Intelligence

First published in Column 8 on the 4 December, 1991

Australians? Now, I know they’re crazy. (Just because I was born in Melbourne doesn’t make me an Australian – it really doesn’t. Prick me; do I not bleed Dunedin blood?)

In a place called Maryborough in Queensland the people are protecting possums. Because the poor little creatures are being enticed across a busy roadway by the smell of pizza and pancakes, the local council has decided to install reflectors on the trees so that the car headlights will warn the opossums not to cross the road.

(Why didn’t the possum cross the road you might ask. Because he’d seen the light?)

Seems a bit of a topsy-turvy idea to me. Ever since I can remember, opossums in New Zealand have been a pest. How come they aren’t in Oz? In fact, if this scenario had occurred here I think the local council would more likely have given a bonus to the restaurant owners whose fragrant delights waft across the road.

If Australia is that short of possums maybe there’s a possibility of a new export industry starting up. Let’s all get out there into the wilds, catch thousands of our furry little friends and ship them alive and well to Queensland.

Believe it or not, in the same edition of the paper in which I came across this exciting news about the vagaries of the Australian intelligence, I found an instance of New Zealanders using their brains.

Well-known author, Joy Cowley, and her husband, Terry Coles, the photographer, have offered two prizes, one of $600 and one of $400, to the person who catches the most possums. Plainly the opossums in Kenepuru Sound up in Marlborough are too smart to get themselves killed hopping across the road just because there’s a restaurant on the other side. Isn’t it remarkable than even our lower life forms have higher IQs than their Australian counterparts?

However, the Kenepuru possums multiply to such a degree that they’re described as a ‘plague.’ (I wanted to use some clever quote at this point, but the best I can come up with is: Of all the plagues with which mankind is cursed, a possum hammering on the roof is worst. With all due respect to Daniel Defoe.)

As a result of the prize offer, Kenepuru residents are all out to fill their freezers with their furry foes. The big question after the prize-giving, however, will be what Cowley and Coles intend doing with the freezers full of possums. Could it be they have in mind some further piece of NZ enterprise? Frozen Possum Pieces might be appearing in local supermarkets any day now.

However, just when it seems as if NZeders have it over their Aussie neighbours, we have reports from up north of some nonsense about hugging trees. (Seems like we South Islanders may have to secede from the North after all, if more of this loony kind of behaviour goes on.

I don’t know if I’d go as far as calling tree hugging ‘witchcraft,’ unless those encouraging the practice think they’re in some way getting in touch with the ‘spirits’ of the trees. New Age peculiarities are turning up behind every branch.

More to the point, does anyone think tree hugging contributes to (a) the education of our children, or (b) the way we present ourselves to our Aussie cousins as being more intelligent than they are?

If we carry on like this, all our efforts to prove our superior intelligence will be in vain.

Brushtail Possum in Queensland, Australia
Courtesy: Andrew Mercer (www.baldwhiteguy.co.nz)

Cowley’s husband, Terry Coles died in 2022, at the age of 92.

See also this story on a bridge built for the safety of possums - in Western Australia.