Hi to all. I am Melanie from Sydney Australia. So happy to be here with you all. :2thumbsup::love::daisy:
Hello & Welcome to the madness. Hope you find some fun here. Peaceful thoughts your way..... Farmout :-D
Wonderful greetings thank you everyone. I'm quite used to madness :juggle: I have my own forum as well for Sci-fi and we are a pretty mad bunch. couple of questions can I have my own avi? default ones are always a bit lame Lol... do we have sigs here?
Hi Melanie - nice to meet you. :seeya: Custom avis are only for those who pay to support the site. But the default ones aren't all lame. You can set up signatures by going to User CP and then editing your profile. Play around a bit and you'll find it. There are some things that you can't do until they promote you from Guest to Member, however.
Pay to support the site... lol...whatever for? Oh well, guess I'll stick with the default ones. Some forums allow customs after you been there a while, that is why I asked. I guess the sig will come once I'm off guest.... cos I can't find the setting
good luck mel ok since i asked the english ppl bout this kinda stuff... how bad are the rabbits there in aussie land?? who wouldve thought some dude bringing 30 rabbits over there from america would turn into ..... WTF!!!
thanx Slappy you asked the right person.. I'm a Vet Lol.. it fluctuates from season to season. You will get a surge after heavy winter rains, just as we are having now. So come Spring time there will be a lot of fluffy bunnies around. Some states are worse than others, but it isn't as bad as it once was, with baiting and hunting keeping a lot of it in check. I live in a semi rural area and comparing it say, with places I go walking, we are doing okay. The best evidence of course is their poo. Go for a walk around Sydney Harbour National Park and you will see a lot of it, or large cemetaries. But here, we don't see that much of it. Where on earth did you hear that from? America??? lol... Rabbits were first introduced to Australia by the First Fleet in 1788. They were bred as food animals, probably in cages. In the first decades, they do not appear to have been numerous, judging from their absence from archaeological collections of early colonial food remains. However, by 1827 in Tasmania, a newspaper article noted "…the common rabbit is becoming so numerous throughout the colony, that they are running about on some large estates by thousands. We understand, that there are no rabbits whatever in the elder colony" [i.e. New South Wales].[1] This clearly shows a localised rabbit population explosion was underway in Tasmania in the early 19th century. At the same time in NSW, Cunningham noted, "... rabbits are bred around houses, but we have yet no wild ones in enclosures..." He also noted the scrubby, sandy soil between Sydney and Botany Bay would be ideal for farming rabbits.[2] Enclosures appear to mean more extensive rabbit-farming warrens, rather than cages. The first of these, in Sydney at least, was one built by Alexander Macleay at Elizabeth Bay House, "a preserve or rabbit-warren, surrounded by a substantial stone wall, and well stocked with that choice game."[3] In the 1840s rabbit-keeping became even more common, with examples of the theft of rabbits from ordinary peoples' houses appearing in court records, and rabbits entering the diets of ordinary people. The Duke of Edinburgh rabbit shooting at Barwon Park, Victoria in the 1860s The current infestation appears to have originated with the release of 24 wild rabbits[4] by Thomas Austin for hunting purposes in October 1859, on his property, Barwon Park, near Winchelsea, Victoria. While living in England, Austin had been an avid hunter, regularly dedicating his weekends to rabbit shooting. Upon arriving in Australia, which had no native rabbit population, Austin asked his nephew William Austin in England to send him 12 grey rabbits, five hares, 72 partridges and some sparrows so he could continue his hobby in Australia by creating a local population of the species. However, William could not source enough grey rabbits to meet his uncle's order, so he topped it up by buying domestic rabbits. One theory as to why the Barwon park rabbits adapted so well to Australia is that the hybrid rabbits that resulted from the interbreeding of the two distinct types were particularly hardy and vigorous. Many other farms released their rabbits into the wild after Austin.
