Dingo fence
She’s a grandmother with one of the toughest jobs on earth in one of Australia’s most remote places
patrol
Everymorning in the farthest north-western corner of NSW, solo boundary rider Phyllis Ainsworth checks her rifle is loaded and heads out for a hard day’s work.
For nine years fearless Phyllis, 53, has braved searing drought, isolation and deadly critters to patrol a 100km stretch of the world’s longest fence, the outback’s legendary dingo fence.
She lives an 840km round-trip from her nearest supermarket in Broken Hill and a dusty 40km drive from her closest neighbour, but Phyllis reckons she’s living the dream with her rescue bull terrier Milly, five cats and four goats for company.
MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
“I love open spaces and I like my own company,” says cheery Phyllis, whose home at Cameron Corner is where the borders of three states meet – Queensland, NSW and South Australia.
It’s back-of-beyond country, in the middle of the Sturt National Park where, unless a curious tourist veers off course, Phyllis can go long stretches without seeing another human being.
“I don’t know how I’d go living in the suburbs,” says Phyllis. “I wake up every morning to a sunrise most people can only dream of and the sunsets are just as good.
“The night stars feel like a million bright eyes are looking down on you. In the stormy season, the lightning shows are unbelievable. And the flocks of millions of green native budgies that fly around are awesome to see and hear.”
Phyllis is the first single woman to be a boundary rider along the 5614km dingo fence. Originally built in the 1880s, it was designed to protect sheep and cattle stocks from feral animals. The NSW government recently announced it would extend the dingo fence by another 742 kilometres.
Handy with her rifle, it’s Phyllis’ job to clear out any wild dogs or boars that venture too close to her fence and to repair any breeches of the wire mesh boundary.
Living alone and so far from help, the grandmother-of-three, who has also worked as a pastry cook, pub manager, storeman, furniture maker and checkout chick, has learned how to fend for herself. She can fix a motor, repair the plumbing, panel beat her car, grow her own food and dispose of the odd killer snake. “I’ve had to take care of a few six-footlong [1.8m] king browns,” says Phyllis, who shares her big backyard with a native menagerie of echidnas, emus, scorpions and myriad birds. “But I steer clear of the inland taipans – those buggers are deadly and they will chase you.”
HELICOPTER RESCUE
Disaster did strike one rainy evening a few years back when Phyllis was trying to repair a water pump and caught her foot in a goat hole, smashing her ankle and breaking her leg.
“The pain was agonising. I had to crawl 100m back to the house,” she says.
“The roads were cut from the rain and I had to wait until 10am the next day when the Royal Flying Doctor Service could get a helicopter in to evacuate me. I was off work for four months.”
‘I don’t know how I’d go living in the suburbs’
After enduring a long drought, there’s been some rain out Phyllis’ way recently, which has taken the pressure off the local kangaroo population, who would drink from her goats’ trough at night.
“I could hear them fighting over the bore water. It was horrible to hear. I would probably be watering about 500 kangaroos a night at the peak of the drought,” she says.
An active participant in her widespread community, Phyllis is an ever-smiling member of the SES and
RFS, and also a volunteer ambulance officer.
When she’s feeling social, she’ll drive 50km along the dingo fence to the Cameron Corner pub to have a beer with the locals and passing tourists.
“I love meeting people,” she says. “It’s good to have a chat. People will tell you that I am the life of the party.”