Fruit rage shows state rules border on the ridiculous

South Australia is the fruit basket of Australia, apparently, and if so much as one fruit fly enters the state all hell will break loose. Oops.

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If you’re travelling to Adelaide from NSW on the Barrier Highway, beware the Oodla Wirra Quarantine Station. Be particularly anxious if you’re packing some sneaky fruit or vegetables. They won’t treat you kindly there.

My wife and I discovered this recently. After being waved to a stop, we made the mistake of declaring we had no such stuff in our car. A search of our vehicle revealed we were bald-faced liars – there was a banana, and several sandwiches bursting with nutritious but offensive fillings, all of which we had forgotten about.

The guard went nuts, but in an unusual way. To say he was angry would be unfair. He was more, shall we say, furiously disappointed. He takes people at their word, he fumed, and to discover fresh fruit and a toxic sandwich, behind such a curtain of smiling lies, was to corrode his faith in all mankind.

He has a point, of course, which is why I didn’t clock him for blasting my wife in the wind tunnel of his rage. South Australia is the fruit basket of Australia, and if so much as one fruit fly enters the state all hell will break loose, apparently. The Queensland fruit fly (Bactrocera tryoni) and the Mediterranean fruit fly (Ceratitis capitata) are as Godzillas to the industry that gives us everything from apple cider to that pineapple juice that makes every boyfriend a good one.

The problem I have with this quarantine business is one of faith. Are we really expected to believe this lone road stop – an hour south of Yunta and another north of Burra – is going to snare every fruit fly with evil on its mind? Do fruit flies only travel in automobiles? Has anyone who’s ever flown to Adelaide had their bags checked for strawberries? Moreover, have the authorities ever heard about wind, that stuff that blows things, living or dead, hundreds of miles from home? Doesn’t the mere name Mediterranean Fruit Fly suggest these dudes can cover some distance?

This bizarre “state of origin” nonsense came to visit me several years ago, when a trucker knocked on my door asking for a blanket. He’d rolled all the way from Charleville in Queensland and, somewhere just north of the border, had hit a flock of pigeons, one of which had become wedged behind his grill, surviving a hair-raising eight-hour journey pinned to the front of a Kenworth Prime Mover. The bird was a trifle stunned, but alive, the driver having discovered him only as he pulled in at Broken Hill.

We rescued the little fella all right, swaddled him, gave him water and a meal, then I called the local wildlife crowd. To my astonishment, they ordered me to bring him in so he could be executed. Birds aren’t allowed to cross borders, they said. All manner of nuisance would be the result of a Queensland bird let loose in the skies of NSW.

A fruit fly quarantine sign on the South Australian side of its border with Victoria. Picture: Arj Ganesan

There was little point in me explaining that birds, as a rule, don’t recognise the state borders set by Federation in 1901, or that the snow goose flies from Texas to Alaska without bothering any executive branches of the US, but I did. I also, pathetically, argued this bird was a miracle, having endured a trial as taxing as Tom Hardy’s in Fury Road, and thus deserved a break. No dice. I was ordered to surrender the bird immediately, and was advised any freelance attempt at emancipation would result in penalties stiffer than the bureaucrat who was warning me of them.

Having not given my name or address, I hung up immediately, nursed the bird back to good health, and set him free into the sky. Perhaps he wrought death and pain on the hamlets of the Outback, but I doubt it. My guess is he got eaten by a wedge-tailed eagle, but that’s nature taking its course, and I’d rather be David Attenborough than Ivan Milat.

The broader question here is what these states actually mean. What is the purpose of those dotted lines on the map? Governance, I guess, which is easier piecemeal than continental, just as a pizza is more consumable in triangles rather than a whole disc. But why extend that reasoning to living things; birds, bananas, flies and sick folk?

During Covid, my wife and I didn’t see each other for eight months, despite living just a few hours apart (she in Mildura, just over the Victorian border from Broken Hill).

Why? When I rolled my car in Ivanhoe, not a cop was available to inspect the wreckage, or me, as they were all at the border in a town called Hay, swatting Covid lest it enter the state. Was it a battle between the states, mate (not really) against (not really) mate, to see who could triumph over the other? Who was keeping score? And what for?

In Broken Hill, the international time zone loops to the east and around the city, meaning we’re on Adelaide time, not Sydney, unlike the rest of NSW. The practical reason for this is that back in the mining days, the mines did business with Port Pirie, and it was just easier if our clocks were in sync. That makes sense.

I can guarantee that the flies and folk, the bananas and birds and Bactrocera tryoni of Broken Hill are not a half-hour younger than they would be in Sydney at the same tick of the clock. But, for some weird reason, we’re all a bit different if we move 30 minutes west or a few hours south.

I confess I do not know the name of a single premier in any one of Australia’s six states. I feel less embarrassed about this than I do about that banana.

Jack Marx is a writer and journalist based in Broken Hill.