A giant leap of evolution

The cane toad is unstoppable. DENISE CARTER speaks to director Mark Lewis about the ecological scourge that has triumphed over humanity

Hated and cast as evil and ugly, the cane toad is bashed, stuffed, frozen, gassed and treated with the utmost contempt all over Australia.

But Mark Lewis, director of Cane Toads: The Conquest, shows more than one side to this much maligned creature.

We see him (the cane toad) as a protagonist battling his way down the highway of life, eating and romancing, as people do, calmly weathering his life’s tragedies, while imbuing other’s lives with hate and love and humour.

It is this empathetic view of the cane toad, with accompanying music to his endeavours, which makes it quite shocking when he is killed.

"It lends itself to irreverent and humorous treatment," Mark Lewis says about his film.

"But it is also a tragedy."

A documentary in 3D created on a road trip of 22 weeks "through the Queensland floods to the heat of Western Australia", the tale follows the cane toad from its initial introduction to Australia from South America, through its failure to do what it was supposed to do (get rid of the greyback cane beetle) to its adaptation to the environment and its advance, despite all the arsenal mankind continues to throw at it, across the country.

Were the cane toad not declared a pest, this would be a tale of triumph over adversity.

One of the most unusual elements of this docu-film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year, is that Mark gives as much time to people who say the cane toad is beautiful, with its large golden eyes and pleasant smiling mouth, as to the people who believe the only good cane toad is a dead cane toad.

"We played with lot of different elements," Mark says.

"It’s a road movie, a romantic comedy, it’s suggestive of Alien, and the cane toad is unstoppable like The Terminator."

This is the second lunge Mark has made at the inner world of the cane toad, his first being Cane Toad: An Unnatural Historyin 1988, which became a cult classic and which was nominated for a BAFTA award for best short film.

So what has changed in the battle of cane toad versus man in the interim years?

"The greatest change and addition to my knowledge is that the war is over," Mark says. "For all the control methods, they keep hopping away. The other thing is that nature will restore itself."

But there is one question which Mark was not able to answer, where this now evolved super toad is going, breaking its little legs down into stumps as it crosses miles of land.

"We don’t know," he says. "They have evolved to climactic conditions."

Scientists in the documentary say they never expected the cane toad to cross the Gulf of Carpentaria much less from the Northern Territory into Western Australia.

"The only thing that stops them is extreme cold, but by our knowledge of how they are evolving, who knows?" Mark Lewis says.

Lewis personifies his cast of animals. There’s a dog who eats a cane toad and we witness him being taken to hospital (vet hospital), which is played out much like an episode of ER,Grey’s Anatomy or House as his family watch over him in intensive care.

There’s another dog, Dobby, who loves to lick cane toads for the kick he derives out of it and we see him having an LSD-type trip.

"It was a wonderful opportunity to do an LSD trip from a dog’s point of view," Mark says.

Then there’s a whole host of characters who either hate or love the cane toad.

"We found wonderful characters with great and entertaining stories," Mark says.

They include Keith Barnes, from Gordonvale, and Tip Byrne, from Tully.

Naturally, Mark also had "thousands of cane toads" in his cast, including one star toad.

"We took him back in the car and released him in an upper class neighbourhood," Mark says, laughing.

But would he go so far as to have one as a pet like some of the people in the movie?

"I’d love to," he says.

"I’ve wanted a cane toad for myself for a long time. Every time someone finds one for me (it has to be at least one and a half kilos), I’m about two days too late and someone has got at it with a shovel."

Having been involved with every facet of the movie (from writing, directing and producing to promoting), there is only one thing Mark desires when the movie opens after four years of personal investment.

"A long sleep," he says.