On Saturday morning, two very different groups began a now weekly ritual. Until September, one group – enveloped in scarlet or black riding coats and accompanied by yapping hounds – will hunt foxes. The other, decked out in all black and with intense eyes framed by balaclavas, will do everything in their power to stop them.
While the opening of Australia’s duck hunting season makes headlines each year, the state of Victoria has about a dozen clubs with a near-invisible profile who set out at least once a week in the winter months to hunt foxes on horseback, guided by hounds carefully bred and trained to sniff them out.
It’s not known how many members there are in each club, though their opponents estimate there are at least 1,000 in total. They include hunters who have travelled from England and Wales – where the activity has been outlawed for almost 20 years.
The practice itself is not illegal in Victoria, but it is highly controversial.
The RSPCA says cruelty to animals is an offence that can be prosecuted, while the government says it is looking to reform animal welfare laws, and points to its code of practice for hunters that states hounds must not “worry”, maim or attack foxes.
Those who oppose the practice are adamant the activity is unethical and allege some people flout the code of practice, but they manage to evade the scrutiny faced by the state’s other recreational hunters due to the fact they ride on private properties, at the invitation of the owners.
“This is a group of rich, wealthy, influential people. They’re doctors, lawyers, politicians and police officers,” the founder of the Melbourne Hunt Saboteurs, Liam Barwick, tells Guardian Australia.
“They think they can hide because they hunt on their private property.”
Animal Justice party MP Georgie Purcell, who sits in the Victorian parliament’s upper house, says there is little appetite from the government to monitor the activity.
“If you look at the ways to get into these clubs, it’s very secretive, it’s very elite,” she says. “You have to know someone and get referred, you can’t just sign up.
“Some of the richest and most powerful people in our state are participating in it, and I think that makes the government nervous.
“It makes me think that the reason it’s so secretive is because they know that it’s controversial and it’s unethical and there’s been a movement around the world to stop it and they don’t want to be next.”
Guardian Australia has attempted contact with 12 individuals linked to various hunting clubs – including the Melbourne Hunt Club and the Oaklands Hunt Club – across Victoria. None responded to repeated requests for comment.
A ‘prestigious leisure activity’
It is believed foxes were introduced to Victoria in 1845 for the sole purpose of continuing the English tradition of foxhunting. The state’s oldest hunt club – the Melbourne Hunt Club, established in 1853 – considered it a “prestigious leisure activity” for member’s of the city’s “elite” society.
The Oaklands Hunt Club – now considered the state’s most prolific – was established in 1888. Several others popped up in other states, though very few remain.
However, fox numbers rapidly escalated across mainland Australia, wreaking havoc with native wildlife.
According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, the fox has contributed to the extinction of several mammals, including some wallaby and bandicoot species, and is hastening the extinction of at least 10 others.
Foxes are also known to kill livestock and poultry.
They have become known as pests in Australia, with appropriately licensed landowners permitted to shoot them on their own land.
However, it’s the use of dogs to hunt other animals that is the chief concern for animal rights activists when it comes to horseback foxhunting.
Mhairi Roberts from the RSPCA says the potential to cause significant suffering to foxes is extremely high during hunting.
“Just because they’re a declared species doesn’t mean people can kill them in a way that’s inhumane. You can’t just be cruel,” she says.
For several years it has called for fox control to be limited to humane methods under a government-supervised program.
A Victorian government spokesperson described animal welfare as a “priority” and expected “full compliance with current standards and protections against cruelty”, even on private property.
They confirmed the government is looking to reform the state’s animal welfare laws, including the code of practice that governs hunting.
Protection of native wildlife v population control
In 2012, as he prepared to travel from the UK to Victoria, one hunter remarked to the publication Horse & Hound: “It will be marvellous to hunt foxes in a country where they don’t have the political correctness that has so afflicted the British countryside.”
The comment came less than a decade after such hunting was outlawed in England and Wales in 2005 by the Blair government.
However, Purcell believes Victoria’s tolerance for foxhunting has less to do with “political correctness” than it does with the animal’s status as a pest.
“Foxhunting is a really difficult issue for us to speak about from a cruelty perspective because foxes are so hated in Victoria and Australia, given they’re an introduced species,” Purcell says.
“I absolutely agree that they are wreaking havoc on the environment and on wildlife, but there are better solutions.
“It’s a very big, expensive day out for the wealthy elite in Melbourne and the taking out of one fox in the process.”
That’s not to say the ban in England was well received. In Tony Blair’s biography, he said that by the end of the debate – which took up more time in parliament than the decision to invade Iraq – he felt “like the damned fox”.
At the time, the then-Prince of Wales, King Charles, was among those who lobbied Blair not to outlaw the practice.
Imported traditions
As the hunters flew into Australia, so did the tactics used by the Melbourne Hunt Saboteurs when they started their campaign against what they believe to be a highly unethical activity in 2016. The group is directly affiliated with the Hunt Saboteurs Association in the UK, known for its arsenal of tactics used to disrupt hunts.
Barwick, the group’s founder, even trained with UK saboteurs, who continue to disrupt hunting activity. Hunting horns and whistles are now used in Victoria to misdirect hounds, and the saboteurs spray scent dullers – including citronella mixed with water – to throw them off course.
“It becomes like a primary school game of ‘keepings off’,” Barwick explains.
Not all of it is legal. Barwick admits to trespassing on private property, chasing hunters and concealing his identity.
Most members wear balaclavas so they are not identified and “doxed online”, though Barwick agreed to his name being used in this story.
He’s also been subject to an intervention order from a hunter and was arrested in 2019 for allegedly breaching it at a hunt, though the charges were later dropped.
“I’ve been arrested. I’ve been charged. I’ve been attacked by landowners. I’ve had Facebook pages of hatred against me. I’ve had dead foxes on my door. I’ve had death threats. I’ve had it all,” Barwick says. “The response tells me that they’ve got a lot to hide.”
He expects this year’s hunt to be the “most normal” since the pandemic began and says his group has about 18 people who will spend every Saturday sabotaging hunts.
Finding a home for foxhunting
In 2018, the home of the Oaklands Hunt Club at Greenvale, on the outskirts of Melbourne, was sold to a housing developer.
The club sought to build two three-bedroom managers’ dwellings, kennels, stables and club rooms in Baynton East, about 80km north of Melbourne, but the proposal was rejected by the local council in April.
According to documents filed with the council, the club said the facility would be “unobtrusive, hardly to be seen or heard”. It said it would add value to the community through its support of community groups, as well as through equestrian and social activities.
However, the council says it refused the proposal for several reasons, “including loss of productive agricultural land, detrimental impact on surrounding agricultural land uses, and negative impact on the rural landscape with large building spread across the land.”
Purcell, who lives 40km away in Kyneton, hopes the decision is a sign of growing community opposition to the activity.
“The rejection of this application is a clear sign that Victorians think it’s time this colonial cruelty is relinquished to the dark ages where it belongs,” she says.
