From the outside, John Feehan's home in suburban Canberra resembles that of many others in the inner north.
However, squirreled away behind the classic 1970s-style garage door lies something not found in any other garage in Australia, let alone Canberra.
As John carefully prises the door open, he tells me to "prepare for something special".
"You are about to get up close to around 40,000 dung beetles ... it's not even something the great David Attenborough has witnessed," he exclaims.
Now, while its doesn't quite rival the spectacle of wildebeest rampaging through the plains of Africa or Christmas Island's red crabs crawling en masse to the sea, stealing a peek at the nerve centre of John's nationwide dung beetle distribution operation is a real eye opener.
In fact, at first glance, apart from the pile of boxes, scales and Express Post packing tape, you wouldn't know the 16-18mm-long French beetles were here at all.
It's only when I listen intently that I can hear a low hum.
"That's the beetles jostling for positions in the boxes," explains John, who has spent the last few days collecting them from farms in southern NSW near Gundagai and Tarcutta where at dusk the beetles fly en masse to the nearest dung and begin to bury it.
"They fly only a few metres above the ground, making it an unforgettable spectacle," explains John.
"Different species of dung beetle are suitable for different times of year and different climatic conditions," says John. "This species, Bubas bison, which evolved in European winters and was introduced to Australia by CSIRO pre-1991, is especially suitable for the cold and wet winters of south-eastern Australia."
John calls his beetles "little nuggets of black gold" for their remarkable ability to improve fertility and water retention of Australian soils as well as to control numbers of buffalo fly and bush fly.
"They really are a win-win for farmers and the environment."
And if anyone is qualified to make such a statement, it's John. After growing up on a sheep farm near Braidwood, he's been researching and studying the beetles for more than 60 years. First at CSIRO under the expert tutelage of entomologist and ecologist Dr George Bornemissza as part of their dung beetle program, and since 1994 operating his own business.
By quickly burying dung, usually within 24 to 72 hours, the industrious beetles not only relocate nitrogen and phosphorus into the grass root zone, but also aerate the soil, and depending on the topsoil, help reduce internal parasite loads in domestic stock.
"Not even John Deere could make a machine which a farmer could drag around his paddocks every fortnight throughout the year which would place dung underground as efficiently as these beetles do," muses John.
According to John, the benefits to farmers aren't just through increased productivity but also in cost savings.
"A farmer will eventually receive a thousand times greater benefit from one new species of dung beetle than they would from one single tonne of phosphate fertiliser," explains John. "And unlike fertiliser which needs to be reapplied every few years, these beetles will keep bringing benefits, even when the grandkids take over the farm."
For non-farmers, the most obvious and welcome benefit is what the introduction of dung beetles has done to the population of bush flies.
"Before dung beetles were introduced to the Canberra region in the late 1970s/early 1980s, you couldn't sit outside and enjoy food, there'd be flies everywhere, they'd crawl into your mouth, ears, nose and all over your food," reveals John.
In fact, while Civic café owner Gus Petersilka is credited for pioneering outdoor eating in Canberra, it was the introduction of the dung beetle that made this an attractive option.
"The beetles can remove dung from the surface of paddocks quicker than the bush fly larvae can survive (six days), meaning there are fewer flies than there'd otherwise be," he explains.
Far fewer.
"Research in Western Australia by CSIRO reveals that just two species of dung beetles can reduce the bush fly population by up to 99 per cent," says John.
To the uninitiated, the term dung beetle might conjure up negative connotations, but according to John "once people find out about what they actually do, they fall in love with the beetles which don't bite, nor sting".
I witness this first hand when I join John on one of his daily runs to the Dickson post office where he posts the boxes of beetles to farmers all over south-eastern Australia.
The manager, who fondly refers to John as the "dung beetle man", holds each box up to her ear to listen to that low hum emitted by its precious cargo, before carefully placing it on the scales.
Even the suited man queuing for his passport photo is captivated listening to John's well-rehearsed spiel on the environmental benefits of the beetles.
You won't find anyone more passionate about a cause than John is about his beetles. Little wonder he picked up an OAM gong in 2011 for contribution to Australian agriculture and regenerative farming.
John's aim is to continue to distribute dung beetles from their current localised sites into the full extent of their climatically matched districts around the entire country.
"Ultimately, when I have all 24 species of dung beetle distributed around the country, I hope one day we will be able to produce two blades of grass where one once grew, which will change the face of Australia forever," he states.
An 'unforgettable spectacle'
Daily fly-out: Once beetles have buried a pile of dung, and guided by the amount of UV it can detect, from sunset for 20 minutes every day the Bubas bison flies a few metres above the ground searching for its next food source - dung from introduced animals such as cow and horses. According to John Feehan, "they are like a mass of drones, they never seem to fly into one another".
Hard workers: According to John, with Bubas bison it's easy to differentiate between males and females. The males have horns and the females, who do all the digging and the hard work, have spurs on their front legs. Those spurs are also used to age the females. "If a female digs twenty tunnels down through hard compacted soil, those little spurs are worn off and rounded just as the spikes on a backhoe shovel would be if it was used a great deal," he explains.
Nationwide effort: Since 1994, John has collected, mass-reared and distributed more than 7500 colonies of dung beetles, comprising 20 different species, from their current localised sites into the full extent of their climatically and geographically matched areas throughout Australia.
Dung load: There are 26-29 million head of cattle in Australia that in total drop about half a million tonnes of cow dung every day.
Did You Know? Some ancient Egyptians considered the dung beetle, or scarab, a sacred animal. According to their beliefs, the beetles propelled the sun across the sky. The sun was a ball of dung in which the beetle laid its egg and from which new life burst forth.
WHERE IN THE SNOWIES?
Rating: Medium
Clue: You've been loving this winter's series of mountain hut photos supplied by Matthew Higgins so this week, another one. Literary lovers will love this one.
How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to tym@iinet.net.au. The first correct email sent after 10am, Saturday July 27 wins a double pass to Dendy, the Home of Quality Cinema.
Last week: Congratulations to Frances McGee of Curtin who was the first of many readers to identify last week's photo, sent in by Rohan Goyne of Evatt as a "ghost sign" at the John Gorton Building (formerly called the Administration Building) on King Edward Terrace in Parkes. The building has housed many government departments since it opened in 1956, including, as seen in this sign, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The building was first announced in 1927 but its construction was delayed for several reasons including the Great Depression and World War II.
The clue of "underground bunker" referred to the underground basement of the building which initially (that part wasn't completed until 1976/77) had no natural light sources and housed a not-so-secret computerised system for all government communications outside of Australia. In 2001, holes were punched in the reinforced concrete roof to create small atriums that allow natural light to filter down to office spaces.
Special note to Glenys Agnew who when the building housed the Department of Finance and Deregulation, once heard a tourist walk past and mistakenly (or jokingly) read it as "The Department of Finance and Degradation".
SIMULACRA CORNER
During a recent trip to Renmark, while walking along the shores of a Murray River oxbow with Erawirung elder Eric Cook, Bryan Cossart of Stirling reports his wife was stopped in her tracks by this dragon. What a ripper!
- CONTACT TIM: Email: tym@iinet.net.au or Twitter: @TimYowie or write c/- The Canberra Times, GPO Box 606, Civic, ACT, 2601
