Physical Design
The fence is 180 cm (5.9 ft) high made of wire mesh, and extends for 30 cm (1.0 ft) underground. The fence line on both sides is cleared to a 5 m (5.5 yd) width. Steel fence posts are spaced every 9 m (9.8 yd). Sheep and cattle stations in Australia protected by the fence are astoundingly large. While varying in size, some stations can be larger than some small European countries. One station alone in South Australia lost over 11,000 sheep in a year due to dingo attacks before the completion of the fence. As recently as 1991, one station lost 3000 sheep in a year. Sheep farmers fought back by using poisoning, shooting, and eventually constructing the longest fence in the world. Aerial poison bait drops are still used today.
Parts of the Dingo Fence are lit at night by 86 mm (3.4 in) cold cathode fluorescent lamps which are alternately red and white. They are powered by long life batteries which are charged by photovoltaic cells during the day. A series of gates allow vehicles to pass through the fence.
The fence is held together by Gripples.
Read more about this topic: Dingo Fence
Famous quotes containing the words physical and/or design:
“Be sure that it is not you that is mortal, but only your body. For that man whom your outward form reveals is not yourself; the spirit is the true self, not that physical figure which can be pointed out by your finger.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (10643 B.C.)
“Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a more calculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (16131680)