Over a hundred years ago, Australian wool growers, outraged at the decimation of their herds by native wild dogs, made a landmark business decision. It may have been one of the great knee-jerk reactions of all time. It has cost millions and millions of dollars and the expenditure of untold thousands of hours of labor in the blazing Outback sun. And sadly, it may have hurt business far more than it has helped.
The problem: Dingoes, wild dogs native to Australia for at least 3500 years, taking their fair share of lambs in clandestine raids on the newly introduced and rapidly expanding sheep camps. The wool growers, naturally enough, were outraged.
Their solution: build a fence. A six foot high fence. A fence that eventually grew (over the next hundred years) to be over 3300 miles long. A thousand miles longer than the great wall of China!
The result: Continue reading “The Mother of all Fences”