The Dog fence (0)

The Dog Fence
When you think about the world's longest manmade structures, China and Great Britain ( Stonehenge ) spring to mind. Very rarely does the Australian continent get a mention , which is a shame, because the Dog Fence, or Dingo Fence, is the longest structures on earth.
The Dingo Fence is a barrier that was built in Australia during the 1880s and finished in 1885.This fence was built only on one purpose : to stop dingoes ( Australia ’s wild dogs ) from killing sheep .
It is one of the longest structures on the planet , and the world's longest fence. it’s 3,307 miles long. That makes about 5,320 km. That is about two and a half times longer than the Great Wall of China. The fence starts near the coast of Great Australian Bight and ends up in the eastern part of Queensland in the Bunya Mountains , not far from the Pacific Ocean. At the time, it was the longest man-made structure in the world. It was only partly successful; Dingoes can still be found in parts of the southern states to this day, but although the fence helped to reduce losses of sheep.
The fence is 2 meters high and it extends about 30 cm underground to keep the dingoes from digging under it. There is a gate approximately every 19 km s.
It’s called different names in different states: South Australia – The Dog Fence, New South Wales – the Border Fence, Queensland – the Barrier Fence, Wild Dog Barrier Fence
At first it was unsuccessfully used to try and keep out rabbits, with the fence built originally as a rabbit proof fence in 1884. It was more successful at keeping out pigs, kangaroos, emus. In 1914 it was converted into a dog-proof fence.
The dog fence guards the world’s second largest sheep flock , after China’s. Without the barrier the sheep industry couldn’t exist . But more and more people – politicians, taxpayers, and animal lovers say that such a barrier would never be allowed today . With sections of it almost 100 years old, built by bushmen traveling with camels. By 1960 three states joined their barriers to form a single dog fence. Queensland has the longest fence with 2500 km long followed by South Australia with 2100 km The New South Wales fence covers 580 km.
The Fence goes over sand dunes, past salt lakes, up and down hills , across plains. It stays away from towns. Where it passes near Cooper Pedy in South Australia, it’s actually a tourist attraction, visited on bus tour . People go and touch it. Children like to climb it.
The fence marks the dividing line between cattle ( outside ) and sheep (inside). Inside is where dingoes, legally classified as vermin, are shot , poisoned and trapped. Sheep and dingoes do not mix.
Stations that once sheared 100.000 sheep suffered so many kills that their owners switched to cattle. Others fought back with massive poisoning campaigns and shooting drives. Stations reported annual kills of hundreds of dogs.
Day after day people, singly or in pairs travel at the fence filling their days by patrolling at the fence. They fill in the holes , set the traps , replace post, close the gates , and shoot dingoes. Natural forces conspire against the fence. Floods wash it away, rust eats it up, blowing sand buries it, and falling trees crush it. Then there are the animals . Wombats, foxes, and pigs dig holes under it. Hot-blooded bulls and wild camels knock it down. Emus for some reason run with full speed into it and spilt the mesh. Dingoes usually don’t make holes. They just wait to step through one. The repair work is relentless on a fence pressured by weather and wildlife . The work is hard and hot. Unloading post logs, carrying timber , stringing new mesh across the posts. To build a mile of 2m high netting costs as much as 12,000 dollars
The Fence is administered by the Department of Natural Resources and Mines. The Wild Dog Barrier Fence staff has 23 employees, with two person teams which patrol a 300 km section of the fence once every week. They gather the corpses of dingoes who have been died in the traps. They reset the trap and cover it with sand.
THE DINGO
The dingo looks like a small wolf cousin to the coyote and the jackal. It’s a leggy dog, short pointed ears and bushy tail. The most common colour is ginger and yellowish-tan. It has a short fur. Dingoes rarely bark . They yelp and howl. The dingo is Australia’s largest carnivore. They hunt alone or in small packs. They hunt mostly at night . They eat rats, kangaroos, rabbits, lizards, and of course sheep. Sheep are really easy to catch because they are slow , panicky, and have nowhere to hide . The dogs pull them down by their necks and with powerful jaws tear the sheep into pieces. A dingo will kill up to 50 sheep at night, killing far more than it needs for food. They swallow meat in large chunks. Dingoes came to Australia more than 3500 years ago
A wild dingo has never been known to attack a human
Facts

• Laurie Corbett, a noted dingo researcher, estimates that since sheep arrived on the continent, dingo numbers may have increased hundred times.
  
• Kangaroos are now cursed more than dingoes. They have become the rivals of the sheep, competing for water and grass
  

• Parts of the Dingo Fence are lit at night by 86 mm lamps which are alternately red and white.
  
• 1989, something like 20,000 sheep being lost to dingoes when the fence in South Australia was washed down, so that'll give you a fair idea of just what happens when they do get in. No fence no sheep