Eco Un-correct

Australia shares many things with the rest of the world; a love of beer; freedom with a sense of civic duty; and generic human hopes and fears. It also has a strong environmental movement, fuelled by its incredible natural gifts, but also by dwindling resources. Yesterday's visit to the reef was an exercise in carefully managing the impact of tourism without ruining the experience, educational, enjoyable and eco-friendly.

Tonight's experience though is a big chunk of pure Australiana, the Cane Toad Race. The Cane Toad, like many naive efforts at bio-engineering, was introduced to Australia to control the cane beetle. This was arguably successful.

Of course no-one thought about how to control the cane toad. It has no natural predators in Australia, and is inedible anyway due to being highly toxic, even it's tadpoles are poisonous.

It has therefore become utterly loathed, especially in Queensland where they grow a lot of sugar cane. But I'll let Bruce explain a bit more.

Thus we spend the next hour witnessing the politically incorrect but utterly hilarious spectacle. Highlighted by Mandy's selection as a 'jockey' of the aptly named 'Aussie, Aussie, Aussie'.