Smuggling Fauna, 1950s-60s

'I first got involved in the late fifties, working with a person named Jim McShane. We worked very well together, all over Australia.

There was a Dutchman who used to get couriers to bring back birds in a specially marked briefcase. A fellow got caught and spilled the beans saying he'd done it for a certain Dutchman. From then on we began to take a big interest in the birds, what was coming in and what was going out.

A lot of foreign birds were coming down the Queensland coast. I got tipped off that a whole ship was loaded full of birds from Thailand, some from New Guinea. They landed up near Bundaberg, I sent up the information, and they happened to get this fellow with the birds. He got heavily fined.

We built up our diary on bird smugglers. We'd buy the newspapers and see who was advertising and what species they were offering. I don't think they thought we'd go to the trouble.

We used to watch the airports to see if any known bird smugglers were going out. If they were, we'd search their baggage and nine times out of ten we were fortunate and found birds drugged, suitcases of them, drugged and ready to be shipped.'

- Fred Steed

'Birds, gee whiz, some of the stuff we got. I'm convinced we never did more than scratch the surface. Once we got four suitcases with about 200 exotic parrots. Now they we so valuable they could have a 25 per cent death rate and still make thousands and thousands, just the ones that survived.'

- Clive Bull

'Snakes were big too. They mostly went to Germany. One young lad used to parcel them up and send them to Germany. Yes, they go for the lizards and geckos, even spiders were sent overseas in parcels. A person in Sydney used to train us on the snakes. Some of the fellas wouldn't touch 'em, but I just picked 'em up. I don't think the snakes were dangerous.'

- Fred Steed