The Woman on the Mountain by Sharyn Munro Page A

damage to Australia’s natural environment or displacement of the indigenous species—the destruction of their habitats, food sources and health, even to extinction—I think we’d be top of the hit list of introduced species. We’d hope the culling was humanely done, wouldn’t we?
    For me, the validity and relevance of the books of the world’s religions are not indisputable. In fact, the Bible’s insistence that God gave man dominion over all creatures seems to me to have caused a lot of our problems. Instead, I keep to one rule, and try to follow the admonition of Charles Kingsley’s The Water-babies character, Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby I know Jesus is reputed to have said much the same, but I like the pithy rhythm of Kingsley’s language better. If everyone managed to treat others as they’d like to be treated themselves it’d be a pretty nice world, don’t you agree?
    Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby had an offsider, Mrs Bedonebyas-youdid, but I found her rather Old Testament vengeful and didn’t take her up to the same degree.
    Although mightily impressed by Mrs D’s simple rule as a child, I only thought of it in the context of human relationships. I’m now extending it to all creatures, even—almost—to leeches, based on the premise that being different from humans is not a reason for superiority and exploitation, but rather for learning more.
    We used to kill whales before we realised how intelligent and complex they are, how more like us. ‘How can they!’ we now say of pro-whaling nations. But I don’t feel that the right of a species to survive ought to depend on its degree of similarity to us, or on whether it’s of any use to us. It’s an intrinsic right, as part of the whole wonderful natural world—biodiversity. We simply don’t know enough about how all things were designed to work together—ecosystems—and we usually don’t find out until it’s too late.
    As Dr David Suzuki says, ‘...we tear at the very web of life that makes the planet habitable.’
    This blind blundering is nowhere more evident than in clear-felling our native forests for wood pulp to send overseas. Recycled, plantation and alternative fibres can be used instead, and yet we allow this madness to continue. We lose the plants and animals that lived in those forests and we lose the trees that would have been hard at work absorbing CO2 from our atmosphere, helping to save us from worse climate chaos. Which is clearly not as urgent as the lining of foreign pockets by the cheaper wiping of bottoms, foreign or otherwise.
    And we think we rule the planet because we’re so clever.
    It is said that cockroaches will survive a nuclear war. Imagine if they ended up the dominant species. I’d hope they’d not be wanting revenge for all those baits and sprays! But I wonder if they’d even consider the remnants of the human race worth keeping. After all, we’re greedy, aggressive, dangerous, and so stupid we foul our own nests, overpopulate, and self-destruct. What good are we?
    With that humbling thought held firmly in the back of my mind, I’d like to think that many of us are atypical humans and that we do care enough about our world to stop wrecking it and start healing it. I’m not a misanthrope, even if I did choose the daily society of animals over that of men.
    And believe me, I tried both.

CHAPTER 5
LIVING FOR WEEKENDS
    Being forced to live in Sydney, amongst millions of other humans, after living here with just ‘my family and other animals’, as Gerald Durrell put it, was a culture shock from which I didn’t really recover, since I always saw my life there as temporary.
    With hindsight, I was barely holding myself together. The marriage break-up had turned my world upside-down, and as a single parent it was a desperate financial struggle. The kids and I were restricted to visits here at best every second weekend, depending on whether I had petrol money or a suitable vehicle. I was without the consolation of this