Ten Eighty is a project about the dingo proof fence and dingo exclusion.
The Dingo Proof Fence is the world’s largest environmental barrier. At over 5,500km long is is longer than the Great Wall of China and, laid straight, is longer than the distance from Perth to Sydney, or LA to NYC. This immense construction is hidden in plain sight - a long running, low-lying assortment of barbed wire and ramshackle posts, propped up by centuries of policy and millions of dollars in annual maintenance.
At the heart of the fence is the dingo: Australia’s most persecuted animal. The largest land-based predator the Dingo has been attacked, excluded and killed since white people arrived on Australia’s shores. To this day, misinformation, euphemisms and inaccuracies dominate the political and social understanding of the animal. In one state is is both protected and legal to kill. In another state policy aims to erradicate the animal completely.
Despite increasing evidence of the ecological importance of the dingo, clear leadership from Traditional Owners of the cultural significance, and calls from a growing community to cease lethal management, the Dingo continues to be poisoned, trapped, shot and fenced. Underlying all of this killing is the oldest idea in Australia: whatever is native is less important than what is saleable.
This is a work in progress.