On the Six Foot Track, with a poet and a piebald.

The six foot track was originally developed as a bridle path six feet wide, covering the 26 miles from Katoomba to Jenolan Caves in 1884. Lord Carrington, then Governor General, and Lady Carrington, traveled the track in September 1887 in company with the noted local guide Harry Peckman, known from his versifying as the Poetical Whip, who entertained them along the way with his songs and recitations. When Lady Carrington found it hard going, Harry told her to catch hold of his piebald horse's tail, she at first refused until her husband remarked, "Now then, Lil', do as the guide tells you", her ladyship took the advice and from then on she was alright. They camped at Little River and broke out the champagne and other good things, Harry gave them billy tea and finished off the bubbly with his brother. Some time later the piebald died, Harry cut off the tail and kept it as a souvenir of Lady Carrington. The track passes through some of the most beautiful, rugged and inaccessible country of the southern Blue Mountains National Park and may take up to 4 days to traverse or as little as 5-6 hours for runners in the six foot track marathon, definitely not me. My younger son and I drove in along the fire trail from the Jenolan end as far as the Cox's River and camped overnight at Little River. I photographed these wild ponies as they grazed on fresh pasture after rain. They probably descend from pit ponies released by the miners after the Katoomba coal mines closed in the 1930s. The rivers were still low with no spawn run fish showing, although a few smaller resident fish showed interest in a dry fly. A school group arrived and took over the Cox's camp ground, they had walked in from the Katoomba end, so we left early and headed back the way we came. No sign of old Harry, just the ponies, there was a piebald one.

The Dingo Tree and other dog tales

My son and I were returning from a long day's fly fishing to a remote Snowy Mountains stream when a massive gum tree loomed out of the darkness, its branches festooned with the bodies of dingoes shot by the local farmer to protect his stock. This folklore practice of hanging vermin as trophies and to deter their ilk probably dates from neolithic times when animals and crops were first being domesticated. Some dogs and pups had been hanging so long only the paws wrapped in fencing wire remain.

They appear to be alpine dingoes from the white colouration of those that still have any fur; further inland they tend red-ginger to sandy-yellow to match their environment, while black and grey also occur, possibly as a result of inter-breeding with domestic dogs.

Anyone who has experienced their long echoing howling often in chorus "where the air is cold as crystal and the white stars fairly blaze, at midnight in the cold and frosty air" while camped alone by a high country stream, will never forget it.

The dingo was brought to Australia in prehistoric times by Aboriginal people who used it to hunt game and as a blanket on cold nights, hence the saying 'three dog night' for a particularly cool evening.

In fact sleeping with dogs is recorded as early as the Natufian culture around 12,000 years ago at the origins of canine domestication. My old archaeology professor, Iain Davidson, notes that in the earliest sites of domestic animals in Palestine, Pakistan and the eastern Mediterranean, you get burials of people with dogs. And sleeping with pets is probably now more widespread than ever. More intimate relations have also been recorded.

Dingo remains appear in the archaeological record from around 3,500 years ago along with a new stone tool technology named the small tool tradition.

Dingo motifs occur widely in Aboriginal art and the dingo is a common character in Aboriginal mythology. In the Blue Mountains it is recorded as a food item after being cooked in a pit oven.

Dingoes soon spread across the continent, except Tasmania, and are are a major feral pest and threat to native animals and livestock, probably accounting for the extinction of the Thylacine, known as the marsupial wolf, on the mainland. The dingo never reached Tasmania because the land bridge over Bass Straight was flooded soon after 10,000 years B.P. as sea levels stabilised.

The species Canis lupus dingo evolved from the Indian wolf about 6,000 years ago and is genetically related to the wild dogs of Indonesia and the singing dogs of New Guinea. New genetic evidence continues to throw light on dingo origins.

the Dingo Tree