Barwon Park was built by Thomas Austin, one of many early settlers who brought sheep, cattle, horses, dogs, cats, hares, partridges, pheasants, sparrows, hawks, starlings, thrushes and blackbirds to Australia. In 1859 Thomas arranged for his English family to send 12 pairs of rabbits from England so that he could breed them for hunting. He built enclosures and employed a game keeper to oversee their breeding - which succeeded beyond Thomas' wildest dreams, attracting wide praise. Today the praise has turned to blame, however Thomas Austin wasn't actually the first to bring rabbits to Australia. Rabbits first came with the First Fleet in 1788.

Rabbits now cover the whole southern part of Australia, from northern New South Wales through Alice Springs across to the West Coast. There are different stories as to how rabbits escaped to the wild - in 1864, the Barwon River flooded and washed away the fences holding the rabbits in at Barwon Park, and the local people also liked to catch and eat rabbits (cutting holes in the fences to allow them to escape). A third theory is that a small hole was cut in the fence so that when the Duke of Edinburgh visited Barwon Park he had easy targets to shoot as the rabbits ran through!

Find out more about rabbits in Australia from Wikipedia.