We of the Never-Never

A Classic of the Northern Territory

Francis Ratcliffe, a British biologist born in India and educated at Oxford, who worked for Australia’s Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, wrote this work, first published in 1937. In it he recounts his fieldwork (and associated adventures and observations) on two problems (which compose the order of the book and inspire its title): the flying foxes (giant fruit bats) of Queensland, which were deemed a nuisance to fruit farmers of the region, and soil drifting (by wind erosion) in northern South Australia, which, it was feared, was a sign of desertification.

That doesn’t sound so interesting, but it is; in fact, the work is an Australian classic, for two reasons. First, Ratcliffe’s engagement with the Australian environment, as he pursues his applied research, goes beyond empirical observation to and recounts his affective response to the land and its creatures, including humankind. Second, he writes beautifully, with vivid imagery and lush sensuality. To a large degree the work partakes of the travel narrative, although the author does not try to conform to that genre; he just writes about his travels.

Ratcliffe immigrated to Australia during the time he conducted the fieldwork recounted in his book and went on to a distinguished career as a scientist and administrator with the CSIRO and as a conservationist (founder of the Australian Conservation Foundation). He published landmark works on rabbits, termites, and kangaroos. He died in Canberra in 1969.

Stephen Powell, of Monash University, has written this excellent essay about Ratcliffe’s impressions of the Australian environment. As for my own comments on Flying Fox and Drifting Sand, I have three.

1. Ratciffe did not try very hard to overcome his own, culture-based reactions to landscapes and take the land on its own terms. He disliked the semiarid outback, it seems, because it not meet his expectations and because he suffered privations there. Thus his analyses of options for the land were colored by his opinion that no one really should wish to live there.

2. Ratcliffe’s thoughts about the land and its problems reflect the linearity of conservationist thought at the time. Ecology and range management then operated in terms of dichotomies and polarities. Holistic, complex, imaginative approaches to environmental problems were in the future.

3. The lyric prose in Flying Fox and Drifting Sand makes up for the lack of imagination about the environmental problems described. There is both color and love in Ratcliffe’s descriptive passages. I highly recommend the work as an introduction to certain parts of the Australian environment and as just a good read.

First Edition

Ratcliffe, Francis. Flying Fox and Drifting Sand: The Adventures of a Biologist in Australia. London: Chatto and Windus, 1938.

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