Where are the good guys?

Neil Diamond’s story—the duck, that is—began on Sunday, 2 March 2025. But its roots stretch back to a busy wetland in Northern Victoria in 2006, when the Lady in the Hat had her baptism of fire during duck shooting season.

In the dim quiet of early morning, mist clung to the lake, reluctant to release its steely grip. The haunting serenity belied what was about to unfold.

Then it happened.

A barrage of gunfire shattered the silence as lead pellets and waterbirds rained down from the sky. The time? Minutes before the scheduled start of this legalised carnage. And as so often happens, the bloodshed had already taken hold.

As rescuers leapt into action, curses flew, and the Lady in the Hat stood, shell-shocked. Nothing—not countless hours of research nor duck rescue briefings—could have prepared her for this.

Then a bird fell.

A delicate white avocet. Unmistakably a non-game species. One that looked nothing like a duck. Her wings outstretched, as if trying to defy her human-imposed fate. Moments later, she fluttered helplessly into the water just beyond the reach of the Lady in the Hat.

“Where are the good guys to police this all?” was all the Lady in the Hat could manage, cradling the fragile, dying bird in now blood-tinged hands. A dagger struck her heart, and she whispered again, “Where are the good guys?”

Numb, cold and confused, she headed back to the onsite veterinary van. Along the way, she was joined by others—some seasoned warriors, others wide-eyed and teary. Yet each was touched by the senselessness of it all.

“Where are the good guys?”

And then she realised—she was looking at them. And she was one of them.

Fast forward to Sunday 2 March 2025. A call came in—an abandoned domesticated duck with a fishing hook embedded in his mouth. Clearly human kindness had failed him so far, but serendipity would not, as our rescue team was close by.

At a picturesque lake in Caroline Springs, the duck was quickly found. After failed attempts one, two, and three, hope wavered. Then—on the fourth try, with the help, wit and skill of Nigel Williamson—Neil Diamond was abandoned no more.

An emergency late-night dash to our dedicated and skilled vet revealed the hook had lodged in his cheek rather than, as feared, further down his throat. Once removed, something remarkable happened—Neil softened in the hands of kindness. His cheery quacks and confident waddles told us this was something the dear boy once knew.

So what of his past? We could only wonder. Where were his people? Why had he been so thoughtlessly abandoned? How had humans been so reckless that a barbed hook nearly cost him his life? (Another multi-barbed and sinister hook was retrieved from a tree, along with tangled strands of fishing line around the lake.)

“Where are the good guys to police this all?”

With duck shooting season soon to descend on Victoria’s wetlands once again, Neil Diamond’s story does not end like so many native waterbirds’ will. He will not be blasted from the sky. Violence will not touch him. While domestication has spared him that grief, he has surmounted his own share of troubles and swum through to the other side. He now rests up with Garry, another recently rescued, once-abandoned duck.

Together, at sanctuary, they have found friendship, freedom and fortitude. As they shuffle along, side by side, their chatter is incessant, like long-lost friends reunited. And watching them, we cannot help but think they are quacking:

“Thank the heavens the good guys came to save us.”