Sophie, Dog Overboard : The Incredible True Adventures of the Castaway Dog (26 page)

In early 2009, over two months after Sophie had gone missing off
Honey May
and in which time, Brian Kinderman and Peter Berck had spotted her on Keswick and then St. Bees, Alistair Meltzer made two trips to St. Bees for research. He'd heard from the various sources—Brian, Peter, as well as Bill—that there seemed to be a dog on the island and they thought it was a cattle dog. The information put the scientist on alert.

“Having had a cattle dog of the same type, I know they can be efficient hunters once blooded,” says Alistair, who had gathered from his conversations with the Bercks that the dog might have been killing goats. “I wasn't too concerned but I was curious. A dog on this island could be a threat to our study of the koala population,” says Alistair who, like Bill, also happens to have striking blue eyes and graying thick hair resembling that of a koala.

Alistair recalls noticing a change in the vibe of the
island's ordinarily unflappable swamp wallaby population when he was out on St. Bees over the months that Sophie was on the island. “Over the previous decade the swamp wallabies had usually been quiet and we could approach to within a few yards of a mature animal, although not a young one,” he recalls. “But on those trips at the beginning of 2009, all the wallabies would take flight at first sight or sound of us.” In past years, Alistair and Bill would have wallabies hanging about the south house while the koala teams were in residence. They were friendly, calm animals, who would hop up to the kitchen's screen door or even up the three wooden steps to the deck, completely unafraid of people. But Alistair noticed that the wallabies were far more skittish during the period that Sophie was on the island, more likely to hop away at the sound or sight of him traipsing around the hills and gullies with his camera.

If this was happening to the wallabies, what then of the koalas?

The concern was that hungry Sophie might have gone for a koala when her survival instincts had well and truly set in. If she was hunting and killing goats, there wasn't much to distinguish between a goat and a koala, except for the latter's delicious fragrant fur: eucalyptus scented. Hunting a koala would have taken considerably more stealth and luck, mind. Koalas spend most of their time in trees and dogs don't climb trees. In order to take a koala, Sophie would need to have come across one on the ground and have been
hungry and aggressive enough to have seized the hunting moment.

Nervous koalas get from tree to tree by moving carefully from branch to branch. The koalas on St. Bees live so free of threats that they're more likely to climb down, stroll along and then climb the next tree. Bill and Sean have tracked koalas, via their GPS collars, that move all over the island, not just from tree to tree but hill to hill, often leaving their parents to go about independently in the world and possibly feeding from many different types of eucalyptus leaves, not just the specific type it has long been thought that koalas are limited to.

“I was concerned,” says Bill about the presence of Sophie. “The koalas over there don't seem to worry too much when they're on the ground. They are not used to any ground-bound predators, unlike the ones inland, which are up a tree as soon as they see you.”

Alistair had kept his eye out for the dog and had seen it several times dashing across Homestead Bay's muddy flats. It had seemed ragged, elusive and very self-contained, but certainly not threatening. It wasn't until the last weekend in March, though, that Alistair got a good look at the dog, when he was standing with a recently-arrived Bill and the rangers as the dog ran out from the bush at Shark Point and across Homestead Bay. It looked fit, not as skinny as he remembered from the previous brief flashes. It had a very hefty blue coat and looked rather impressive crossing the flats against the sunset.

Bill was on St. Bees to collect specimens from as many of the koalas as he could in four days. Knowing that the dog was there, he would be on the lookout for signs of distress. He also knew he should be prepared for possible koala injury or death.

But while Bill and Alistair noticed changes in the wallabies, there was no sign of stress in the koalas. At least not yet. None of the known koalas were missing, none of them turned up dead on the knolls and there was no sign even of any other ravaged animal carcasses.

Still, this dog had now been seen on both islands and was sturdy enough to have been living out there without seeking the company or support of humans for over three months, maybe more. It was wily enough to have survived a swim across the channel and whatever else it had been through in order to get to St. Bees and Keswick in the first place. Even if it wasn't killing koalas, over time it could disturb their peace if they became afraid of a ground predator. There really was no other answer but to get the dog off the island.

F
or a month or so, ever since David Berck's phone call alerting them to the presence of the dog, rangers Ross Courtenay, Steve Fisher and Steve Burke had been meeting in the Mackay offices and discussing how to deal with the animal that first Brian on Keswick and then Peter on St. Bees had spotted. “So, we're thinking, what are we going to do with this dog?” recalls Steve Fisher.

Dealing with sick or wild animals was part of their job, and they'd been destroying goats for years. They were professionals and knew that eradicating non-native animals for the sake of the natural flora and fauna on the islands was their duty. This was different, though. This wasn't a feral goat, it was a dog, and all of them
were appalled at the idea of having to destroy it. But the problem was that nobody knew how long it had been out there and how wild it might be. If it was feral and vicious, death might be the only option.

“We talked a lot about how to handle the situation, what was for the best. We wondered, do we let the dog starve to death? But, no, we couldn't do that. That's inhumane, we couldn't let a dog starve. Do we shoot it? If it was a wild dog, maybe. But shooting was definitely a last resort,” Fisher explains.

“I was very keen on trying to trap the dog. The logical explanation was that it was somebody's pet,” says Burke. “That was the only way it would have got there. Which meant that it might not have been too wild, and that we should try to get it back to Mackay.”

“We never once came up with the idea that it had fallen overboard from a boat and swum there, and that people might be still looking for it,” says Fisher. “That would just never have occurred to us as a possible explanation. We thought, someone's abandoned the dog and that's a pretty cruel thing to do.”

The rangers consulted with the Mackay Council workers who dealt with lost or abandoned domestic animals all the time. They discussed the possibility of trapping the dog, hoping that it was in a friendly enough condition to bring it back to the mainland. While it was a long shot—the dog had showed no intention of being lured by Peter Berck—trapping gave the dog the best chance of survival.

The Mackay Council agreed to loan the QPWS marine park guys a spacious, wire animal trap for Burke to take out to St. Bees on his next trip. He and his colleagues were going out to do some maintenance on the lantana, which had been eating its way across the island, along with prickly pear. Prior to the dog's arrival, these plants and the goats were St. Bees' main feral pests and predators. The rangers were only going to be out on the island for four days, though, and Burke knew catching the animal could be tricky.

The rangers talked about what they'd do if they could trap the dog and it was in any state to be domesticated or rehabilitated.

“We actually thought it was a long shot because what dog, especially one that had been out there for a while, is going to walk into a trap?” admits Ross Courtenay. “But we had to give it a go. And as long as the dog wasn't savage, we planned on taking it back to Mackay. We probably would have put an ad in the newspaper. We just kept coming back to the idea that it had to be someone's pet.”

If no one came forward, they could take it to the pound for assessment and, hopefully, adoption. “We would have found a home,” says Ross. “As a last resort, one of us would have ended up keeping it!”

On the morning of Friday, March 27th, Steve Burke, Ludi Daucik and several ranger colleagues, along with Bill Ellis, arrived at the south end of Egremont Passage
and moored their boat,
Tomoya,
just at the edge of Homestead Bay. Sophie was over on Honeymoon Bay when they arrived. She was now three months into life on St. Bees, five months into island life altogether.

When Steve Burke first saw her, it was through his binoculars. He was standing on the bow of
Tomoya,
surveying the island to see if he could catch a glimpse of any goats or interesting wildlife activity or flora developments. He scanned north to Shark Point, up through the bushes and rocks that led to hills, zooming in closer as he hit the tree line, spotting a curlew here, the tail of a lace monitor lizard there. As he moved east over Homestead Bay, and then all the way around to the south side of the island, he caught sight of something shiny and white in between two trees, just at the edge of the beach line on Honeymoon Bay. He zoomed in but still wasn't sure—it looked like the skeleton of something, but it was bulbous. It looked like a turtle shell, a rare sight on St. Bees as turtles are so stealthy. Burke shifted the binoculars so that he was looking at the beach, and caught a moving gray and blue mass. It was Sophie, rolling around, legs lolling about as she rubbed and rolled her back and her tummy all over the sand.

“She was having a fat old time,” Burke remembers. She looked as though she'd just been swimming. Any onlooker might have imagined that she wanted to be there. For now, Burke was excited just to sight this elusive creature.

Midmorning, the rangers motored into shore on
the dinghy to drop off Bill, who was meeting with his volunteers and staying at the south house, and the rangers walked up to Peter's house to say g'day. Peter was not long back from his medical treatment in Brisbane. The rangers had called ahead to tell him that this was the weekend they were going to try to trap the dog. Peter didn't admit it but he was nervous for the animal—while the rangers were telling him that they hoped they could save it, Peter knew that any hint of hostility would end in death. And given that he hadn't been able to bring the dog in himself, he was skeptical. But he wasn't going to interfere with the rangers' job.

Steve Burke told Peter that he'd spotted the dog already through his binoculars, rolling around on Honeymoon Bay. “Makes sense,” said Peter, who had figured the dog was sleeping either there or one beach along, at Stockyard Bay. “It's coming closer to the house now,” he told Steve. “It might have got a whiff of the dog food I'm leaving out. Still doesn't want to get too close, though. It just won't quite show up.”

They discussed where to set the trap, considered Honeymoon Bay, and decided to wait it out and see if the dog appeared anywhere else.

Two nights later, the dog did make an appearance, trotting across the flats of Homestead Bay just as the sun was starting to set, as Bill was looking out to sea with Alistair, Steve and Ludi. It was a Sunday evening.

“There it is,” Burke said to Bill.

“Lone dog in the wild,” Bill replied.

It was time to set the trap.

While Bill and Alistair were watching the sunset and Steve and Ludi were setting the dog trap, David Berck and his wife Carolyn were starting to think about dinner over in the Mackay suburb of Eimeo. David opened the freezer and realized that the family had plenty for a barbecue. “Why don't we get Jodi and Ray over here for dinner,” he said to Carolyn. It was a spur of the moment idea but it was the way things rolled over in Eimeo.

Jodi Manning and Ray Cook had been neighbors with David and Carolyn for years and had spent many a weekend on St. Bees with them and many a Sunday night in the Bercks' Eimeo backyard feasting on steak, potato and salads. Jodi and Ray walked right over. Carolyn opened a bottle of sauvignon blanc and David, a jovial, heavyset guy who loved to entertain, got barbecuing. The four of them started talking about their weeks while the Bercks' children, Hayley and Tyler, played with Jodi's two dogs, Rani and Jack.

David had a story. “So, there's a wild dog on the island,” he started, turning a steak over as he spoke.

The conversation paused.

“What do you mean?” asked Jodi.

“It's a stray dog that seems to be bringing down goats. It's been there for months, we've had to call the authorities.”

“What sort of dog? Where did it come from?” Jodi
asked, ever the dog enthusiast. Jodi had adopted dogs all her life, including Rani, a most unusual looking animal not for the faint of heart—a very short-haired, wrinkle-prone white thing, a shar-pei–pitbull cross.

Carolyn and David explained that Peter had been seeing the dog, a blue cattle dog, on and off for a few months and that they figured it must have been left behind by boaters who had come over to camp or picnic. But this blue heeler had scared their friend Frank by growling and hissing at him in the generator shed, and now they were concerned that it was feral and dangerous. The QPWS marine park guys had taken a trap out there this weekend and were hoping to catch it once and for all.

The idea of a dog being dumped on an island was appalling to Jodi. “How could someone have left their dog?” she demanded.