Baco: Our Hero For The Animals

To those who support live sheep exports from Australia, Craig Baco is an animal activist, a born and bred city dweller with no idea about farm life.

But Craig Baco is many things to many people.  A tree surgeon with over 25 years’ experience, a qualified tyre fitter, a partner in a rural animal sanctuary, a son, a friend.  Moreover, to many people in the animal advocacy sector, Craig Baco is nothing short of a hero.  A hero for the animals.

Regardless of the labels he’s given, Baco, as he is affectionately known within his animal-loving community, is laser focused when it comes to his life’s purpose: to document and showcase the abhorrent cruelty inherent in the live export trade.  Cruelty which he observes every time there is a live export ship – which he terms a death ship – anchored at Fremantle Port.  And that happens a lot.  Far too often for someone with Baco’s deep care and passion for animal welfare.

“It all started for me in 2017 when I watched the 60 Minutes expose of the Awassi Express which showed Australian livestock suffering terribly and dying in their own filth,” explains the 52-year-old, who was born and raised in Sydney.

“The whole country was horrified, farmers were even reported as being horrified, but for me, when I watched that footage something in me shifted; it was the moment that my life changed.”

Baco explains that the suffering recorded on board the live export carrier propelled him to do more research into the industry, after which he says he had the cold, hard realisation of the level of terror and misery involved in the trade.

“A couple of years later, I had the opportunity to move to Perth, so I packed up and made the decision to devote my life to helping the Australian community gain awareness of the misery the industry inflicts on live sheep and cattle to make their millions,” he says.

And so, since moving to Perth five years ago, Baco has borne witness to pretty much every live sheep and cattle truck that has driven into Fremantle, with animals destinated for countries in the Middle East, Africa or southeast Asia. 

To date, over 53 months, he has been there to film and document 167 live export ships enter Fremantle Port, and leave days later engorged with thousands of live Australian sheep and cattle.

Armed with nothing more than his mobile phone, Baco films the crowded trucks heading towards the Port, often bearing witness to heat-stressed animals, or those who have collapsed or are trapped, sometimes with limbs spilling out of the slatted metal sides.

“I feel devastated that I can’t help them,” says Baco.  “Those trucks drive past me continuously and it’s heartbreaking, I get so upset and I just feel their suffering falls on deaf ears.

“The distress is overwhelming, just like the smell.  I don’t think Australians realise how active the live export trade is, how frequently the death ships visit Fremantle Port. 

“If people saw the constant and ongoing suffering that I see, the injuries, the blood, the sheep that are trampled on as they are offloaded, the majority of Australians would want live export banned immediately.  Once and for all.

“Australians would surely agree that we are better than this, and we need to treat our animals better.  They shouldn’t be on those trucks for hours, sometimes in boiling hot temperatures.  And they shouldn’t be on those ships for days, weeks, sometimes even months.  It’s completely inhumane.” 

Since relocating to Western Australia, Baco has become a part owner in a privately-run farm animal sanctuary in the Wheatbelt, known as Paradise Pastures.  Amongst its residents are more than 150 rescued sheep, 70 of which were saved from the live export trade.

“Sheep are just so incredibly gentle, I have such a soft spot for them, they are intelligent and very obviously feel so many of the same emotions we do – fear, pain, joy, excitement,” explains Baco, who knows each sheep at the sanctuary individually, after spending years feeding and caring for them.

“When I have a particularly bad day filming the trucks at the Port, I’ll head to the sanctuary and just spend quiet time in the paddock with the sheep, the wool kids as I call them. 

“They very often pick up on my sadness and press their heads next to mine.  They comfort me and I feel devastated that the sheep I’ve seen on the trucks that day have never felt the same human kindness.

“If that makes me an activist or an extremist in other people’s eyes, so be it.  But to my mind, I’m just an Australian who cares about animal welfare.  An Australian who knows the difference between what’s right and what’s wrong when it comes to how these gentle, innocent creatures should be treated.”

Footnote: While the majority of Australians oppose live export (based on RSPCA Australia research), and the federal Labor government has introduced legislation to ban the live export of sheep by sea, the ban does not come into effect until May 2028.  In comparison, the federal coalition has vowed to repeal the legislation, if elected.