BUFFEL
“…Save Our Buffel…”
Dear Boss,
With grave concern, I have decided to launch a new association in Alice Springs called S.O.B., or “Save Our Buffel.”
With every bleeding heart conservationist doing to utmost to obliterate this noble grass, I am becoming increasingly fearful that it might one day be added to that list of endangered vegetation which needs protection from horticultural fanatics and other wild-eyed, left-wing fundamentalists.
After all, when all is said and done, wasn’t it Buffel that nurtured our cattle industry in earlier days? Wasn’t it Buffel that curbed the blinding dust storms and helped consolidate the hills, plains and valleys of Central Australia?
I have of late watched in horror as fiery-eyed “de-buffelers” gouged out the magnificent grasses by the roots and cast them unfeelingly on to haystacks to decompose or burn. To see this stalwart grass treated disrespectfully, unmindful of its contribution to our peaceful prosperity, is more than a sensitive heart can suffer, mate.
Walk around and look closely at the properties of the “de-buffeling” radicals; they bake under the sun like arid lunar landscapes, completely devoid of vegetation, indigenous or introduced, gasping and shocked, with little or no refuge or sustenance for the native insects, birds and other wildlife.
It’s no bloody wonder they all come to my place!
Listen carefully to the “de-buffelers”: in their glittering, darting eyes can be sensed the gigantic ego of those who pit their strength and energies against the very forces of nature, determined to conquer, unrelenting in their struggle to become dominant.
Remember the poet’s words: “A man’s ambition must be small … To write his name on a dunny wall.” This could so easily to extended to: “But a man’s ambition must be worse … To treat his Buffel like a curse.”
With compassion for the beseiged Buffel grasses, I have now diligently gathered the seed and am carefully cultivating these into seedlings with the long term view of transplanting them into damaged and eradicated areas.
We are also thinking of selling Buffel seedlings from a stall at the Todd Street market, encouraging locals and visitors alike to propagate this wonderful grass willy-nilly across the country.
One Queensland devotee has even developed a hybrid Buffel which is so prolific in its nocturnal growth you can go out at night and actually hear it growing!
Another innovative spirit in the arid hills of Tennant Creek is experimenting with plastic indigeous vegetation; he reckons it’s too hard eradicating Buffel then waiting around for the native flora to re-assert itself. He strategically places his plastic plants around the denuded landscape to lend a semblance of realism while he patiently awaits the regeneration of fair dinkum plants.
“Yes,” he commented recently. “The plastic stuff has its advantages. It is hardy, can tolerate reasonably hot weather without melting, and it doesn’t need water or any other molly-coddling.”
To break the monotony, he has even invented fictitious kangaroo paws, sun flowers and bottle brush replicas, and these he thoughtfully places in conspicuous positions to attract Steve Strike’s romantic camera, and to please the aesthetic senses of purists like myself.
In a moment of candour, he confided: “The beauty of plastic natives is that they only require dusting off once a year. Of course, if it rains – which is does occasionally – the plastic vegetation is de-dusted in the process, and this alleviates a great deal of labour.”
-N. Brown, Alice Springs, Australia.
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