. Flocking birds can easily cover huge distance from waterhole to waterhole and are
a clue of standing water nearby. Japarola and Japangadi know that the birds almost
certainly mean water amongst the trees but there is a problem. Here there is every chance
it will attract deadly creatures too.
Despite their thirst the man are cautious and leave the family behind to follow in relative
safety. They are moving into a dense jungle of palms and vines. These jungles are
common and contain many fruit bearing plants but that is not all.
By stalking up wind the men reduce the chance of an animal smelling their approach.
Neither creature had ever met, both need to assess the dangers of the other. It is a vast
animal it could be dangerous but it doesn’t look like a predator – herbivore after all.
At two tons Diprotodon is the biggest marsupial ever to have live. These clumsy giants
lurch about in vine jungles constantly eating fruits and leaves. What caused one of their
number to charge so furiously. Is there something more sinister hidden in the vine jungle?
Confident the nearby herd of Diprotodon is not a threat after all Japangadi feels it is safe
enough to approach the water’s edge. This far inland they feel they have little to fear
from salt water crocs and throwing stones at the water will spook any other smaller
predators in the area. The decision is that it is safe.
Tracks! Huge foot prints in the sand. This was no crocodile and the tracks are fresh.
Somewhere nearby there is another giant creature but what?
Something in the darkness
Millions of bats take to the air. The creatures of the dark are on the move. If the day
revealed strange giants what might be lurking out there in the gathering chill of darkness.
As the noised fades Japarola thinks the danger is gone. In a way he is right this furtive
giant is not a creature of the night. Its body is too cold and sluggish to hunt – for now!
By day a gruesome find
With the new day in an Australian summer the oppressive heat quickly returns. Unsettled
by the tracks at the water’s edge and the sinister noises in the night the family keep
moving.
Out noses are insensitive but even so we are capable of smelling death in the warm air. A
fresh kill an adult Diprotodon brutally mauled. What monster animal had the power to
do this? With the stench of carrion their concern is that predators or scavengers will
return to the kill.
The family has no option but to seek safer hunting grounds leaving behind the land of the
giants, if they can. In fact Diprotodon is unlikely to stray far from the vine jungles and
water.
Life in a sun-baked world
Ancient Australia is covered in a patch work of different vegetation types. Open grassy
country like this is far less common than it will be n the present day. The further inland
they go the hotter it becomes. The desert here is a furnace temperatures here can reach
forty degrees centigrade. Without shade the heat saps energy and the dry air sucks water
from your skin. A world of mirage.
In this open country there are tracks from creatures they haven’t seen before. They are
the first humans to see a red kangaroo, a weird and seemingly misshapen beast. Yet this
odd hopping gait is superbly efficient for good reason.
In this sun-baked world rainfall can never be relied on it could be a huge distance to the
next water hole. The creatures here are adapted to conserve both energy and water.
Kangaroos and emus are grazers. They lead nomadic lives in open country, endlessly
searching for grass and water. They are less widespread than they will in the present day.
Learning from these animals will help these people to survive here but for now all they
have to work out is that this is game they can safely tackle. Following the trail of the
kangaroos they are learning bush craft, picking up skills that will be honed over the
centuries to make aboriginal tracker legendary.
Crouching one behind the other carefully coordinated as one, the hunters appear as a
single smaller animal to the quarry. This kangaroo has never seen a human before. It has
no idea that an animal can hurl a lethal projectile to strike from thin air.
A delicious meal
Here at last is a perfect source of fresh meat. After month living hand to mouth and on
the run this is riches indeed!
Cooking kangaroo will become a strict ritual which celebrates their importance to
aborigines. The animal is cooked whole in its skin to retain juices. It fur is beaten off and
the meat is often eaten extremely rare. It will be a staple of aboriginal desert diet. So
respected would the eating of kangaroo become that braking the proper etiquette of eating
will be punishable by tribal law.
The kangaroos had encountered for the first time a formidable new predator. The humans
had found a feast.
Bush fires are an ally
Living in this place you never know what will happen next. Even in the desert the sky can
crackle to the beat of electric storms. Fire here burns at over a thousand degrees. There is
only one simple lesson to learn stand up wind. Now the family is no longer so much at
the mercy of Australia’s savage elements and they are to make another discovery. In the
wake of a fire the scorched earth is easy to pick over a place where you can easily find
burrows of tunneling creatures and already barbequed remains. Bushfire has become an
ally. Fire rages here for good reason despite the lightening storm this is still a land of
drought.
Back to the dangers of a better watered land
In the desert they found a safer place with plentiful food but there is another problem the
seasons are changing and becoming increasingly dry. Rain may not fall again for year on
end. The last drops of water are burning off under the blazing sun. They are simply
running out of time.
In the future their descendants will learn of hidden water supplies the secret of desert
survival. But now without that knowledge they face no choice they must face the long
trek towards river country where they can find standing water. It is a walk that will lead
them back into the heart of danger. After week spent kicking dust, weary feet long for the
cooling rush of running water.
Grabbed without warning by a giant salt water crocodile a human has no chance. In
prehistoric Australia all the great waterways support a great number of crocodiles. It is a
continent where reptilian predators are ever present, a country where you drop your guard
at great peril.
Since the weather is seasonal the cold deepens as winter draws on and the wildlife
becomes less active. For the people it is proving hard to find so despite the threat of
deadly predators the cautious search for food goes on.
A mighty lizard
They never know what snack they might stumble across in the grass but these are
unwelcome signs. Large dropping scattered on a patch that has been used regularly.
Some of the group has spread out unaware of any threat. What creature uses this place
and how recently. Regurgitated bones suggest a predator, danger for the unwary. This
looks like a basking site. The droppings are fresh. A large carnivorous animal cannot be
far away.
A giant bird defending its nest is a formidable foe but something else has distracted it
from the chase. It is time to leave!
Megalania six metres long the largest lizard ever to have lived. Its saliva is riddled with
toxic bacteria, a bite from this creature spell certain death. It is short sighted but it has
another method for detecting prey. Like the Komodo dragon it tastes the air with its
forked tongue using an acute sense of smell to track down food from as far as fifteen
kilometers away.
The scent of man is new to the reptile it is on the scent of more familiar fare. The instinct
to protect eggs is strong but not that strong.
Humans are unique animals because of our ability to communicate ideas and complex
information but you need more than speech to survive it take knowledge and experience
to tackle deadly threats. This is a wilderness where terrors lurk and tensions run high but
the aggressive display of a frilled lizard is nothing to be afraid of.
By now even the simple act of drink water has become a deadly task. For the early
settlers the need to find a source of water that isn’t patrolled by monsters has become
critical for survival.
Perhaps shallow water sources in dense woodland might be safer. Even so it is perilous
for a child to wander off alone unnoticed. Nangala knows she has little to fear from a
lumbering Diprtodon but they are not alone. Megalania is an ambush specialist with a
brutal bite one that causes blood loss and poisoning so severe that even two tons creatures
are at risk. Never stray close to an attacking predator you become competition.
Jabarola is killed.
Humans have always believed in the spirits of the dead. The keening ritual or sorry camp
may last several weeks. It is a time to mourn the departed and speed their spirit’s return to
the ancestors. In grief people need time on their own.
The hunter becomes the hunted
The parenti, it will become Australia’s largest lizard. Now in prehistory it is a minnow.
During the day this is a fast moving aggressive creature but in the cold hours of dawn the
reptile’s blood is too cold for it to move and if a small reptile is too cold to move could
Japangadi have found a chink in the armour of its bigger relative the Megalania. Is the
cool of dawn to become a time of strength for humans, a time when the vast predatory
Megalamia will immobile?
It is these people ability to learn and plan that will transform them into a super predator.
Armed with new knowledge Japangadi will fight back.
In the morning cold the hunters work as a team lighting the scrub upwind. The fire
gathers pace with the morning breeze. By setting large scale bush fires man has
discovered a way to defend himself against the most powerful of predators.
Fires changes the Australian landscape
Evidence suggests that Australian fires became more frequent some sixty thousand years
ago. Before man’s arrival all fires had natural causes. Was the most likely change people
burning the hostile bush for their own security?
There are many plants that can’t survive regular burning in particular the more delicate
types of tree but some plants always grow back the fastest to return are the grasses. New
tender grass shoots attract grazing herbivores. Kangaroos travel hundred of kilometers
looking for such fresh growth. Burning not only clares the ground and defends humans
against predators it also changes the vegetation to attract game for hunting. At some point
humans must have realized that fire was more than just a weapon is was a tool that could
alter the land to their needs.
Over the millennia regular burning has dramatically changed the vegetation. Most of the
vine jungles where Diprotodon browsed have disappeared. Without suitable food these
browsers were doomed along with their huge predators. At some point in the last forty
thousand years they simply vanished.
Many will argue that humans had no part in these extinctions. Today grazing kangaroo
are widespread. They are the symbol of Australia, winners in a world where fire resistant
plants have replaced ancient forests. Was it fire in the hands of man that created the land
we see today and burnt the monster of Australia to extinction?