PIG OUT

On the long weekend, eager to switch off news from the political pig pen that is Canberra, I made tracks to a friend’s farm in outback NSW to shoot the breeze and some vermin.

In the morning sunlight, the jet black back of the sow gleamed. She stood proud within the sorghum stubble and treated her hairy boar of a husband and four obese piglets to breakfast. With the .222 rifle locked and loaded, we thumped across the rich black land determined to stop these hoofed hitchhikers in their tracks. With nostrils twitching and their heads pointing skywards, it wasn’t long before our quarry detected a scent of human in the air and started trotting towards the nearest exit from the paddock.

The killing of these grunters was not intended as an act to satisfy one’s lust for blood. For we were not a pair of sporting shooters trigger happy at the prospect of creating carnage in national parks or straddling our kill and posting photos in Guns and Game. With 12 Babes rounded up on a neighbour’s farm the night before, and the prospect of more rashers streaking onto crops, freedom for this lot was not an option. The sextet of cylindrically shaped snouts was responsible for rooting the earth and producing more swill than Craig Thompson. They’d bulldozed their way onto land like Julia’s hefty carbon tax and displayed more speed under fences than Abbott showed when attempting to leave the Chamber. Known to devour newborn lambs, flatten grain, plough the earth and foul drinking water for livestock, removing swine from productive farmland is an essential, albeit ugly task.

The thud of lead hitting leathery hides signaled each bullet found its mark. The tuskless, toothless, mud-encrusted boar and his missus headed for the hills trying valiantly to escape but they dropped dead before reaching the fence. Overhead, rolling clouds of pink and grey galahs screeched in response to the crack of gunfire. Within the same paddock, cattle oblivious to all the commotion bowed their heads, not in prayer, but rather to continue masticating. One sensed they’d seen it all before and were perhaps quite pleased not to share their plot with a family of interlopers.

Beetling back to Sydney in my car packed to the gunnels with lamb chops, fresh eggs and a boot full of firewood and cow poo, I turned on the radio only to hear barge ass and wing nut at it again, trading insults across the floor of Parliament House. With a wry smile and shake of my head, I thought what fun it would be to let the PM and her opposite loose in a paddock full of sorghum.