Ask any Adelaidean who was around in the 1990s if they’ve heard of environmentalist John Wamsley and there’s a chance they will recall him as the man who wore the pelt of a feral cat on his head.
The infamous accessory debuted at the South Australian Tourism Awards, where John and his wife, Proo Geddes, were up for an award for their much-loved Warrawong Sanctuary.
Suspecting it could draw attention to their campaign to change laws around pest control, Proo put a few pins in the cat skin, turned it into a headpiece and placed it on John’s head.
The cat hat went on to cement John’s reputation as a local conservation legend as well as spark an important discussion about feral cats and the destruction they wreak on the environment.
More than 30 years later, John, now in his late 80s, reflects on his life’s work and how the stunt became a spectacle that people still talk about.
The small marsupial holds a special place in John’s heart, as from a young age he would rise at dawn to go out in the bush and watch them feed on the grass.
“I walked in wearing the cat hat and the effect was unbelievable,” he says.
“The story was on the front page of The Advertiser the next morning and there was a meeting of the Australian state environment ministers in Adelaide at that time … they saw all this and nature was put on the agenda.
“That was the start of the Department of Environment actually trying to do something to save Australian wildlife.
“Within a year, the Endangered Species Protection Act was passed, followed by the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
“So things actually started to happen and it changed the whole direction of things in wildlife management in Australia.”
Aside from the cat hat, John is known for his fierce activism and no-holds-barred approach to conservation.
He established Warrawong Sanctuary in Mylor in 1969, when South Australia was the only state where it was legal to keep native animals.
John, who grew up on a farm in NSW with six sisters, had spent much of his childhood exploring the bush, finding animals and learning about nature.
But he also had a passion for mathematics, gaining a PhD in that field by the age of 30 and moving to SA where he lectured at Flinders University.
He spent time reinvigorating the Mylor property and what was once a degraded block of bushland now flourished with plants and birdlife.
But as universities moved towards what he calls the “business model”, he decided to part ways with teaching.
He recalls the moment the idea to open the property to the public was born – one morning while catching a glimpse of a little red-necked pademelon while standing in the middle of his native forest.
The small marsupial holds a special place in John’s heart, as from a young age he would rise at dawn to go out in the bush and watch them feed on the grass.
“So I’m down in the rainforest this morning wondering what I’m going to do with my life and I was surrounded by these pademelons,” he recalls.
“I thought to myself, well, people would pay to look at this, so I went home and told Proo that we were opening to the public.
“I went down to the gate and put a sign up for guided talks at dusk each night, $5 a head, but nobody came.
“You see, it’s a bit harder to run a business than just putting up a sign.”
But soon enough word spread and tours booked out.
Warrawong went on to contain over half of the world’s population of western brush-tailed bettongs, Australia’s smallest and then-rarest living kangaroo.
Other species such as the long-nosed potoroo, the red-necked pademelon and the southern brown bandicoot were brought back from the brink of extinction.
“One of the things that I was aware of is that the Australian bush was disappearing and desperately needed help,” John says.
“At that time people didn’t know there were such things as bettongs and numbats and bilbies.
“When you talked about animals you talked about lions, tigers, giraffes and elephants.
“You didn’t talk about these wonderful Australian animals.
“Warrawong was the only place in the world, I think, where you could go and look at all these wonderful Australian animals living in the wild.”
John also built a 2.1-metre feral-proof fence to keep out pests such as rabbits, cats and foxes.
His uncompromising efforts were not always welcomed by all, often putting him at odds with neighbours, local authorities and police, and also coming at a significant personal cost.
Despite these conflicts, John went on to earn many accolades for his environmental feats, but Warrawong was far from his only conservation initiative.
A network of sanctuaries, including Yookamurra Sanctuary in the Murray Mallee, were established as part of Earth Sanctuaries Pty Ltd.
It became the world’s first stock market-listed conservation company, but later fell into difficulties, with ongoing tension between John and conservation authorities also adding to the challenge.
Many properties were eventually sold, but some remain operational today under other conservation organisations.
In terms of Warrawong, John and Proo left in 2005 and it passed through various hands before being bought and resurrected by David Cobbold and Narelle MacPherson in 2017.
John and Proo no longer have any involvement in the business, but still keep in regular contact with its current owners.
“You can’t just give up because of that, you’ve got to do what you can,” John says.
“I never did it to make money or anything. I did it to save my life.”
Now living on a block in Aldgate, John leads a group of volunteers as part of the Friends of the Scott Creek Conservation Park. Over the last decade he has transformed his property from a hectare of dilapidated block into pristine bushland.
“If you go back before settlement, the Adelaide Hills was grassy woodland so quite different to what we have now which is shrubby woodland,” John says.
“If you take a hectare of grassy woodland you have about 400 species of plants.
“With shrubby bushland you have about 40, so there’s quite a change in biodiversity and that’s what happened here.
“All I did was manage (the land) as it was managed a couple of hundred years ago and it gradually changed from what it was to beautiful bushland with over 400 species of plants, including over 40 species of native orchid.
“I opened it as part of the Open Gardens SA scheme and people would come and say how wonderful it was.
“Doing that saved me from depression and that’s how I got through it all.”
Looking back on his life of work, John admits he could have done things differently.
But then again, what would things be without him?
“There’s about six species of Australian mammals that are still alive today that would be extinct if it hadn’t been for me,” he says.
