Establishing the Biosecurity Detector Dog Program

Casey Baines:

Hello everybody and welcome once again to Detect and Protect, the Australian biosecurity podcast. I am your guest host today; Casey Baines and I will be taking you through a very special series to celebrate last year’s 30th anniversary of the biosecurity detector dog program. The program plays a vital role in the interception of biosecurity risks in the airport, mail, and cargo environments. The detector dog’s excellent agility and super noses make them one our most effective and loveable detection methods.

To conclude our celebrations for last year’s milestone, we reached out to some of the departments very first biosecurity detector dog handlers to hear some stories during their time in the program.

And what better way to get our podcast series started than with an interview with the Detector Dog Program’s first manager Bob Stirling.

Bob talks us through his journey with the detector dog program, from its humble beginnings involving sourcing handlers, trainers and the iconic beagles. Through to his role in building the profile of the Program with various promotions and media including newspaper articles and television appearances. Bob didn’t just manage the program, but he was also on the ground handling dogs, working during the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.

Ok enough from me! Let’s jump into the interview!

Thank you again for joining us and being part of our celebration for the 30th year of the biosecurity detector dog program. To start us off could you just give us a bit of an overview of your role in the program and when you started and how you got into it?

Bob Stirling:

Oh alright from the very beginning. It happened back in 1991 one of our senior managers, Dennis Patterson, had been to America, seen the Americans use using the beagles and came back and said, right we're going to set that up and do it. And I knew it was being set up and it just happened that in around July they just approached me and asked me if I'd be prepared to run it. And I, of course, went, Oh yeah! Definitely. And so what happened they had contracted one of the main trainers from America would come over and join us Colvin Brannaka and he arrived in September. We'd set up kennels and everything else in Brisbane, in the quarantine facilities there, and we used one of the big sheds that weren’t being used at the time to do the training in. And then Col Brannaka and I started scouring the country for looking for beagles. We had beagles specifically because in America they'd found that everybody liked them and working in amongst the general public, people were really comfortable with having the beagles around. The Beagles actually rate on a survey that I saw and studies they’d done that they rated as the least aggressive of all the canines towards people.

Casey Baines:

Oh right.

Bob Stirling:

And everybody knows them because of peanuts and Snoopy so everybody knows a beagle. And they're just food mad and will do anything for a bit of food. So to do a passive reward with them, they just sit, if you right, you get a bit of food, they'll swing backwards up Niagara Falls for a bit of food. Beagles work on their stomach. And I mean a lot of other dogs like different rewards systems and whatnot. We ended up doing that eventually. But so we got the right number of beagles. We worked closely with beagle clubs and I think most of the animal shelters or the RSPCA or local councils around the country got to know us because we were forever searching for dogs there.

And then we went looking for handlers obviously because it was a pilot program that we went within the service and we were fortunate to find Rachel Holdforth in Sydney and Harold Smithard in Brisbane. And we thought right, these two they’re experienced quarantine officers. We think they're going to be good with the dogs. So we started training them and it turned out we were right. They were very good. And so Rachel was Melody kicked off in Sydney and Harold and Winston were in Brisbane.

We started the program and actually officially launched it in March of 1992. Yep. The Minister, then Alan Griffiths came up to Brisbane we did it at the terminal and we had a good turnout. I must say that I did something a little bit wrong in that I had written the speech for Alan Griffiths and I had the two the dog teams behind a partition and I knew the appropriate moment in Allan Griffiths speech that that's when the dogs should come out and it was all choreographed nicely. What I didn't realize, though, is that Mr. Griffiths had decided that he would change the order a little bit of the speech. So at that moment that I thought was appropriate, I gave the signal, the dogs came out, so all the cameras just swung straight round onto the beagles. And I got to give Alan Griffiths his credit. He just stood there and he went, “Hmm it appears I’ve been upstaged by the dogs and that's exactly as it should be.” So that was, that was good. I, yeah, I thought he did a good job. And so from the pilot program we kicked off and everybody thought it's a resounding success and let’s just keep expanding it, so we did.

And just developed from that and then eventually we decided that because it became a permanent program. Yeah. Into the airports and we were just expanding it to go all around the country that we should go out to tender for the trainer. Yeah, we did that, and we ended up getting Steve Austin based in Sydney, so all our training then happened in Sydney.

And it worked out beautifully and they did an 8-week training course and I was very lucky in that I managed to be at the beginning of every training course, halfway through when we did the validation testing and then again at the end. So we made up some pretty heavy rules about it. And all the dogs had to be a minimum of 80% proficient. So they had to ignore non scents. Not nonsense. And had to get the scent that they’d been trained to do and all of our dogs were over 90% accuracy, but it was absolutely a minimum of 80%. If they’d fail that one they’d have to go back to training or be retired or whatever.

And the handlers we ended up then going outside because we couldn't find, the appropriate number of handlers from within the quarantine service so we started advertising. And it became an exceptionally popular program.

Casey Baines:

How many applications would you get?

Bob Stirling:

I’ll give you an idea. At one stage we advertised for a position each in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. I got 850 applications.

Casey Baines:

Oh boy.

Bob Stirling:

At that stage I was going through them all myself. So this was nights. I spent nights and weekends because I still had a job to do. Yes, but night weekends going through all these applications. After that, I decided that I would get a company to do it for me under my criteria, which I did and they would whittle it down to a manageable number. But 858 for three positions I thought for the three positions was a little bit over the top. It just showed how popular the program was. And I think that's, to be honest, Casey. I think that is the reason why it became so such a good program is because people in it loved it, they enjoyed doing it, they enjoyed going to work and I think that's what really made it, because without the calibre of the staff that I had, it wouldn't have happened.

Casey Baines:

That’s always the story. If you find the right people, build the right culture, then everything just comes automatically, basically.

Bob Stirling:

And then so after the first which as I said was the two, which was Harold and Rachel, then the next group came on and that's Dee Apps joined us and Sydney and eventually took over. Rachel became the first senior dog handler in Sydney and Harold took that role in Brisbane and then Rachel left us and Dee took over as the senior handler.

But during that time also we then decided we would develop further and go outside of the airports. And then we moved into the active response program, which was dogs doing air couriers and international mail. And then we didn't need to worry about what people thought of the dogs. And so basically we got a different breed of dogs and it was anything we could get our hands on. So one of the nicest things and we trained up a lot of our handlers to go out and road test the dogs for us.

One of the nicest things was to get dogs out of the shelters. Some of them had been like they were on death row because nobody could handle them. They were just so full of it, beagles in particular were escape artists, which is quite renowned. But a lot of the other dogs were just so full on that it was very hard to find them a home. And it was so nice to be able to take a dog from there and give them a new lease of life and they’d enjoy themselves. So we had all sorts of animals and but to do that as a pilot also, I had to take on, you know, just to get it started a guy called Simon Mills set up with a dog called ‘Rowdy’ which was basically a cattle dog.

And that was good fun. And Simon was a renowned dog handler in his own right. He’d been in dog shows and everything else, a dog breeder, bit of the same background as I had and yeah, he made it work and then it just went from there. So I'll stop rabbiting now.

Casey Baines:

No, that’s ok. So to sit on that was the move across to active dogs either because you couldn't get enough beagles or because they thought it would be a better way to expand the fleet. And then to follow on from that, if they were rescue dogs, did they respond better to an active response? And could you explain what an active response was?

Bob Stirling:

Alright, so with the beagles in the airport it was a passing response which simply meant they sat next to the item that they were after and they got a passive reward, which was food. So that was really fine around the passengers. When you get into areas like international mail or the air couriers, as I said we don't need to worry about what people think of them. And so therefore we could get whatever breed we felt like and it wasn't because beagles couldn’t do it they certainly would. But, you know, if you stick to one breed, it's hard to fill all positions that you want with just one breed. And also I happened to be a terrier man and there were so many other dogs that could fit the bill.

You could train almost any dog to do scent detection work, but some are obviously better than others. And also an active reward, it is very simple as well. It just simply means that if the dog finds what they're after, the active response is that they'll scratch or nuzzle the item. Now, you don't want that in the airport because you don't want them scratching people's luggage or worse, their pockets.

In the courier and air mail not a problem. So they'd scratch that. And quite often also they're working on a conveyor belt, so therefore it's on the move as well. So they'd scratch at that and then if they're right, they get a game, either a tug of war or a game of fetch and you can just go stupid with them and the dogs loved it.

So we had dogs ranging from, because I went out and noticed the dogs too. I loved doing that it was a great part of my job. I ended up with dogs ranging in size from large things close to Rottweiler sized,  down to one dog that I got that went to Perth was smaller than a Jack Russell terrier. Very small, and I got her from the RSPCA here in Canberra and she was ball mad just would do anything for a game of playing ball. She ended up over there and she was so good because you could put her on the shelves in the air courier's and she’d work away through all the packages. Which some of the bigger dogs couldn’t do.

So you know it's just, it's horses for courses. Different dogs for different areas and but any dog that we took on that didn't work out, we were guaranteed to find them a good home.

Casey Baines:

Right of course.

Bob Stirling:

That was a promise that we gave people if they donated dogs particularly early stages with the beagles. And there are still quite a few dogs out there. Well, sorry, it's getting on now. So from my time, no, none of them would still be around. But we did have a lot of dogs that didn't quite make the grade and we would guarantee to find them good homes.

Some of them went to handlers themselves. If the dogs were retired, depending on the dog, because if they stayed in kennels, we all had our own kennels everywhere and quite often that was where they felt comfortable. That's where they wanted to stay, which was appropriate. But sometimes they could make the transition and then become a house dog. So but either way, once they served the useful life with us, went to a good retirement.

Casey Baines:

Yeah. And that's something that's maintained through the full 30 years. Even today, when a dog retires, they find the best home we can for them whether that's the handler or the list for the best home we can get them.

Bob Stirling:

I presume your list is as big as what is was when I. Yes.

Casey Baines:

Yes. Quite a long list of people that want to rehome to take the dogs For sure. You were talking about the recruitment process and obviously you had to sift through 800 plus applications.

Bob Stirling:

Only once did I have to.

Casey Baines:

What did you find were the best attributes in detector dog handlers? And who were you looking for when you were recruiting?

Bob Stirling:

Oh, that is a very good question. Again, initially we wanted people from within the quarantine service, so we didn't have to teach and also we didn't have the position set up because it was a pilot program. But you needed people who had a natural affinity with dogs. The dogs actually naturally responded to. They didn't have to have a big background in handling dogs if they did and they were good at it.

That was a bonus that sometimes you found that there were some people who had been dog handlers for a long time and we couldn't teach them anything new. We couldn't have that. We needed people who were open enough to be taught new methods and to accept what we wanted. There were funnily enough, there were a lot of people we thought of a food reward and a passive response was a silly way to do things. Obviously they didn't work in the airport. In the other areas, yes with the active response that's fine. But we also we needed people who had motivation, who we knew were going to stay with us. But also we needed people who in the airports could get on with passengers. Who could maintain a rapport. But the level of being a law enforcement officer, if you like.

Casey Baines:

Yeah, regulatory officer.

Bob Stirling:

Had to be pleasant. And also to maintain calm because one of the things with dog handling is that whatever emotional state you're in, it runs straight down the lead.

Casey Baines:

Right, the dog reflects.

Bob Stirling:

If your feeling really if you've had a fight with your partner before you come in that day, you have to stand at the door and just dump it and then walk in and it's a new day and the dog knows nothing about your background. It just goes, “oh the boss is here, I'm working and everything's good.” If you come in and you're feeling miserable, down or you're angry, your dog's going to pick up on it and not work properly.

But we had a great variety of people, different characters, really good stuff. I was so pleased with the calibre of the staff that we had from all sorts of backgrounds. Yes, we did have some who were, you know straight handlers from other areas, from other regions, but there were some who'd never handled a dog in that sort of manner in their life. But they fitted the bill. The dogs would tell us, because in the interview, not only did they do a normal interview.

Casey Baines:

They got to meet a dog right?

Bob Stirling:

And it was whatever we felt like using the time. Now if it was at training centre then we'd pull out one of the dogs that was there. But if I was interviewing somebody in, say, Adelaide, I would get dogs from the from the local pound.

Casey Baines:

Yeah, right.

Bob Stirling:

I mean I’d obviously go look at them first and make sure that you're capable of not getting aggressive or anything else. Put the handlers through the paces with the dogs they've not met. See if they can follow instructions and see how the dog reacts because the dogs will tell us whether these people are worth having or not.

Casey Baines:

Yes, that's really interesting.

Bob Stirling:

The dogs will let you know.

Casey Baines:

And I know you did mention that you did get to handle the dog for a little bit yourself. Do you have a one story that you draw back on? The one interesting find? And maybe you could tell us a bit more about why you moved from your role to handle a dog for a short period?

Bob Stirling:

Well, as I said, I did so much of the dog recruitment as well as people recruitment. And that was a part of the operation that I loved.

I also got to handle the dog occasionally to do demonstrations. We did The Science Show in Canberra and I borrowed a beagle and we did The Science Show, two kids that were there and whatever. And that was good. But come the Olympics leading up to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, we needed all dogs on hand in Sydney in particular, but also Brisbane and Melbourne. In Sydney in particular, big influx of people. We needed more dogs, and I brought a couple in from interstate but also I went, well, I may as well get teamed up with the dog, so I did. I. So Steve Austin the trainer, we had a dog that was had been trained and was used as a spare because occasionally a dog would be off sick or whatever so we had spares.

So I got teamed up with a little beagle called Cindy, and I worked the baggage hall and I just became a dog handler for that time, which meant I was at the kennels at five in the morning picking the dog up and to the airport. And I stopped being the manager whenever I had the dog on the lead. So I just said to everybody, I am now a dog handler. You treat me as such. And the interesting thing was that we had media from all over the world, obviously an interesting one was a Korean, South Korea. And the media there wanted to film a dog handler working and they also wanted to talk to the manager. And they realized that I was doing both. I did say to them, I want to get a better dog handler to film actually working. But no, no, they picked on me and we did the interview with the interviewer talking in Korean at me and somebody would translate and then I would answer in English, apparently it went ok on national television in Korea which was nice.

But from my point of view, one of the things that surprised me and I don’t know if it was deliberately done or not during the Olympics. I seem to end up with getting more of the wrestlers, weightlifters, boxers, to cover rather than you know the gymnasts or you know. I don’t why I ended up doing this, but anyway, it was. But no, we all had a good time.

I thoroughly enjoyed the work, but it was flat out, it was solid and yes there were a lot of interesting finds, but the more interesting ones I didn't get. And I’ll tell you about one in particular that happened, and it was Harold Smithard and I think with his dog, Winston. And the dog is trained to sit next to the item and you get to the stage where can say to the dog show me and they'll pinpoint. So if you have a big bag and there’s say an apple right down in the bottom of the big pack, they would point down here, it's here ok? Their nose they’ll put it there. The dog sat next to a gentleman and just looked at him and Harold said show me. And he just stared up at the guys top pocket of his jacket. Harold checked it out. They put him in for a check. He had queen bees in five fountain pins in his top pocket and the dog had scented those. And that was, to me, one of the best finds that you could get.

And it elevated our status in the apiarist industry. Like sky high. So a lot of really interesting finds. And another strange one that happened was Ronnie in Melbourne was working her beagle and somebody had brought in on their trolley, they had a big one of the foam type Esky and the dog came up, sniffed it, took a few steps back, it was about a metre and a half away, sat, looked at this thing and sort of rumbled, bit of growl again and Ronnie went, Show me and the dog went, no, I'm staying here. They checked it out. It was an untrained black bear skin. Oh wow. And the dog knew that it was something it should alert to, but canine instinct said it’s something I’m not supposed to get too close to. A bit of self-preservation, sat back and looked and went, “yeah that’s it.” So you know some weird ones.

But most of it is pretty sort of mundane stuff. Was the fruit, the meat plant material, that sort of stuff. But yeah, there were some interesting finds, you know, odd reptiles, people smuggling eggs in, one gentleman tried smuggling grapevine cuttings inside his pants. And when Winston pinpointed, he went up to the guys groin, that was amusing for everyone. Well moving right along now.

Casey Baines:

So you talked about the training program, could you elaborate a little bit more on what the dogs were trained to sniff out and what they had to maybe contend with to have non-scents what things weren't a biosecurity risk.

Bob Stirling:

But what I should have said at the beginning is when we were testing the dogs, particularly at the airport, you would make sure that they were basically bulletproof so that nothing else when they were on the job, nothing would disturb them. So we made a lot of noise. We had a lot of people around, moving conveyor belts, all sorts of stuff. Just so you knew, when got into the airport and they were focused on their job, nothing would disturb them.

So we got that started and then the trainer would take them on to do the scents. We initially started in the pilot program, we started on one of fruit one of the easier ones of the lot. And the simple thing, for example, is you want them to do oranges. You put an orange in boxes and we'd have a lot of boxes set out. Sterile boxes, clean, put an orange in one and the first thing you do is teach a dog sit on command. So dog comes walking along, sniffs every box because that’s what dogs do. When it sniffs the box with the orange you go “sit,” the dog sits, gets a little food reward. It takes no time for the dog to suddenly get go “oh, if I smell that and I sit, I get fed. This is brilliant.” So then next thing you do is you put a few boxes out with oranges then you out a lemon. The dog will come along “oh, it's close I'll try it.” Sit and then get a reward. Then they go “whoa, this is simple.” So any citrus fruit that you put in there, the dog will try it, if they get a reward. Bang, that's in the picture. You do the same with apples, then you add pears then you add.

You can do that, you can it do it with the meat, you do it with plant material and the dogs start to select. And then they’ll what we call generalize. So as I say, with the citrus fruit start off with orange and just start expanding. Mandarins, limes and then just anything that smells remotely citrus. They’ll alert to it. And you keep expanding that and then the dogs will always try any new scent.

So then we start looking at, you put the normal scent and then you might put chocolate or some. And then the dog would come up “oh here’s a new scent. I'll sit.” You get nothing. “Ok, fine. I know I get rewarded for that so I’ll ignore it.” It is basically that simple. It takes time but in reality it is that simple. The dog knows “I won’t to get rewarded for that. I'll get rewarded for all this other stuff so I’ll sit at it.” Then you start getting a little bit more complicated and you do things like fruit flavoured lollies.

Casey Baines:

Smells like fruit but they're not.

Bob Stirling:

Yeah, precisely and the dogs can pick the difference. The amazing things about dogs is the scent discrimination that they can do. I put it this way, if you walked home and the boss is cooking a stew. You walk in *Sniff* “Stew, lovely oh this smells really good.” The dog walks in and goes *sniff* “oh there’s a bit of lamb, oh there’s a bit of potato, there’s turnip. And they can discriminate all of these different scents whereas you and I smell stew. The dog goes that's got this, this, this and this, this with it so they can pick the difference.

And you need to have that so that if somebody comes in and they're trying to smuggle in, for example, some grape cuttings. And then they try to because they know that the dogs will alert certain things and they might try to mask it by putting in smelly stuff. You’d be surprised what people do, I won’t go into some of the gross ones. But they'll try and put other food in. And so then they can declare it and go “oh, look, I've got this, I've got chocolate biscuits. And that must be what the dog’s alerting to. And we got “no, it's not, you're going in for a check” and then we'll find what we're after. So it sounds simple. In reality it is.

It just takes a little bit of time and then you can add scents in later to life if you suddenly decide. So we start off doing all the food. But once the pilot program was settled, when then went right, let's include bees. Right, then will include reptiles. So you borrow people's reptiles and that fine. We had help from everywhere. People were helping us with all sorts of things, so you do that. In New Zealand they wouldn't allow them to do snakes. Oh, ok. So I actually got a permit to send over shed snakes skins.

Casey Baines:

Alright so they could learn the scent of a snake without a live snake.

Bob Stirling:

So they weren't allowed to bring in live snakes. But even shed skins, I had to get a permit to send to New Zealand but that’s alright. And then we would add in things like eggs. Now eggs is pretty tricky because it's not that much odour that comes out of eggs. But the dogs will do it. The dogs can get it every time, so.

Casey Baines:

That's how precise they are.

Bob Stirling:

One grape in a suitcase and they'll find it. It's that simple. It really is. They’re just an exceptional tool. I was asked at one stage by somebody who said, “Well, with all the technology, there are handheld scent detectors and surely that would be better than having to train up dogs and handlers whatnot.” My answer was twofold.

Number one, passengers don't like handheld devices, they love dogs, it’s that simple. So from a PR point of view dogs are phenomenal. Secondly, with those devices, you have to recalibrate them basically for every set. They are not going to have a huge range that the dogs can have.

Casey Baines:

Yeah, and that's the generalist about a dog that works very well. If you have a device that you program it to understand an orange, you'll have to program it to understand a lemon as well. Whereas you can train a dog on an orange and it will get you a lemon, your grapefruit, a lime.

Bob Stirling:

And as I said, do the birds. The birds and the bees.

Casey Baines:

So noting we're running out of time. One final question for you. Do you have any advice for someone who might be aspiring to become a dog handler? Or to become someone involved with the program?

Bob Stirling:

Yeah ok if you've got experiences, dog handler. It doesn't matter whether it's formal or not. Make sure that if you're applying, put the information in. But the other thing I will say also is that if you have other outside activities, this is something I've always insisted on, other outside activities that can demonstrate that you have the staying power, the mindset that will allow you to go is almost as focused as the dogs do. Please add it in your application. I had people who just didn't tell me enough when they spoke to me because they didn't score an interview. I would delve a bit it further. And so hang on next time, put that in your application. It’s that simple. But the main thing for dog handlers is, number one, enjoy your job. Number two, the ones that thing we drum, we just drummed into our handlers all the time, trust your dog. It doesn't matter what anybody tells you. Trust your dog because people will tell you all sorts of stories. Yes, stories why your dog responded or didn't or whatever.

The other thing I didn't mention, though, is that one of the drawbacks is that the dogs will alert us to residual odours. So if you've had an apple in your in your briefcase and you’ve eaten it on the flight coming over and the dog alerts, if the passenger says, well, I had an apple in there. Fine, good, that's still a reward for the dog, because the scent is there.

So that was quite a few of our alerts, but we used to get an awful lot of it. It got to the stage where each dog would be averaging 12 to 15 seizures per flight. And that gets busy, it really does. And they were very, very good tool. The other thing that I didn't mention is that I unashamedly used them for PR.

Casey Baines:

You mentioned the program grew and grew and had a life of itself. Did you have a role? So obviously you did, but was there something specific that you did or did you just start to build?

Bob Stirling:

When people saw dogs they kept saying, can we do filming with you? Can we do this? And yeah, and we just used it to advertise. Because we quarantine was always being confused with customs and whatever. And so we used the quarantine dogs unashamedly to advertise quarantine. But the other thing I loved is that we actually were then regarded as probably the world leader in this sort of work.

We ended up collaborating with New Zealand, with America again, with Canada, Korea. England.

And it was really nice that it got a bit more international and we helped the New Zealanders set up as well. And so no it was lovely. I even went to America with Steve, the trainer, and we spent a lot of time at the training centre because things had started to go a little bit array for them and they needed somebody from outside, which you always do.

And this is why after I started it, as I said, the first teams in 92 at the end of 2003, I had actually taken over an international mail program for a while acting. And then I went no and I've been doing this for 11 years, the dogs, it's time for some fresh eyes, time for somebody else to put their stamp on it. And I just stayed where I was and left it, which I think it was time. I mean, we all have our use by date.

Casey Baines:

And the programs continued to and develop definitely.

Bob Stirling:

Yeah that’s right. And I'm just so pleased that we're actually doing this and looking at the 30 year anniversary. Yeah, because I think as a program, it's definitely worth celebrating.

Casey Baines:

Very much so and it's very important. It's a big milestone that we've got to and the program has been successful for all of those 30 years. It hasn't ever dropped off, they've been one of the best detection tools.

Bob Stirling:

And because it was so successful, they ended up giving me a public service medal. Whoa! And I said no it wasn't me. It was the whole lot of them, the teams. If it hadn’t been for them, this wouldn't have happened. But the secretary, Mike Taylor, just went “no, no, we're making that public service medal.” Alright, I accepted it basically on behalf of the team.

And I just think it was it was probably the highlight of my working career. I was almost 30 years in quarantine and the dog program. I had a brilliant time in quarantine. I loved all of it for the 29 years and I probably would have stayed there, except the old Commonwealth superannuation scheme suggested that I get out before I turn 55. But I just love the quarantine staff, but the dog program was for me the highlight.

Casey Baines:

Well, thank you for telling us this story and a very big congratulations to you and the program that you built. And that public service medal is definitely a reflection of that. Before we do finish up, is there anything else that you would like to add?

Bob Stirling:

I look I could go on for hours, but I won’t. I’ll just let it go but if there's anything else you need, just call me and let me know.

But look, I wish you guys good luck with this. Thank you and I hope the anniversary goes well. I’m sure it will.

Casey Baines:

Us too and I know you said you weren't particularly as big a collector of merchandise, but we have a show bag that we're getting together for the 30th anniversary. So we'll be sending one of those your way.

Bob Stirling:

Thank you very much Casey I’ve enjoyed it.

Casey Baines:

Thank you so much Bob have a great day.

Bob Stirling:

Thank you. Bye, bye.

Casey Baines:

I hope you have enjoyed today’s episode of Detect and Protect. You can find our more information on the department's website or by visiting biosecurity.gov.au. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast series to get updates on future topics and learn more about Australian biosecurity. Also be sure to follow us on our social media pages. Thanks very much for listening everybody. And we will catch you on the next episode of Detect and Protect.