In the 1970s and ‘80s, Lynda Stoner was one of TV’s glamour girls. After being crowned Miss TV Times (pictured) in 1976, she went on to star in popular dramas The Young Doctors, Cop Shop and Prisoner.
But, in a report this weekend in the Sydney Morning Herald, Stoner’s latest ‘role’ is as far removed from the bright lights of showbiz as can be imagined.
A long-time vegan and campaigner for animal rights, Stoner reveals how she and an Animal Liberation colleague recently spent two days ‘undercover’ at a pig dogging workshop. A black wig, dark-rimmed glasses and a $12 wedding ring from Paddy’s Market saw Lynda Stoner, actor and animal rights activist, transformed into ‘Linda Brown’, pig dogger and game hunting enthusiast:
”The only way to do it is to go in there and try to dissociate, to mentally put yourself in another place and know that you’re doing it to try to get this terrible thing stopped.”
Pig dogging is where pigs are pursued and caught by dogs and then killed with knives. It has been legal in declared state forests since March 2006:
”It’s such an underground culture. I’ve spoken to other hunters; they are so disparaging of pig doggers. They are the lowest of the low.”
”If they’re proposing this is to reduce the number of feral animals, it’s the most disgusting, most barbaric, most brutal thing they could do.”
The information that Stoner and a colleague collected from the workshop will be used for Animal Liberation’s campaign against pig dogging.
The full report is on the Sydney Morning Herald website.
