Grey nomads and other travellers staying at a Western Australian Goldfields town will be relieved to hear a plan has been hatched to keep noisy cows out of the local caravan park.
The Kalgoorlie Miner newspaper reports that a new fence is to be erected around Menzies to protect gardens and landscaping from stray cattle wandering into the town for a feed.
The town common fence has apparently fallen into disrepair and cattle from neighbouring stations have been entering the townsite for years in search of food and water … and they’ve been destroying gardens, potted shrubs, grass and kurrajong trees in private gardens, public areas … and the caravan park.
FLASHBACK: An aggressive bull terrorises a campground. PIC: McArthur River Caravan Park
“They have been in the caravan park … woken up people in their vans, and some of them get a bit aggro at night-time and bellow and carry on,” Shire of Menzies president, Greg Dwyer, told the newspaper. “The infrastructure wasn’t capable of holding cattle back from moving between pastoral property and town common.”
Councillors have now voted to cost the installation of a fence around town, and seek co-funding from adjacent stations.
Menzies’ new fence push follows similar moves in Leonora and Laverton, where talks have already begun with pastoralists about town fencing.
Mr Dwyer said cows were causing myriad problems when coming into town.
“They have been known to jump fences people have on their home blocks,” he said. “They have been up the nursing post and chopped the hell out of their hanging pot plants and their shrubbery.”
The town common boundary is 55 kilometres, but the final position and length of the fence is yet to be determined.
While having noisy cattle outside your van at night is no fun, everything is relative … having an angry bull charging about is much worse! Back in 2014, grey nomads and other campers were forced to flee from an ‘aggressive’ bull as it rampaged through the McArthur River campground near Borroloola. Some travellers even climbed trees to escape the beast, which was eventually shot by Northern Territory police.
Yes, Charged by a cranky Cow and calf at a Road house C/P not far from Broome, lucky I had a tree to get behind.
Had a tiger snake dangling from a shrub at the back of the van and a dugite curled up next to the shrub in Hopetoun WA. We had those snake deterrents in roughly the same area. Needless to say, we kept inside for a while until they left.
Could be worse. We had bison strolling through Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park in Canada while we were camped. They were rubbing their bodies against the vans to help remove their winter coats. Not much fun at all.