New Kids at the Water Hole

By George and Lory Frame • Photos courtesy of authors

There we were, lulled almost to sleep by the hot, lazy Australian afternoon, when all of a sudden—thumpety, thumpety, thump! We jumped awake to see several very frightened young water buffaloes running for their lives. Close behind them were three determined dingoes—Australia’s wild dogs.

The fleeing buffaloes ran bawling into the safety of a nearby herd. The dingoes slowed down and circled.

There wasn’t much the dingoes could do now. The buffalo prey bunched together and wouldn’t budge, even when the dingoes tried to make them run. They seemed to know they were safe as long as they didn’t panic and scatter in all directions. So they stood staring at the dingoes, sometimes threatening with their horns, until finally the dogs gave up and trotted away. The predators would have to find a meal somewhere else.

We were watching these wild animals in northern Australia’s Kakadu National Park. While we were camped in the park, we saw hundreds of water buffaloes every day. That surprised us because, before that, whenever we thought of Australia, the first animals that came to mind were kangaroos and their smaller cousins, wallabies.

Trail of a rude guest: Buffaloes snap off the aerial roots of banyan trees (above) and rub against termite mounds, wearing them thin (below).

Water buffaloes don’t really belong to Australia. They came to Australia in the 1830s, with European explorers who wanted to settle the land. The explorers brought a few dozen buffaloes from Indonesia.

The European pioneers failed in their efforts to live in the new land. They abandoned their farms and returned home without the buffaloes. The buffaloes remained and thrived. Today there are nearly a quarter of a million of them in northern Australia, all descended from those few ancestors.

The northern part of Australia is near the ocean, low-lying, and flooded every year with tropical monsoon rains and typhoons. In many ways it is like the water buffalo’s original home. That’s why the buffaloes do so well there.

Water buffaloes love to roll around in cool, wet places, making lots of wallow holes. When we drove around the low-lying areas of the park, it seemed that wallow holes were everywhere. They reminded us of bowls of chocolate pudding. What a gooey, muddy mess!

 

Once, while we were observing a herd of water buffaloes in the park, a big, old male came lumbering up to our car. We saw him coming, so we climbed inside to be safe. Australia’s buffaloes are wild and dangerous. This one sniffed the air and listened. We sat silently. The only sounds were flies buzzing around the buffalo and geese honking in the distance.

A water buffalo stops for a drink.

The bull buffalo circled our car, then continued on his way to the nearest water hole. He took a long drink and crossed the stream. Sloshing through the muddy water, he pushed the tall plants aside and left a trail behind him. The swamps were crisscrossed with trails the buffaloes had made.

On higher and drier ground, too, we saw many trails formed by the trampling water buffaloes. Every rainy season the rains scour the trails deeper, until they become channels flowing into the swamps. Then, during flood tides, ocean water flows through these channels into the forests. And eventually, the salt water form the ocean kills the trees.

Buffaloes tramp through the swamplands, leaving a gooey mess.

The buffaloes are harmful in other ways, too. Wallabies, kangaroos, and other native wildlife often find their homes destroyed and their food eaten by reckless buffaloes. Cattle ranchers lose much of their herd to diseases spread by the buffaloes.

Scientists had to make a tough decision when they realized how much harm the buffaloes were causing. They recently removed them from one area of the park. Now, without the buffaloes, the country’s native wildlife has a chance to prosper again.

After only 150 years or so in Australia, water buffaloes are one of the most important wild animals there. We went to Kakadu National Park to see wallabies, crocodiles, waterfowl, and other wildlife that is native to Australia. But the animals we saw the most were the water buffaloes.