Elephants and Egotists

In Search of Samorn of the Zoo

PATRICIA SUMERLING CONTENTS

Foreword ix 1 Death of an elephant 1 2 Early South Australian elephants, the Adelaide Zoo and menageries 7 3 The elephants of Adelaide Zoo 16 4 White hunters and animal traders – Peter (Peif) Ryhiner 38 5 A Siamese elephant hunt of 1939 48 6 The arrival of Samorn in Adelaide 62 7 Early days in Adelaide 73 8 Into the wasps’ nest 95 9 Ringing the changes 115 10 Samorn and Tara 129 11 Samorn’s Hero 136 12 Sharing the love 156 13 The end of an era? 170 References 179 Acknowledgements 188 Index 191 1 Death of an elephant

N 10 OCTOBER 1994 the zoo’s silver bus, filled with visitors, pulled up at the boundary of the animal enclosure at Monarto Zoo where OSamorn the Thai elephant (known as ‘Sam’ or ‘Sammy’ by those who worked with her) was always waiting to greet her visitors. She was supposed to be there as usual, but instead of that friendly craggy head and the trunk writhing to show her pleasure at seeing them, the visitors were met by a most peculiar sight. All they could see were four large dark grey legs sticking straight up from the dry moat. This was the ha-ha boundary designed and constructed to keep Samorn and other large animals secure from wandering off. The passengers, when they realised what they were looking at, cried the obvious. ‘Look there’s an elephant upside down!’ ‘Why is she upside down, Mummy?’ ‘Why doesn’t she roll over and get up?’ ‘Is she all right?’ Or words to that effect.

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The panic-stricken driver, not believing what he thought he’d seen, scrambled from the bus and rushed to look into the moat where Samorn was trapped. He could see that she had fallen or slipped into the moat, rolled upside down and lodged herself so securely that escape was impossible. Worse, he could not tell if she was alive or dead, for there was no movement or flicker of life when he called ‘Sam’. And he couldn’t get to touch her because, of course, the boundary ha-ha was designed so no one from the visitor side of the moat could climb into the enclosure. He clambered back on the bus and spoke into his radio telephone to ask the business centre for imme- diate assistance. And then he turned to his bus full of distressed visitors and said something like, ‘It’s going to be all right, kids. And, ladies and gentlemen, please don’t be alarmed. I’ve rung for help and we’ll be able to get her out in no time as the zoo has wonderful equip- ment for matters such as this. She’s just slipped into the moat in such a way that she can’t move without assis- tance. I’ll keep you informed as I hear how the rescue goes. I’m sure there’s no need for alarm. She’s a tough old girl. I don’t want you to be more upset than you are so we’ll go and see the other animals and come back when Samorn’s on her feet.’ All the children, greatly relieved, cheered and clapped the driver as he started the bus engine. And so that morning Samorn’s keeper, Paul O’Donoghue, was in the moat with her for a couple of hours, talking to her and pacifying her in her extra­ ordinary situation while a crane was preparing to rescue ELEPHANTS AND EGOTISTS 3

Samorn in the late 1970s. (Photographer Chris Thompson) her. Both zoo vets were called and arrived as soon as possible. Sadly, minutes after the crane lifted her out of the moat and placed her gently down with her legs tucked beneath her, her life quietly ebbed away. Samorn was Adelaide’s fourth zoo elephant. For the time being there would be no more elephants at the Adelaide Zoo or at its Monarto Zoological Park, even though there had been plans for several more to join Samorn. Unfortunately, ever since zoos have done away with bars and fences and dug moats instead, elephants dying in them is not an uncommon occurrence. The fact 4 PATRICIA SUMERLING

that the bottom of the moat at Monarto had not been rounded off so that a trapped animal could easily free itself, did not help Samorn’s plight. While quite a few elephants have slipped into moats accidentally, at Sydney’s Taronga Park in May 1949, a small girl in tears told attendants that she had watched one elephant bump another elephant named Nellie, a 26-year-old several-tonner, into a deep moat. Like Samorn she was found on her back wedged with her feet in the air. Attendants with blocks and tackle battled for three hours to try and hoist her into a sitting position, but she died before they could rescue her. Several years before in the Zoo, Peggy the elephant playfully pushed Betty her companion into the moat, again creating the problem of how to get her out. In her case, it was a success story, for bales of tightly packed straw were arranged to create a slope for her to walk up. Furthermore, both elephants learned from this incident for they were regularly seen after- wards walking down the sloping side of the moat and then climbing out again. Of course, when the news was spread that Samorn had died at Monarto there was an outpouring of grief from many of the grown-up children who’d had their own special time with her during more than three decades. But Samorn’s death coincided with the many changing attitudes of the time about keeping wild animals, particularly elephants, in zoos for the express purpose of display and the amusement of fee-paying customers. Even breeding programs within zoos for some animals were being questioned. ELEPHANTS AND EGOTISTS 5

Zoos all around the world were amending their charters as animal conservation and the harsh reality of endangered species challenged their relevance. There is no world human population peak in sight, and seem- ingly few serious initiatives to bring about planned reduction (though one mustn’t overlook the draconian measures of China’s one-child policy, and the world- wide family planning foundation set up by Bill and Melissa Gates in July 2012). As the world human popu- lation soars, the demand for virgin land grows unabated, destroying natural habitats of such endangered species as orang-utans, pandas, tigers, elephants, Syrian bears, Madagascar aye-ayes or, in Australia, Carnaby’s black cockatoo from the southern parts of Western Australia. Even more elusive is the legendary termite-mound- nesting paradise parrot of southern Queensland. Its supposed extinction in the 1920s is yet to be proven for it is still listed in bird books as the rarest bird in Australia. As ornithologist Penny Olsen states, ‘After all how can extinction be proven?’ As numbers of endangered species climb, and zoos around the world collaborate for better solutions by keeping details of the gene pools of their own captured or zoo-raised animals, the importance of safeguarding natural habitats and provision of corridors linking areas is pursued in earnest. In C.F.H. Jenkins’ book of 1977, Noah’s Ark Syndrome, he states, ‘International and inter- state liaisons have resulted in stud books for many rare animals and inter-zoo loans and exchanges are now common in a bid to promote breeding and thereby to preserve endangered species’. 6 PATRICIA SUMERLING

The glorious and quirky Elephants on Parade sculpture show of over 250 baby-sized painted and adorned elephants was on public display in London for over two months in 2010. It was then auctioned and raised over £4 million to buy tracts of land in Assam, northern India, for use as corridors from one area to another for its local elephants, thus demonstrating what is possible. Acquiring rainforests in Sarawak to guarantee homes for orang-utans continues against impossible odds, while reserves created for the critically endangered rhinoceros in Java had less than 40 rhinos in 2012 because of poachers. Perhaps we should be reminded of Penny Olsen’s quote about extinct creatures. When the tiny brown and orange blotched grass- land copper butterfly Lucia( limbaria) was spotted by Janet Subiago in the middle of Park in Adelaide in 2011, she and a dedicated group of conservation- ists successfully fought government authorities for its protection. For years thought to be extinct, its survival is due to a small acreage of remnant grasses not tampered with for more than 165 years – even while the vicinity was used for horse-racing. It is one small triumph amid an endless list of conservation battles fought but not always won. 2 Early South Australian elephants, the Adelaide Zoo and menageries

HE SMALLEST CITY ZOO in Australia, the Adelaide Zoological Gardens of the Royal Zoological Society of , is an Teight-hectare (20-acre) wooded and shady area carved out of a small corner of the Botanic Park, which is managed by the Botanic Gardens. They in turn are part of the city’s encircling Park Lands, managed by the Adelaide City Council and the newly formed Park Lands Authority. This green verge of parklands swaddles the small city, of only about 421.5 hectares (1042 acres), like a huge figure of eight around its two separate parts that straddle a creek, grandiosely called a river (the River Torrens). Indeed, a boutique zoo for a boutique city. The enviable Mediterranean climate of Adelaide that is much like Morocco and Tunisia ensured that animal exhibits on show from the mid-nineteenth century generally thrived and sometimes multiplied. However

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1898 plan of Adelaide Zoological Gardens.

there was great ignorance about and neglect in caring properly for captured wild animals in times past, no matter how mild the climate. Throughout the nineteenth century there was a healthy tradition in Australia for displays of exotic animals. As seamen passed through South Australia or jumped ship to escape poor shipboard conditions, they often sold or left their pets in the pubs in exchange for food, board or other pressing debts. While birds, snakes, other reptiles, and monkeys were the most popular species, unusually at the Union Hotel in Waymouth Street in May 1849, a ‘black tiger’ (most likely a jaguar or leopard) was exhibited for a short period and caused ELEPHANTS AND EGOTISTS 9 much excitement for its size and ‘wild’ behaviour. It had arrived by the ship Cacique from Malacca. The Adelaide Times for 21 May 1849 declared that the ‘Black Tiger is now exhibited by Mr Creech at the Union Inn’. As you would expect of an animal in a thoroughly wild state when approached, it roared, spat and showed many ‘curlings of the tail in true jungle style’. It measured from six to seven feet from mouth to tip of tail and was noted for its beautiful sleek fur. Because it was so rare to see such an animal in South Australia, it was expected that crowds would flock to see it for themselves. The newspaper speculated that Mr Creech would probably find the animal an expensive lodger. As it turned out, feeding the ‘tiger’ was rather taxing and it caused plenty of trouble for its owner who ended up in court accused of stealing his neighbour’s ducks to feed it. When the case was thrown out through lack of reliable evidence, Mr Creech announced that he was shipping his pet to London. In fact it ended up at the Ship Inn in Hobart by November of that year. Before this, in 1838, the second governor of South Australia, George Gawler, kept a menagerie of animals for his children at Government House. Gawler’s daughter Julia wrote in her diary: ‘We are fencing an aviary. I have a cockatoo, owl, & laughing Jackass given to me. Our farm increases every week. 20 goslings, turkey, a hen, 4 cows, 5 calves, a young kangaroo and a Newfoundland dog called Rose.’ In July 1840 Gawler’s son John wrote to his Aunt Jane: ‘We have quite a farmyard now, 5 pigs with young 10 PATRICIA SUMERLING

ones … We have plenty of poultry, 2 hens sitting, we sometimes find 20 eggs a day. We also have 4 Spanish geese … and five English … 2 ducks, a drake, 1 muscovy duck, 7 cows, 6 calves and 2 emus.’ He described the emus as very tame, although the young one occasionally wandered into town, ‘where it is chased from one end of the street to the other by packs of dogs, but it always returns safe home …’ The emu’s antics occasionally reached the local newspapers. Within a short time following the Botanic Gardens’ public opening in October 1857, a growing number of birds and animals were put on display in a small menagerie ‘in a variety of wired, fenced and barred enclosures as established by George Francis’. When an American bear was donated a nearby notice informed the public that: Mr. Bruin, the bear, who lately came here as an assisted immigrant, being delighted with the climate … intends to remain here for some time – at least till the squatting question is decided … He is now having a house built for him … He has no objection to visitors poking fun at him, but has the strongest objection to the poking of sticks and parasols. After Bruin was put on display in 1864 the South Australian Register for 19 September announced that as many as 2,720 persons visited the gardens one Sunday afternoon to see him. The 19th century was a time of minds inquiring of all things scientific as explorers and travellers returned from their grand tours or explorations with exotic flora and fauna that encouraged the establishment of gardens