Nonetheless, this gives me a laugh because it somehow reminds me of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd – remember them?
As told to Francis Ratcliffe by grazier Darcy Donkin of
Springsure (1948):
A boundary rider reported eagles were playing up in the lambing paddock. So we decided to have an eagle hunt. I had an old S.E. [World War I era biplane] I’d bought just
after the war, it had a top speed of 75 miles per hour. Ronnie took the controls; I got into the front cockpit with a 12-gauge gun and we flew out to where the eagles were bothering. We flew after one big fellow and it turned to meet us. Then it flew alongside
and seemed as interested in us as we were in it for it kept turning its head and looking at the plane. The bus was flat out, doing its seventy-five; and the eagle kept level and it never moved a feather! This went on for two or three minutes. Then Ronnie shouted,
“Dong him!” So I cocked the gun and was about to dong him when the brute changed his mind and just shot straight ahead and left us standing and still never batted his wings. Ronnie shouted that the damned thing was just laughing at us so we turned around and
went home.
Reference: Penny Olsen (2007) Spirit of the Wedge-tailed Eagle: The art of Humphrey-Price Jones. CSIRO Publishing Collingwood, p. 46
John Layton
Holt.
