Author(s): Catherine Watson

Australiana

At the age of 15, Jack McCraith reached a momentous decision; "Everyone knows how to catch rabbits," he said. "I'll learn how to sell them." On his first buying trip, he biked into the countryside and bought two rabbits which he skinned in the back yard and hawked around the neighbours. Within 20 years he controlled a rabbit empire which stretched across half of Australia. In a 40 year career, he exported more than 130 million rabbits. Wherever the rabbits went, he went too. Rabbit chillers and trucks, emblazoned with the legend JOHN A. McCRAITH, Rabbit Exporter, Spencer Street, Melbourne, dotted the back country from the Simpson Desert to the Nullabor Plains. It was a cut-throat and difficult industry filled with unscrupulous people and nohopers. Chillers were robbed or sabotaged, buyers absconded with the buying money, trucks broke down hundreds of kilometres from the nearest garage. The trappers were tough men but Jack McCraith was tougher. When he had to sort out problems in the bush, he used his fists. His methods were unorthodox. He was a big gambler and he brought the same gambling instincts to his business life. Many of the exporters went broke, but Jack McCraith survived and prospered. The Rabbit King is the previously untold story of the Australian rabbit industry, and how it kept some people alive in the harshest times and made other people very rich. It is also a personal re-telling of an old story about a poor boy who makes good. It is the story of the rise and rise of a man who perfectly suited his time and all that reveals about the way we lived and thought then.