I am proud to hear about my cousin from Oz running a campaign to close down SeaWorld, the campaign has gained that much momentum the mainstream media in Australia has picked it up, now she has exposed what SeaWorld to millions.
June Killington
With countries phasing out the captivity of “man’s best friend in the ocean”, the Gold Coast’s Sea World dolphinarium looks like an endangered species. Or is it? Tim Elliott meets those working on both sides of a highly emotional divide.
Recently I visited Sea World, on the Gold Coast, with an animal liberationist named June Killington. Killington, 58, is a former London punk and one-time backup singer for Adam and the Ants who, in the 1970s, published a punk rock fanzine called Halitosis.
Since then, she has worked as a booking agent and a secretary, and run her own advertising agency. Her true calling, however, is animals. In the 1990s, she infiltrated then prime minister Paul Keating’s piggery to shoot covert footage, which she gave to Channel Seven. She has also picketed fur shops and campaigned, with some success, to shut down puppy factories.
But for the past two years she has focused on Sea World, which she calls an “aquaprison” where “dolphins that have been stolen from the ocean or bred in captivity perform tricks every day for dead fish”.
We have 110 staff in marine sciences. Do you think there could be an issue with suffering or cruelty without one of them speaking up?
Close down Seaworld
It’s late afternoon when we turn up to Sea World, driving into the car park in Killington’s hatchback, which is plastered with “I’m against dolphin captivity” and “Sea World sucks” stickers. Killington is dressed in black, with a chunky gold necklace and hair the colour of Ribena.
In the Klieg-light glare of Surfers Paradise, she sticks out like a goth at a beach party. She is also the most profane woman I have ever met, spraying around expletives like blasts from an Uzi. “Look at this f…ing place, would you,” she mutters, gazing with undiluted scorn at the theme park’s gates. “What a f…ing disgrace.”
Sea World is home to 31 dolphins, 32 seals, four polar bears and lots of sharks, all of them housed in a series of pools and man-made lagoons. The park runs regular dolphin and seal shows, as well as other displays, such as Jet Stunt Extreme, which is just winding up as Killington and I walk through the gates. The show features two guys on jet skis tooling about on the main lagoon, doing loops and 360s, accompanied by the kind of hair-metal guitar music that sounds like a tin shed full of hand drills.
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Killington shakes her head. “Dolphins work on echolocation.
Close Down SeaWorld The AquaPrison
Their hearing is very acute. That’s why people like Joan Jett stopped SeaWorld in the US from using her music.”
We take off around the park, Killington radiating an anguished contempt, like a vegan in an abattoir.
“They hate us, these dolphins,” she says. “If they could talk, they would say, ‘You motherf…ers.'” She has brought with her a stack of glossy postcards. The postcards look legitimate, with the Sea World logo beneath a picture of a cheery-looking dolphin. Flip it over, however, and it reads: “DON’T BUY A TICKET TO ANIMAL CRUELTY. Open your mind and your heart and know that cetaceans are not here to amuse and entertain us.
Go to Sea World SHUT DOWN on Facebook for more information.” As we walk around, Killington hands these cards to everyone she meets, including staff, even popping into the toilets to leave stacks of them beside handbasins.
Dolphin
