Highlights of Kununurra

Brief update: After spending one week at Drysdale River National Park (flying in via helicopter), we had a few days back in town and then returned to the Mitchell Plateau to do two weeks of exciting sites during which I met several species of bandicoot (or bandi-“cutes,” yeah I went there) and finally got pretty good at quoll-wrangling and microchipping. We just had a week back in town and will head out to Bachsten Creek tomorrow for our longest trip yet (18 days, yowza!). We’re supposed to catch a lot of animals the first week, maybe even the adorable monjon, and then will have meals provided for us the second week, which will make up for us not having as many animals in our traps (we’ll be trapping at a cattle station, and the small mammals don’t tend to do so well when the large ungulates are around).

But before I catch up on the backlog of posts about the Bungle Bungles, Drysdale, and the Return to Mitchell, I thought I might spend a bit of time on Kununurra itself, since this was my last week in town (I’ll be heading for Darwin right after our last trip, to continue with my travels). Here goes, in stream-of-consciousness style, not in any order of preference:

1.       The giant green tree frog that has taken up residency in the shower curtain. I try to remember to move him out of the way before I shower, so he doesn’t get blasted with hot water and soap (frogs are so sensitive, and he has those big glossy eyes…I could seriously kiss him).

2.       Visiting “Swim Beach” on Lake Kununurra (which is really just a long wide section of the Ord River bounded by two dams) and maybe jumping off the half-submerged tree in the middle of the swimming area. It’s lovely during the day when it’s freakishly hot, or in the evening just after work, when the chances of getting sunburned are reduced. In July it could be quite chilly but it’s now really easy to walk right in, partly because it’s frequently upwards of 38 degrees C during the day (that’s the high 90s F, 40 degrees Celsius is 104F, by comparison). And people only see crocodiles there occasionally.

3.       Entering data and sorting through camera trap videos in my little “donga” room, which is basic but has a desk and air conditioning, so what more could you want? Normally I sniff at energy-guzzling “air-con” and try to endure with just a fan or something, but in a poorly insulated room without a fan, and that super-heat I just mentioned, it becomes necessity. Viewing endless camera trap videos could be tedious, so over the course of my data entry, I listened to a lot of Harry Potter, the entire book of Ender’s Game, a dozen or so episodes of That Mitchell and Webb Sound (a hilarious radio show), and a fair few Human Behavioural Biology lectures (a class I’d wanted to take at Stanford but couldn’t fit in, so I downloaded all the tapes of the lectures instead).

4.       Housesitting for Ian for a week (did this in July) and baking bread and pumpkin pie, watching fun Aussie movies (“The Castle” and “Brand Nue Dae”) and Glee, walking the dogs (Tubo, a big happy one with a very friendly nature, and Bronte, a small slender grey dog who’s quite old and doesn’t last long on walks, but does enjoy snapping at the two cats), ogling at the cute finches in the aviary (double-barred finches, Gouldian finches, painted finches, and one more…crimson finches? Have to check on that), jumping on the trampoline (OMG awesome!) and trying not to step on a chook (chicken) in the backyard.

5.       Visiting Richard’s place for morning tea (I also stayed there the night we got back from the Bungles) and admiring the bowerbird in his backyard that has constructed a lovely twig bower with two thick walls and a collection of broken glass, Styrofoam, plastic straws, and other treasures to be found around Kununurra. Also feeding the wild finches in his backyard (double-barred, crimsons, and something else with the word chestnut in the name). They’re super cute and bounce around, and then they get spooked and frantically fly up, except for a few who are like “Meh, I’m eating, can’t be bothered flying up at nothing” and stay on the ground.

6.       On that note there were three tawny frogmouths living in the roof of one of the dongas (they’re not there anymore, maybe it got too hot sitting there – Tennessee Williams’ less-successful first attempt: “Tawny Under a Hot Tin Roof”) and dozing during the day. I saw them hunting at night once, too, which was cool to see their eyes open. One yawned at me and then hacked up something. It was very romantic.

7.       The Saturday markets where you can buy various melons, pumpkins, papayas (extra yum), and other seasonal fruits (the Kununurra dry season is the best growing season for most things, so it was cool to have summer and autumn food continue into the normal “winter” time). They also have souvenir stands with cool rocks, fancy jewelry, even fancier rough-cut diamonds that come from the nearby mines (the pink ones are the most expensive), and other Kununurra specialties. The frozen mango stand, the customized frozen yoghurt stand, and the smoothie/lassi stand were also highlights. I always meant to add a bit of music to the scene by playing my penny whistle, but I never made it out early enough, because of...

8.       …Friday nights at the local Tavern, especially when there was live music, because Richard knows how to swing dance (only he calls it “jive” and it starts on the off-beat). Also one of the guys in our department is big into lindy hop, apparently, so one Friday we did some lindy on the slick tile floor of the outdoor patio – it was a bit hard to keep my balance, but still fun.

9.       Wednesday’s Karaoke nights, which featured several regulars, such as Chopsie, who freestyle raps during his songs, and the aboriginals who occasionally sing Australian bush songs that I don’t know, as well as Brown-Eyed Girl and I Will Survive. In fact, most of the songbook was obscure Aussie artists or bands (well, only obscure to me, I guess) or very recent tunes with only a few classics (they had almost no Beatles and a weird selection of Michael Jackson songs that did not include Billy Jean – sad). Over the weeks I sang a bit of Lady Gaga, Pink, Adele, Abba, Madonna, and Wham (I realized they changed the pitch of a lot of songs to be lower, which helped with female artists but unfortunately messed up my relationship with “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go”). Favourites included Bohemian Rapsody (dueted with Christina, a German girl studying linguistics and working at the language centre in town) and Footloose, which brought down the house both times I sang it, as well as amusing Richard who always hints that I should be related to Kenny Loggins.

10.   Hanging out with various locals and travelers that Richard knew, usually at the pub for karaoke or dancing, including Christina, Cindy (originally from Thailand, now working at Coles), Kristal (also working at Coles, but Australian), Amy (originally from China, now working at the souvenir shop), John (works on/off again at the mines, has a jetski, but more on that later). I also met a few more people working at the language centre, two from Australia (Steph and Tom) and one girl from Montreal, Vivian, who goes to McGill and just started here this past week though she’s been in Australia nearly as long as I have. We bonded over mutual love of the TV show “Community,” and the fact that we had both couchsurfed at Michael’s flat when we were in Perth, albeit several months apart – how bizarre is that?

11.   Meeting some random travelers one Saturday while at Swim Beach and joining their guitar and drum circle briefly and playing with their dogs. Heard a Jamaican version of “Country Roads” that was quite good. It’s hard to describe, but the best bit was in the chorus: “Country roads, take me home, to the place, I belo’ong!” with a bit of reggae rhythm. It was fortuitous that I befriended these guys because they later helped me jumpstart the ute battery which had mysterious died when I was trying to drive home.

12.   Thinking of the office, occasionally there would be super fancy morning teas with birthday cake or strawberries and cream or doughnut delicacies – always a pleasant surprise and good wake-up in the morning. It was fun to chat to department people other than Richard and Ian for a change (no offence, but we do spend a lot of time together in our various field trips and planning sessions).

13.   Enjoying the outdoor movie theatre (there’s no other one in town) on a Saturday night with Christina, Steph, and Richard (we saw Despicable Me 2, and it was pretty cute – they should make guacamole hats for real!)

14.   Hash walks on Sundays among various beautiful Kimberley scenery, and the subsequent beer and snack ceremonies at the end, complete with silly songs. On the last walk I did we saw all these amazing boab trees of different varieties and then relaxed with a “sausage sizzle” (an Aussie classic) and a swim in a hashers’ pool. I was sad to never reach my 5^th hash walk, which is when you get your official hash-name. Alas.

15.   Attending a few dinner parties at Ian’s house, which always featured amazing food, tasty drinks (I think I mentioned the mango daiquiris in the first Kununurra blog post – yum!), nice conversation, and entertaining background music (usually Glee and other current stars or divas, it always surprised me). The dogs and cats running around your feet could also be quite hilarious.

16.   Going shopping with Richard multiple times before each field trip and visiting hardware stores, office stores, stock supplies (my favourite, they had animal food, really nice Akubra felt hats, and baby cockatoos), and Coles (many many times, and we always ended up with more food than we’d planned).

17.   Getting creative with meals as I struggled to use up leftovers from our various trips (waste not, want not). Sometimes I did get a bit sick of cheese sandwiches, sweet potatoes, bruised apples, and pumpkin, but I very rarely had to buy food, so it was a win most of the time.

18.   WATER SPORTS!! This deserves its own post, will write it momentarily.

I hope I have characterized my time spent in town to the fullest extent. Though I ultimately preferred being out in the field because of the animals and gorgeous locations (at least until the long hours and waking at 5am thing would wear me down), Kununurra is not a bad place to spend a decent part of the season (at least, when it’s the dry season and it’s not terribly hot all the time, it’s getting closer to the wet season now, so it’s building up to be really hot without breaking until November). I owe a lot of my fun adventures to Richard, who from the beginning included me in his invites to hash walks, karaoke night, and boating trips, and introduced me to pretty much everyone I know now. Good times.

Back to the Outback

I know I haven’t written up the Bungles yet (due solely to laziness, as I have all the notes ready), but I’ll just have a start of the recent Drysdale River trip before I head out on the next one (back to the Mitchell Plateau, where I may have the internet to post some more, we’ll see).

After a break in town between the Bungles trip (during which I sang some Queen and Adele at karaoke, danced lindy hop with two DPAW employees, how random is that, and recovered from a week bushwalking through spinifex grass), we prepped for our exciting helicopter trip (exciting only to me, really, since everyone else had been on a helicopter before. Even though I almost was rescued by one – I see you Pasha, my fellow dive disaster buddy – I to date hadn’t actually been in one before).

And so on Friday, the 16^th of August, we packed up all our stuff and headed out towards the Mitchell Plateau, but this time we would be turning off at Carson River, a different spot, camping there overnight, and then catching a helicopter out the next morning. We passed the Cockburn (pronounced “Coe-burn”) Ranges again, where they filmed “Australia,” and drove over the Pentecost River (the one that may just maybe have saltwater crocodiles). The water was down really low compared to the last time I was there, back at the end of June, but we didn’t stop or anything to check it out.

We kept going and breaked for tea on the side of the road, where we could just make out a little gorge off to the side. Soon after that we realized that our bunged-up spring from the original Mitchell trip was acting up again, and we’d have to replace it. Fortunately we made it safely to the Drysdale River Station so we could have lunch and fix it at the same time. I learned a bit about how to replace a spring while watching Richard work under the trailer, but mostly I just enjoyed not sitting squished in the car for a little while (we have to sit pretty packed to fit three people in the cab, and I actually told the others the sardine poem that I remembered from elementary school that was something like this:

A baby sardine saw its first submarine

It was scared, and watched through a peephole

“Don’t be, son,” said the sardine’s mum,

“It’s only a tin full of people!”

I think that’s the first time I’ve put a poem inside of a parenthetical, but it was worth it.)

With our newly-fixed spring we continued on the road past the turnoff for the Mitchell Falls and towards Carson River. I really noticed this trip how moist everything gets as you go north, especially compared to the Bungles, when we went south and it got a lot more arid. We started seeing greenery and palms everywhere. After the turnoff it was quite a windy and bumpy road and I was feeling a bit “average,” as the Aussies say when actually you’re feeling terrible (in context after a Friday night: “I woke up feeling pretty average/ordinary”) but we finally got to the river crossing, avoiding cattle running across the road several times (they were everywhere!). The Carson River was barely flowing at that point, but fortunately when we got to the airstrip, where we would make camp, it was deeper and we could use the water for drinking (cross my fingers I don’t get sick, but apparently we were in such remote country that the river and creek water, provided it was flowing, was perfectly safe to drink…let you know in a week if that is hooey or not).

We were meeting up with Rohan, who’s in charge of a crew of aboriginal rangers from the “Balingarra mob” (another Aussie slang tidbit: “mob” means any sort of group, but especially used for the different aboriginal groups in the area). There were four guys, ranging from 19-year-old Scott, to Leo and Quintin, to the older, more veteran ranger, Phillip, who also went as Byron (I never got it straight which was actually his name). They had arrived the day before and already had a fire going with a roast cooking in a big camp oven. We were planning on eating the first of our army ration meals (more on them later, they’re so cool!) but instead we got a nice meal and finished off the esky of beer that Richard had brought specifically for the first night at camp. There were also a few (none-too-classy) jokes told and a billy was boiled, although I thought it was much too hot and humid for tea, even at night.

Add to that scene the super bright half-moon overhead and the ground burned beneath the tents, and it was a quintessential outback evening in the north Kimberley.

Mishaps, Mice, and the Mitchell Falls

After Richard picked up Ian at the airstrip, Ian set off to show me the Mitchell Falls, the most famous icon of Mitchell River National Park. We started off on the same track to Little Merten’s Falls, but bypassed the rock art turnoff and continued onwards along rockier tracks. Along the way we saw this cute lizard sunning itself on a rock, and some sort of cool pigeon, I think it was called a partridge bird, that had bright yellow around its eye. 

We passed a different rock art site that was on the side of a cliff above a narrow ledge, making it hard to get a close-up look without falling off the edge, but it was still cool to see from a distance. There was another big kangaroo and lots of slender figures throwing spears at each other, which were more of the Bradshaw art that is supposed to be from a group of aboriginals that came over from Indonesia independently and after the earliest immigrants.

We came to a spot that was in the open and along a cliffside above Big Merten’s Falls, although you couldn’t see them well from the top and it was dangerous to get too close to the edge. Still, there was a big chasm and I could see the river a little ways along in the distance, and some of the falls pouring down away from the path.

After climbing up the next ridge we were at the top of the Mitchell Falls, and we could see a fair way down through a few of the tiers, although again the view wasn’t the best from the top. There was a large flat plain to our left where the river flattened out before rushing over the falls, and parts of it were shallow, going over a few large rocks. Ian said that the best view was across the river, and suggested that we keep our socks on as we waded across, for better grip on the mossy rocks. This was a brilliant idea since the hardest thing about wading across a stream is the chance you might slip on the rocks. And the water was way warmer than the last time I had waded across a stream (in order to get to some mysterious falls in May in Canada, we had to cross the most frigid water imaginable).

Anyway we reached the other side, climbed a few rocks, and had a spectacular view of the Mitchell Falls. There are three levels: the first is pretty short, the second leads to a small pool, and the third is a big drop down to the big pool and the rest of the river (the closer you get to the ocean, the greater chance that saltwater crocodiles may be swimming about, but none of them would make it that far up the falls to where we were camping). We perched on a rock overlooking the falls and took a few classic photos before we headed back over the hill to Ian’s favourite swimming spot. There were lots of little fish in the water and it was also a very nice temperature for the heat of the middle of the day. There were little birds dipping down from a nearby tree to take baths, which was pretty cute.

Apparently if you follow the trail for longer, you reach an interesting rock art site (I think it’s the one that has reindeer, which is more evidence of a different group arriving from Indonesia more recently than other aboriginal groups, because they would have experienced deer-like animals, or have had them in their legends or group memory) but we didn’t feel like walking a long ways when there was a pool to swim in, so we gave it a miss. 

I forgot to put my socks back on, but succeeded in crossing the river in my bare feet without any difficulty. We passed Big Merten’s Falls again, and it was closer to sundown so the light was a bit better in the gorge. Somewhere along the path back towards the smaller falls I heard a rustle and was excited to see a monjon browsing around the tree trunks near the path. I could see its little face and tufted tail clearly, especially through binoculars, although it was obscured in lots of undergrowth so my photos aren’t too thrilling. It was really cute to watch and it appeared to be eating dry leaves, which didn’t seem that palatable, but you never know (if it had wandered up the creek a little further in the preceding days, it could have eaten peanut butter instead of dry leaves, but to each his/her own). I was very excited to have finally seen both a monjon and the famous Mitchell Falls, so it was a nice day and a good break from the trapping.

Monday we had a long day of setting up more sites, this time back along the road into the Mitchell Park which meant that we had to drive quite a ways to get to some of them. The first was off the road a bit in some big palms, which were prickly when you brushed up against the broken fronds on the ground. The second was down a different side-road and had a boggy section, which kind of turned me around and I waded through a lot of mud before realizing that the main gridline was staying on the dry land. Oh well. The third one was across the road from the boggy one (spoiler alert, it caught no animals – bummer).

The fourth was kind of exciting because we had to take the Can-Am out and use the GPS to locate the trail, which was very overgrown towards this lagoon. We had some aboriginals out with us for the first few sites, but they didn’t come out to this site (can’t remember why) so it was just me and Richard in the Can-Am with Ian balancing on the back (there’s a little box part at the rear, but it’s not too big and probably pretty bumpy. I tried to guide with the GPS and sometimes Ian would shout out where the road led because he had a better vantage point, but we still ended up demolishing a few innocent plants in the process of navigating to Glaut’s Lagoon. A pretty site, nonetheless.

The last two sites were right off the main road, although one was down a very steep hill, and I was reminded a bit of carrying traps up and down the big meadow site in Canada, which was also very steep (although at least this wasn’t snowy). We had our lunch at some point on the side of the road in our slightly creaky camp chairs, and left our trailer at the last site to finish setting traps out the next day.

After driving all the way back it was pretty late, and I decided to use up all our extra mashed potatoes by making squirrel bakes (basically cheesy potato balls dipped in egg and breadcrumbs and baked to perfection). It was so late though, and the oven was a bit crappy, that I got kind of hungry and impatient, so they were a little undercooked and not crispy, but still tasty.

Tuesday we checked our traps and I went to the furthest sites with Ian so he could start doing some vegetation sampling while I was collecting mammal data. We didn’t find much except a chestnut mouse and a dunnart that may have been a ning-bing because it had a very thick tail (ning-bings are another type of small marsupial, but in a different family than the dunnarts, so it’s weird that they look so similar). I got some pretty adorable photos of it, at any rate.

We met up with everyone else and finished setting up the last two sites, which were nearly 2 hours away from the Mitchell ranger station, so it was going to be a long drive there and back in the coming days. One site was in a grassy but burned section hidden behind some rocks, and the other was in a very rocky area that involved lots of climbing and squeezing through rock cracks, but was not as successful as the other rocky site from the previous week (we didn’t catch a single animal there). There were a lot of cattle noises in a lot of these sites, proof that cattle are still roaming freely in the upper level of the plateau. We saw a giant dead bull on the side of the road, left after a ranger had shot it (they do massive cattle culling once a year, but the rangers shoot every cow they see, though it’s a shame they can’t do anything with them and have to leave them to rot or be eaten by dingoes). Because the carcass was in the midst of a bunch of palms, it reminded me of those drawings of herbivorous dinosaurs lying in ferny fields after being attacked. All the scene needed was a few velociraptors hanging about (though this was not wishful thinking on my part, yikes).

We had lunch near the King Edward River, which is the first entrance to the park area, though technically not within the park boundaries. There was a pretty rocky section you could walk along to see a small waterfall (the rock was only accessible because the water is so low in the dry season). The rocks were nice and warm and it would have been a nice spot for a nap if we’d had the time, but we had to open all the sites again after lunch and make the long drive back.

Wednesday we received some frustrating news about our project. Turns out that the aboriginals who were required to assist us were having time off because of the elder who had died the week before, and we wouldn’t be allowed to do our field work until they were available again. Even worse, the funeral wasn’t until the beginning of August, so we would have to wait until after that, when we had planned another trip out to the Mitchell for the end of July. This was the first year that the aboriginal assistance was mandatory in that area, and apparently we were supposed to have people accompanying us all the time, even though they didn’t want to be there and often didn’t even get out of the car to go with us (I really don’t blame them, I wouldn’t want to be pointlessly following after people doing field work unless I was actually involved). 

At any rate it really messed up our plans because then we tried to go out to a different site in the middle of July instead, so we could move the Mitchell trip to the end of August, but the aboriginal group in that location were unavailable and refusing us entry as well. This is why we had to go to the Bungles at the end of July, even though that was not in the original plan and there aren’t that many animals there. The whole situation is very frustrating and the worst is that it doesn’t seem to be coming from the aboriginals themselves, but from these in-between coordinators (white Australians) who seem to want to make extra rules and throw up obstacles. Of course tourists would still be allowed into these places, but our little project which is designed to help better manage the land and improve the animal populations in the area (probably harming less of the environment than the average flock of tourists) is not allowed because of some new mandate. Anyway, I won’t ramble about that any more, but we’ve been dealing with it for the whole season and it’s driving us mad.

We were able to finish out the trapping that week that we’d already started, at least. I managed to lose my water bottle (even though it is huge and bright orange) in one of the sites off from the road, and never found it again. I also lost a big stripey lizard that snuck out of the plastic bag before I could finish measuring it. Alas.

We had a fancy roast dinner with wine that night and I pre-baked the cake for the 4^th of July the next day. Janie, the partner of one of the rangers, came over for dinner and brought special chocolate cupcakes with cherry sauce that were really nice, especially with ice cream. It was decadent.

Thursday I went with Ian again, but this time in the Can-Am so we could go to some of the more out-of-the-way sites. It was pretty chilly waking up at 5am and even more so when you’re in an open air vehicle moving at top speed. I rode in the car until we reached the spot where we’d been meeting the aboriginals and then switched to the Can-Am (just a further point of annoyance, they were constantly late, often by almost an hour. Despite being disrespectful to us, this is really bad from an animal ethics point of view since we’re supposed to be getting critters out of traps as soon as possible. Again, I don’t think the aboriginals want to follow us around and I’m not sure why they’re being forced to. I think that getting permission and approval from them that we won’t be trespassing on any sacred sites would be a much better way of maintaining a good relationship without annoying everyone. But nobody asks me.)

Okay anyway we had a few more animals in these sites, including a small ning-bing and a gigantic chestnut mouse that I was sure was a rat until Ian looked at it and said that it “looked like a mouse” and was just a large male. Ah well, I still have trouble telling the rodents apart and haven’t quite worked out how to tell the small rats from the large mice, haha. We caught another tata lizard (the stripey type) but I still didn’t get any pictures. On the drive back we nearly ran over a giant king brown snake at one of the creek crossings. Ian braked quickly and it slithered away. Only later did he realize that he maybe should have reversed the Can-Am just in case it decided to slide in our direction...

I was cooking, since it was the 4^th of July. I made kind of a weird amalgamation of food: butternut squash baked with apricots, butter, and sugar (the apricots kind of burned but it was okay anyway), deviled eggs (I was a bit heavy-handed on the mustard), yams, and sausages which Eltica grilled (she was a Dutch traveler that Richard knew who had stopped by the Mitchell Falls with her boyfriend on their way to go boating somewhere). I also had a bottle of ginger beer and made a flag cake for dessert. The cake was a bit odd since the whipped cream was “long-life,” which was helpful so it wouldn’t go bad, but tasted a bit funky since it wasn’t fresh. After whipping it with a hand-beater (old-fashioned yeah), I added honey to it, which helped a bit. I used raspberries and blueberries to make the US flag, although they were frozen so had that softened thawed-berry texture. It worked alright, but it was definitely a cake that was more for looks than for taste (one of my few recipes where that’s important).

I realized it was the first 4^th of July that I had celebrated without any Americans being around (unlike in Mexico, Peru, and Canada, when I was traveling with my fellow countrymen) so everyone else probably thought I was a bit silly with my 4^th of July socks (yes, I traveled halfway around Australia with them, just waiting for the right day to wear them) and decorated cake. I just love celebrating all holidays. I got my penny whistle out and played a few revolutionary war ditties (which a few people recognized as old English songs, alas) which was fun.

Friday we saw a few adorable dingo pups cross the road when we were driving, although one of them looked slightly menacing as it turned to stare us down (they are 4000 years removed from the domestic dog, after all). It was the day of the chestnut mice, apparently, as we found one in each site (including a really tiny one that confused me because it was so much smaller than the giant I had found before), and I proudly identified one by myself (finally). We also caught our first melomys, which is a rat with pretty grey fur and a uniquely patterned tail that was really obvious on this one, which was helpful. We met up with the others at the hill site, and said goodbye to a few of the students who had been helping us while they scope out the landscape for theirs PhD topics. One of them, Hugh, had done microchipping of penguins at some point, but I didn’t get a good chance to talk to him about how that happened. I should mention that for most of this week I had a weird cold, so I was feeling icky a lot of the time, and wasn’t that chatty.

We had lunch at Glaut’s Lagoon and found a very nice overhanging tree for shelter and a nap. There were a few sulfur-crested cockatoos hanging around in the trees nearby and squawking occasionally. We closed our traps and headed back on the long drive. In order to ride safely in the Can-Am on the dirt roads, we wear goggles and dust masks, and there are also riding gloves for the driver to wear when it’s chilly in the morning. I also put in ear plugs for the long distances because there’s an annoying whine when the Can-Am gets up to speed (like over 60km/hr). We look pretty ridiculous all kitted up like that (especially the goggles and gloves, like out of an old movie) but it does the job (I have funny pictures). 

I have no notes written down for Saturday, but in short we checked our sites and closed up the first day’s sites, packing up all the traps, which I then disinfected and laid out to dry back at camp. I created a bit pyramid of open big traps, to catch as much sun as possible and dry them out. I hadn’t thought to close them overnight, and on Sunday when I went to pack them up, one was mysteriously heavy. Lo and behold, a quoll was inside! The little rascal had traipsed into the trap without there even being any bait. What a doofus! It didn’t seem too worried when I let it out, but of course it made a mess inside the trap so I had to clean it again.

Sunday we had checked and cleared the last few sites (a few of these were super easy, since they never caught any animals, although I think we got a crow in one of them). I was still feeling a bit dodgy, and Richard showed me a tree that had green fruit that were supposed to have an uber high concentration of vitamin C. They were a bit sour without a really strong flavor, but I ate a few of them on Saturday and Sunday and I kind of think they helped (although maybe it was just the end of the cold). Whatever the reason, it was good “bush tucker.”

After cleaning up the rest of the traps (taking care to close them all this time) I went for a short swim at Little Merten’s Falls, spotting a largish goanna along the way. I think it was actually Merten’s goanna, which was rather convenient (Merten must have been an important explorer guy). It was nice walk to the pond below the falls, but I didn’t see any more monjons. We were up really late packing everything, even though it was dark.

Monday was a bit of a nightmare…We set off at a decent (if early) hour, arriving at the Drysdale River Station for a morning snack (we had cake, since they didn’t have lunch open yet). I noticed the bar had a big sign that said “Annie’s Bar,” right next to a few cattle skulls, so of course I took a picture with it. As we were preparing to leave we realized we had a flat “tyre.” No biggy, we changed it and were on our way, heading to the Mt Elizabeth Station, which was a few hours detour and where we had planned to drop off the trailer of stuff, since we were going out there a few weeks later on our next trip (which was then cancelled, so we had to go get the trailer again, but that’s a side-point). 

We were almost there when the trailer started jerking weirdly, and we discovered that one of the springs had broken (in some way…). Of course Richard had packed every possible car part and spare tyre imaginable, but not a spare spring. We tied it up with a bit of rope and inched the car along, hoping we could make it to the station where they might have a part to fix it. Naturally, we were on the most corrugated stretch of dirt road possible, and the rope broke after only minutes. So we tried more rope, got a bit further, and it broke again. We were running out of intact rope, so we tried some wire next, but that didn’t last much longer. 

Then Richard had one of his brilliant mechanical ideas and we took some strands of thin wire, tied them to a post, and twisted them together into a thicker wire strand using a cordless drill – pretty handy. The newly-thickened wire still broke after a little while, which was very disappointing. Meanwhile, everyone who drove past us kept telling us how little distance we had to cover (some said 2km, some said 7, but it was still a pretty short way). We were close to abandoning the trailer on the side of the road when we made one more attempt, this time adding a few more strands of wire to be twisted, and tying the spring in two different places. Miracle of miracles, it actually held. We then inched our way along for the last few kilometres, taking about a century to get there and really having time to appreciate the scenery (not, it was pretty uninteresting due to cattle impacts). 

We triumphantly limped into the station, and the men went to see if they could find some parts to fix the trailer while I waited for station people to ready our lunch (yes, it sounds lazy, but realistically what could I do to help?). They had a baby wallaby in their care and it was really adorable. They let it out on the lawn briefly and it sort of wobbled around for a little ways. It was so pale and skinny that it didn’t look so good, but I don’t think there wasn’t anything wrong with it, that’s just how joeys are.

We had lunch (even though it was pretty late in the afternoon by this point) and learned that there were no tools or parts available to fix the trailer, so we would have to abandon it and drive back to Kununurra and return to fix it later. Of course then we were stuck driving the Can-Am back as well, since it was supposed to ride back in the trailer, so we got to test out its lights since it was getting dark by the time we left Mount Elizabeth. We dropped the Can-Am off at a different cattle station closer to Kununurra (they were very nice about us turning up in the evening and asking if we could leave it there) and continued. It was not super comfortable in the ute with three people (it has one of those half-seats in the middle that are okay for short distances but get a bit cramped for longer) but I sort of slipped in and out of sleep because it was so late anyway and I was used to going to bed around 8. We didn’t arrive back at the office until 11:30pm (absurdly late!) and had been on the road since about 7 in the morning. 

It was a very long day.

Spinifex Is the Devil

Some facts about spinifex:

1.       It is a grass that grows in clumps, sticking to sand and rocky soils and growing larger and rounder the longer the area has been protected from fire

2.       It is the dominant plant across central and western Australia (and some of the north), covering a large area and preventing erosion into a sandy desert

3.       It is like a terrestrial, celluloid sea urchin, or a reverse pin cushion, with pointy spikes protruding out at all angles from some hidden interior

4.       It contains silica in its spikes, which means that each pointy tip is like a glass skeleton

5.       When you walk past it, thousands of shards prick you through your pants, no matter how thick they are

(My field pants are very thin indeed)

6.       Many of these shards become embedded in your skin, though it is very difficult to tell which pinpricks are splinters and which are mere scratches

(This is especially difficult if one has lots of freckles)

7.       Each subsequent day that you walk through fields of this lovely monocot, the shards re-embed themselves in the same areas that have already been pricked, as well as finding new locations to torture

8.       Until finally, your shins resemble something like a poison oak rash, with the addition of many invisible spikes that continue to itch and annoy you until you can figure out how to get them out

9.       At the same time, if you happen to be poking your hands around this spiky phenomenon, for example to set a trap under the spikes or to tie a label of flagging tape around a stem, your hands also become be-splintered with glass

(At least hand splinters can be more easily removed)

10.   Surprisingly, some creatures use this disastrous excuse for a grass as habitat, somehow darting between the spikes to conceal themselves or possibly look for a spinifex food source, in its minimal seeds or plant fiber

(These animals must enjoy eating glass)

11.   However, at sunset the vast clumps of green and yellow spinifex grass complement the red soil and fading light to form a golden landscape

12.   It is almost enough to make you forget the evil side of the plant and wander into it again, expecting only soft hay

(Almost)

More on the Mitchell

To continue where the Mitchell Plateau story left off…Thursday we left early again and checked the closer sites while the other group did the farther sites (ours were more interesting anyway). We only caught quolls in ours, which was good as it gave me a chance to improve my quoll-handling skills, especially the microchipping. We caught a few that had been microchipped already, so that made it easier, but we also caught a couple that had been microchipped last year, so that made for some nice continuity. Apparently the males don’t live very long (I think they burn out after reproduction, like a few other small marsupials) but occasionally you get one living an extra year. The females live a year or so longer than the males, and I think the quolls we recaptured were all females anyway. I got a few cute pics of the quolls leaving, although I’d like to get one with me in it too, at some point.

We finished up around morning tea time (10-11) and then chilled out for a bit before we had to open the traps again. It was pretty hot out and the tent was a sauna, but I managed to take a nap just outside the tent entrance, which must have looked kind of funny if anyone had noticed. I saw a big katydid wandering by the tent, a typical giant tropical insect that I hadn’t really seen since Peru. I wanted to look for interesting birds but it was just too hot.

In the afternoon I got my first real solo 4WD driving experience – traveling to the further-away sites to reopen traps. The track is really bumpy in sections and crosses a creek that’s really shallow but has a steep hill up at the end with a seriously rutted section. I was a bit worried about how I would do on the rough bits, but went slowly at first and then more confidently on the rough sections, trying not to let the wheel wobble too much (and keeping my thumbs outside the wheel, which is apparently important when you’re driving in the really rugged bush so you don’t accidentally jerk and break a finger – yikes). I met up with Richard to fix the camera at the rainforest site, and we rode in the CanAm up the hill, which was some serious bush-driving where we kept hitting giant volcanic rocks hidden under the grass and some very steep sections. I think I prefer walking.

I saw a dingo trotting casually along when I drove back to camp and took a video, but the light was bad. We met some researchers back at the station who were studying fish and processing all these specimens on the table, which kind of stank up the place. They were nice, though, and wanted to come out with us at some point to see some animals. We shared some of our ice cream with them since they were hard at work with their fish samples and still hadn’t had dinner (that’s the sort of field work that I’m not crazy about – I like to have regular meals!). I also saw a cute praying mantis in the office (I never remember if it’s “preying” or “praying,” since they look like they’re doing both)

Friday was exciting because we got to see a golden-backed tree rat. It wasn’t in one of our traps, but a helicopter pilot brought it out to us when we rode past the Heliworks Centre since he had trapped it at his tent (apparently they were making a lot of noise and climbing around everywhere). It was kind of pretty, for a large rat, with a golden colour and a bulbous face. We caught a few more quolls at my favourite rocky site and some more rock rats – one looked a bit worse for wear and was missing half its tail and ear. I think it was a juvenile too, so it had been getting into a lot of trouble for one so young, haha. I got a good release video of one of the rats (I think it was the less-injured one). We caught a quoll in a big cage and had to do lots of bag transferring between the cage and our smaller bags, which was tricky with two people and I think would be quite hard with only one, so hopefully that doesn’t happen again (usually the cages are too big for the quolls and rats to think about wandering inside).

We took Greg, one of the aboriginals working at the ranger station, with us to the next site and caught another quoll and I learned about another rat species, the field rat (aka Rattus tunneyi). We also caught my favourite little dunnarts at the burned site and had another chill afternoon where I dozed in front of my tent. I wandered out later to look for birds and ended up chatting with a couple at the tourist campsite who were asking about my binoculars and what I’d seen. They were very nice and enthusiastic about the mammal trapping work, and pointed out a white cuckoo shrike, but otherwise not many birds were about at 2pm. Right before dusk I wandered out again and saw a few wallabies bounding away (I love the sound they make as they hop, and they can move so fast), which was cute.

Beau (the two-year-old) brought us some cake that his mom had made after we got back from resetting traps, and then Richard made fish and chips for dinner, so that was a nice combination of tasty food, although we didn’t have much extra to give to the hungry fish people (they had their own food, I just always felt bad that they were still working at like 8pm, when I was starting to get ready for bed).

Saturday we took the fish people out with us to hopefully show them some animals. The other workers had left so I had to go to the Yalgi creek track (the bumpy road without very many animals). Fortunately we caught one quoll, so my fish person was happy (I feel bad I don’t remember any of their names, but they were PhD students studying fish populations in the Kimberley and had so far identified several new species, which was cool). The quoll was a recapture, so I didn’t have to do anything to it, although of course it was very calm and would have been really easy to handle. Some of our traps had been turned over in one site, and we suspected dingoes as the culprits. We caught lots of the tunneyi rats at the other sites, although I had to bring a few back to Richard to be sure about the identification (the rats and mice are way easier to handle than the quolls, as long as they don’t die of heart attacks, but way harder to identify, so they still take a long time to process). When I checked the rainforest site I saw a cool ground bird strutting around, which I learned was the orange-footed scrub fowl that makes the giant mounds to bury its eggs (I think I mentioned that already). We never got one in the camera traps, though.

I had to drive back to release the rats back to their site after I’d showed them to Richard, but then got to chill out at lunch again. We watched a few of the camera trap videos and were excited to see some quolls, possums, and monjons in the shots. I got my first glimpse of the tuft on the end of a monjon’s tail, and their cute little faces (they’re like a very small wallaby with a long fluffy tail). Beau was playing with kitchen utensils, using them to dig holes outside, which was cute but a bit annoying since then we had to wash them. Oh well.

I made thai chicken curry for dinner using a cool green curry paste thing that worked quite well although was a little spicy. At night as I was walking between the kitchen and my tent, Richard warned me that there was a brown snake about so to keep my headlight on. I didn’t know what it would look like, but I moved really slowly and saw the long snake casually moseying through the grass. It was about a metre long and I took some photos and then continued to the kitchen. I confirmed that it was in fact a very poisonous snake (most of them are) and vowed to always have my headlight on at night, no matter what!

At some point in that first week I saw a kangaroo with a joey so she looked pretty heavily laden as she jumped, and another bigger kangaroo at the entrance to one of our sites. I also saw a small white hopping critter around my tent at night, but couldn’t get a good look to figure out what it was. Probably some sort of mouse or maybe even a dunnart!

Sunday we closed up all the sites, catching a few more rats on the Yalgi track, although we got a bit confused about whether they were more tunneyi rats or maybe another species, a grassland melomys (pronounced MEL-o-meez), that look really similar. Alas, the struggles of catching rodents! I washed and cleaned out the traps (quolls are especially messy when trapped) while Richard went to collect Ian from the airstrip (they fly helicopters in and out of there on a regular basis, but it’s not an official airport as such). We headed off to the Mitchell Falls just after lunch, but I’ll save that for later. I’ll also put up the first short post about the Bungle Bungles, which was the location for our second trip (I just got back from it on Sunday).

Saddling My Pack to the Springs

In between writing about the Mitchell trip, I’ll post about one of the day-trips I did after returning back to Kununurra. Richard invited me to another of the Hash Harriers walks, this time a more involved hike through a spot called Packsaddle Springs. After a short but especially rugged ride along a dirt road (complete with stream crossing), we set off up a hill that didn’t look too special, but at the top was a splendid view of a wide gorge with a stream and series of small falls running through it. We rested under a tree for a little while, then turned left and started climbing around the side so that we could descend to the creek level for a swim. It was a lovely day to be hiking because it wasn’t too hot (for Kununurra anyway) and there was a nice breeze.

Of course I hadn’t realized we were going to be swimming, so I had to wear my clothes in, but the water felt really nice, once you got into it (not too cold, but fresh after the heat of walking) and we had cliffsides to view as we paddled around. I found a few mini-islands and half-submerged rocks to stand or sit on, and could see a some bowerbirds hopping around up the cliff (too far away to see their bowers, unfortunately). After we put our gear back on (or in my case, just my shoes) we picked our way across the rocks and over the stream to a spot level with the steepest of the waterfalls. I had to take my shoes off again (oh, the dramas) so that we could get a photo of us all crouching under the waterfall. It felt like a very nice but hard massage, and the only downside was I wasn’t wearing any goggles or anything, and the water kept crashing in my eyes. Still, it was the first waterfall I’ve stood under since the old Stanford in Australia days, up in the rainforests of Queensland.

Further up the stream it got a bit rockier and we had to do some mild rock-climbing up the red sandstone. Richard was taking us to another lake in the stream for lunch, and we were still enjoying the view as we progressed through the gorge/ravine (what is the difference between those, anyway?). There were only 11 of us on the trip, a few of the people I recognized from the last time, and then a couple of New Zealanders (one of them we nicknamed the hippopotamus because he kept striding into the water, fully clothed, with his bag and everything, while the rest of us carefully leapt over rocks to cross the streams). There were also two Japanese holidayers who had just started working in town. We had trouble convincing the girl to jump in the water, but the boy was pretty keen and when I mentioned that I was from Seattle he asked about the Mariners, and Ichiro, which was cool – I guess Ichiro is still pretty famous over there.

We reached the spot for lunch, slightly shaded and with a nice pool right next door, but first Richard led us through a muddy, hillocky path to the lily pond, which was a small pool literally filled with lily pads and flowers – pretty “spekky,” I’d say (I can’t remember which Australian I met said “spekky” all the time, I’m losing track, but someone used it a lot to mean spectacular, and I liked it). The Maori fellow made another hippo-like disappearance into a nearby pool, and then we all headed back to the other spot for lunch and a swim. Someone climbed up a rock ledge and a few of the guys did jumps and dives from the top. I finally decided I needed to jump, at least from the lower ledge, so I swam over and gave my best screaming leap off, which was pretty sweet.

Finally we had to start moseying back to the cars, so I put my dripping feet into my socks once more (the absolute worst thing about swimming while hiking is putting socks and shoes back on) and we made the trek back, over the streams, past the waterfall (this time going around by the top so we could get shots looking over the edge) and bypassing the first swimming hole to return to the top ledge. On the way we saw lots of small kapok trees covered in yellow flowers, looking nothing like the giant kapok I saw at the Posadas Amazonas lodge in Peru. I’m assuming it’s a different species or group in the kapok family, which would make sense since the Kimberley is pretty different from the Amazon rainforest, along with the fact that they’re in two separate continents. Anyway I had seen a lot of the flowers when I first arrived in Kununurra, but now some of the trees had big green bulges hanging from the end of their branches – shaped sort of like gigantic olives, and a brighter green. Apparently the inside is super fluffy, at least when ripe, and one of the women, from Derby (which is still in the Kimberley but much further west) said that they used to have kapok fluff in their pillows, which was nice until it lost its fluffiness and got kind of hard (not sure how or why this happened). At any rate it didn’t sound like the best pillow stuffer, but it’s pretty cool that they used it anyway, coming from a weird green fruit off a tree.

We had another hash beer-and-nibblies session back at the cars, and the newbies had to chug their glasses of beer while everyone sang the silly song about drinking it “down and down and down.” On the way back into town Richard stopped at the Zebra Rock Gallery, so I could see some of the cool sculptures and jewelry they’ve created out of this striped rock type that’s only found in the region. It’s like a sedimentary rock but in dark and light alternately layers (hence the zebra name). There were lots of pretty pendants and cool sculptures that took advantage of the different layers of dark and light, the coolest was a face that had been carved so that the dark lines etched the features while the rest of it was mostly light – clever.

We also got mango smoothies and grabbed a slice of bread to feed the catfish down by the pier (the gallery is right on Lake Kununurra, which I was to learn a lot more about two days later). The catfish were huge and very eager for pieces of white bread, lifting their whiskers out of the water and clambering all over each other – one of them was massive, like the size of a groper, or a small pygmy hippo (okay, so it wasn’t that big, but still). Then we chucked a few pieces into a green, plant-filled area, and up came turtles to vie for the bread (the catfish usually snatched it from in front of their noses). There were as many as 8 or so turtles up at one time.

Right before we left we visited the cockatoos and corellas they had at the back of the gallery, which are supposed to speak multiple languages. All we heard was “hello,” over and over, and in an up-beat way that emphasized both syllables equally, like a Brit might say to a child, or like what Pooh-bear is always saying when he’s surprised by something (“hu-llo!”). Cute. One of them, a sulfur-crested cockatoo, kept displaying his yellow crest in between trying to burrow out of the bottom of his cage (according to Richard, he does this a lot).

It was a very nice day, and I was thoroughly wiped out by the time I got back to Ian’s place (I housesitted for him when he and his family took a holiday to the Mitchell Falls for a week. We were supposed to have gone there as well at that time, but the plans shifted and we’ve had to wait). Pretty sweet - swimming, hiking, gorges, turtles, parrots, and mango smoothies to boot!

Mitchell River NP and the Supermoon

So I’m finally getting around to writing about the first trapping trip. We were supposed to be going up again last Tuesday, but all the plans have been shifted and we’re not leaving until tomorrow, and going to a less-exciting location. Bummer. But I’ll explain all that later.

This past trip was to the Mitchell River National Park, and it was a 10-hour drive from Kununurra. Richard and I had made all the food purchases on Friday, packed everything up and made it ready, although we had Saturday off (there was a circus in town and I was feeling like I needed to pack instead of going, but I kind of wish I had gone since it was across the street from the office/my room. Oh well).  Ian was at a conference and would be arriving a week later.

Sunday we headed out bright and early, starting along sealed roads but quickly moving onto the infamous Gibb River Road, which is unsealed and full of wild river crossings. I’d heard about this road already since it pops up on every rental car’s rules and regulations statement, usually banning you from driving on it. EVER. Apparently it becomes rather treacherous during the wet season, when the rivers rise and it’s muddy and hard to cross the water, but I thought it was pretty tame at the moment, albeit a bit bumpy.

We were treated to some nice cliff/mountainous views, first at a distance and then right beside us as we passed under them. Sorry I can’t upload photos in my current internet condition, which makes these comments rather meaningless. However, Richard told me that a lot of the scenery was used in the movie, Australia, so if you saw it and remember the cattle mustering sections, I think it was somewhere in there. We discussed that it was a bit of a ridiculous movie, and Richard said he thought it should be called Far Away Downs instead of Australia, which I think would have made a lot more sense, since it didn’t really encompass everything in Australia, as its broad title would suggest.

[cliffs]

At some point we pulled over for morning tea (out of a thermos, Australians are always prepared for morning tea, and I applaud them, it should be mandatory in North America) and walked a short way to a waterfall, even though it was just a tiny pool since it’s the dry season. It was still picturesque, and full of the red sandstone that is iconic in the Kimberley.

We also crossed our first and widest river, the (aahhh I forget the name). It was pretty cool to just ride over it in the ute (short for utility, in this case a 4WD truck) and I got some pics as we crossed, reminding me of the old Oregon Trail game when you had to ford the river. I would definitely rather be in an enclosed truck than a covered wagon! As a side note, this river was the only area we encountered that could have saltwater crocodiles (aka salties) since it flowed closest to the ocean, and was sort of tidal. All the other rivers we saw would only have “freshies” (freshwater crocs), which are small and harmless, rather like the caimans I saw in the Amazon. I have yet to see any sort of crocodile yet, and I’d like to keep it that way, or at least at close range (seeing them at a distance would be cool).

We stopped at the Drysdale River Station for lunch (in Australia “station” usually means a cattle station, like a ranch, and there are a lot of those in this part of the country) and then pressed on for the final hours. When we turned off onto the Mitchell River track, the unsealed road got even bumpier, and we really rocked as we went up and down the red corrugations. We crossed another river, the King Edward, and a few little creek things along the way there.

A few times Richard got out his radio to speak to the drivers of some trucks we wanted to pass. I thought it was really cool that everyone has radios (aka fancy walkie-talkies) that are tuned to the same channel so you can chat back and forth to strangers when you need to solve issues. It did interrupt our music, though, which was set on Richard’s ipod in alphabetical order. It was fun guessing what the title of the song was when you were listening to it, to see how it fit under “W” or “T.” It got pretty random when we reached the numbers, though, since there were lots of songs that started with track numbers that didn’t mean anything. In other auditory news, we heard this weird beeping sound throughout the day that seemed to get worse when we got on bumpier roads. Finally we pulled over and made a thorough investigation, yielding no results. As we jostled down the road again and the inconsistent beeping began anew, we finally realized that it was an even fancier radio that was set up in the top of the cab. There was a handheld mic thing connected to it and it was laid out that every bounce turned it on briefly. Auggghhhh it was annoying, and we figured it out right before we got to the ranger’s station, and our camp area for the next 2 weeks.

We set up our tents and our swags (a magical item that’s a sleeping bag, sleeping mat, and partial tent all rolled up into one – literally) and planned to ready dinner when we met up with Chuck, the head ranger, and his wife Jaz, who invited us for dinner with them at their little house. We also met Beau (I’m assuming that’s his name, unless it’s just Bo), their adorable son who apparently is very fond of lady field assistants. Ain’t gonna lie, he was pretty smitten with me from the start, and I have to say he’s probably the most charismatic 2-year-old I’ve ever met. We had some good times.

I was pretty exhausted that night and relished crawling into my swag and enjoying its cushy floor (technically the swag is a sleeping mat with a canvas tent that you can pull on top of you. I put a sleeping bag inside and only needed the tent bit when it got really cold, as the normal tent was good enough for that). Jaz said that it was a “supermoon” that night, because the moon was especially close to the earth, closer than it had been in a few years, and was full, so I enjoyed the supermoonlight as I went to sleep. I think that Marvel is missing out on an opportunity for a new superhero: “Rise of the Supermoon” (trademark Loggins 2013).

Monday I saw my first northern quoll in a trap in the kitchen/office area. Apparently they’d been nosing about John’s house (the other ranger) and causing trouble. 

We brought it with us and released it somewhere on the way to our sites, which we set up with traps and flagging tape. Richard marked out a 50x50 m grid, flagging every 5m, while I set up a trap at each flag-mark, chucking in a ball of bait (peanut butter mixed with rolled oats). We have three sizes of traps, for a range of animals from rodents and smaller marsupials to larger possums and monjons (which is like a small wallaby with a tuft on its tail – so cute). The first site was funny since Richard drove along the side-road but then couldn’t find the right entrance to the site, which was about 200m off the road. Of course we lugged the largest traps around for a bit over rocks and such before he found it and we could actually set stuff up. Richard had me try driving the side road back, which was a bit of a disaster since I went so slowly but still managed to nearly crash into a tree on my left-hand side, since I’m not used to there being so much car to my left. We stopped and Richard hacked off the closest branches, but I went even slower after that, so it was even bumpier.

After a break for morning tea (of course) we headed down the road in the opposite direction, this time in the Can-Am Commander (a sturdy off-road buggy thing, I don’t know what the generic name is but it’s like a golf cart crossed with a jeep that can drive on anything – seriously). After crossing the helicopter pad (there’s a “scenic flight” business nearby as well) we broke in the new machine by forging a path through the grassland and then over a narrow but rock-enforced stream. I was a bit nervous every time we did this, since I always thought we were going to end up floating, or stuck through a rock, but the buggy prevailed each time and bounced itself safely across. After this initial adventure we navigated around some trees and rocks and arrived at a ridge, beyond which lay the site (side note: it’s been a long time since I’ve written anything, and I think my blog-writing-style is fluctuating a bit – since when do I say things like “beyond which lay the site??” Call it the tropics going to my head). Though setting up the traps involved lots of inconvenient climbing over rocks and slipping on grass-covered hummocks, Site 2 quickly became my favourite site of the week since it held the most animals (most of those lovely quolls I met, as described in my last post, were from this rocky area. No wonder they were so gnarly!).

We returned over the creek to have lunch back at the station (here I just mean the ranger’s station, no cattle anymore, although there are lots of wandering feral cattle in the park, leftover from when there was a cattle station here. They think they’re causing problems with the native mammals so there’s been a lot of culling, but there’s still a lot about). The third site we set up was had been recently burned (if this were a scientific study, we would be keeping track of and controlling which sites get burned at which times, to better monitor the effects on the mammals, but since it’s a government monitoring program we don’t have that sort of control. So we just have to note which sites have been burned and hope something useful comes out of all the data). It was a lot harder to find shade to cover the traps (most of them are small with aluminium siding that cooks in the sun so we have to shade them as much as possible) and the ground and lots of the plants were still pretty blackened, although the fresh grass shooting up was a nice bright green, which made everything kind of pretty, in a black-and-green contrasty sort of way.

Tuesday we were supposed to meet up with some local aborigines and some aboriginal rangers-in-training, but they didn’t show up so we just started with the site across the river. In one of the first traps we got our first quoll, so Richard showed me how to constrain them in a corner (like we did with the squirrels), measure their head from skull to nose, measure their back foot, determine the sex, and then put a microchip in them. This last was tricky, since you have to put it in the quoll’s flap of skin between their shoulder blades, which means that a lot of them is exposed. Unlike the squirrels, manhandling the quoll may not be the best approach to ues, so you have to just hold your hand on the back of their neck, keeping their head (and teeth) in the corner and then pinch the skin with your fingers, quickly inserting the microchip with your other hand (it’s like an injection, but it doesn’t make them flinch or anything, and the chip is really small). Then you quickly scan them with the device to make sure it’s working properly, and the quoll is ready to be let loose (I tried so hard to get a decent photo of the release, but they’re really fast).

So those were the quoll-tactics, but the next animal we caught was a Kimberley rock rat instead of a quoll. Richard had me try getting it into a canvas bag, but it was squirming and screeching a lot as I tried to get it into position inside the bag to measure its head. Suddenly it was still, and I realized that it wasn’t moving. Sadly, this occasionally happens with the rodents who get really stressed out and have heart attacks. I felt a bit bad, to say the least, although Richard reassured me that I hadn’t done anything wrong, although then remembered that he usually uses clear plastic bags with the rodents, so that you can see what’s happening and it’s over quicker. We caught a few more rats and Richard demonstrated how the clear bag was easier, but I was still worried about inadvertently killing the next animal I touched (fortunately, I handled other animals, including rock rats, with no more heart attacks).

When we got back to the station the aboriginal rangers-in-training had finally arrived, so then they followed us to check the next three sites. Unfortunately, since they were supposed to get handling experience, I didn’t get to touch any more animals, even though we caught a few quolls at the first site we’d set up, and a very tiny mouse. One ranger successfully microchipped a quoll that was leaping inside the bag and snarling at her, but this was done with a lot of help and she was very nervous, so I was hoping that I would be okay at handling them, given my squirrel experience, but was a bit nervous myself after watching this especially violent one.

We set up three more sites along this river track, although the rangers did the rainforest site so I didn’t get to see that lovely stretch of vines and volcanic rock until later (though it was pretty, I say this sarcastically since all the vines had little prickles and the volcanic rock was perfectly placed to trip you up).

Wednesday we had our first 6am start, which meant a 5am wake-up (it was still dark out and really hard to mobilize) since we had six sites to do in total. The rangers were late again so we started without them for the river site. I was super excited to see a scaly-tailed possum in one of our traps. At first it looked really calm (it was probably asleep) but then it started freaking out and Richard tried to get it out of the trap and into a bag. As he was tipping it down, it streaked towards the bag, snapping through the cage at his finger along the way. Of course he released his hold slightly and the possum disappeared into the rocks, taking a bit of flesh with it. Needless to say, he was not thrilled at being chomped by a possum, and we didn’t get to take any trapping data, but at least it was cool to see one.

I got to handle my first quoll, which was a small one that was very fidgety (see previous blog post on how this makes life difficult). Though I got the other measurements alright, the sneaker kept trying to back out from under my hand every time I got it in position to be microchipped. Finally Richard said we were running out of time since we still had to check the other sites so he grabbed it and finished the job. He had some trouble with it too, though, so I didn’t feel too bad for failing at microchipping it. I then handled a Kimberley rock rat without killing it (win) and felt better.

At the next site we got a few quolls that had already been chipped, which was fun to check with the scanner and hear the beep, like at the check-out line in a grocery. I also handled and microchipped two quolls in a row, a success, although I had a bit of trouble getting the needle in quickly and Richard said I should never be a nurse (I agree wholeheartedly).

At the third site, which had been burned so we didn’t know if we’d catch much, we got our first red-cheeked dunnart! These little guys are so adorable! They are sort of like a mouse (but a marsupial, which is really obvious when you’re determining the sex) but have more pointy faces with a stripe down the middle and red on each cheek (as predicted by the name). They’re darling.

We met up with a few of the trainers that were supposed to be working with the rangers and learned that the aborigines weren’t working that day since one of their elders had died. Fortunately the trainers agreed to still monitor the traps with us since we needed the help to make sure we didn’t leave any animals out for too long. We’re supposed to close the traps during the day and then reopen them before dark. This is a new rule which is to keep animals out of the traps during the heat of the day, but is kind of frustrating since it wastes so much time in the afternoon when we have to drive back around to all our sites again (which are not close together) and reopen them, even though all the mammals are nocturnal and wouldn’t be active during the day to go into the traps to begin with. Either way, it’s a rule now so we have to do it. We had a bit of time to kill, though, so Richard took me along the track to the Little Merten’s Falls.

The track was very nice and wove alongside the creek and then up into higher savannah areas (with the odd eucalypt scattered about, very classic outback) before reaching a wide rocky area where the stream grew wider and then spilled over a cliff edge. We went down a side track to the bottom of the falls, where there was a wide pool and you could see the falls crashing down. Richard said you could get the best photo from the middle of the pool, so I waded out a bit, but it got so deep that I was afraid I might drop my camera, so I gave it up.

Up we went to yet a different path that led right behind the falls, past some cool aboriginal rock art. There was a kangaroo, some snakes (rainbow serpents, I guess), and some people that looked like they were wearing cowboy hats. These last were called Bradshaw art, and were estimated to be from people who came over from Indonesia after there were already some aboriginals living in Australia. The art is known to have fancy headdresses and thin figures with sashes, skirts, and spears. There were also some hand marks and a woman who was supposed to be an evil spirit. Much better rock art than the little snippet I saw in the Grampians in Victoria, where we traveled a long way down a dirt road in a rental car to find a small rock that only had a few indistinct figures on it. It was still kind of cool at the time, but not worth the risk of damaging the car when we weren’t supposed to be driving it off road (fortunately, we didn’t).

Behind the waterfall was also pretty epic, watching the sheets of water in front. It reminded me of the love song in Robin Hood (the Disney movie) although without the handsome fox outlaw (no offence, Richard). The Merten Creek was the same one that we had to cross to get to our rocky site, and apparently once it flooded so much that Ian had to walk all the way to the waterfall, cross behind it, and then walk all the way back along it to the site, to get to the animals. I was glad it’s not the rainy season now!

Richard preferred to swim at the top of the falls, so we climbed back up and found several Jacuzzi pools, where the water was swirling down in short rapids and you could get a mini massage. It was chilly, but a nice relief from the toasty day (the first week at the Mitchell was quite warm, and almost a little humid – yuck). We also saw a rainbow bee-eater (a gorgeous bird, and probably one of my favourites, even though it’s pretty common) flitting around a small tree.

We had to go back to set up the traps again for the evening, and pulled out the GPS to find the rainforest site, since the other group hadn’t marked it very well. I got a lot of experience trekking up and down hills with clumps of volcanic rock cunningly hidden in long grass (you have to keep walking at least 3km/hour to get the GPS to read properly, so I couldn’t always slow down to navigate more carefully). Eventually we found it, but had to adjust the camera trap so it was more inside the forest. Richard pointed out a giant mound on the forest floor that was formed by an orange-footed scrub fowl, which burrows its eggs in the middle of a built-up decomposing heap to keep them incubated. Pretty cool.

When we got back to the ranger station I was sprung upon by Beau, who was fascinated with the CanAm and pretended to drive it and explore all its buttons. I was instructed at several times to sit down in the passenger seat, put my seatbelt on, help him put his seatbelt on (very safety conscious, of course) and then we would “drive” somewhere, occasionally stopping so that Beau could climb to a new part of the machine and play the peeking-out game (“Hello!”) from different spots. Richard came over at some point and suggested finding the horn, so of course Beau had to figure that out, realizing that if you turned the key slightly you could beep the horn loudly. Hanging out in the CanAm wasn’t quite so much fun after that…

One of the heliworks pilots, Steve, came over in the evening to watch a rugby game on our television (I hadn’t realized we had one, but there it was). It was the second game of a series called State of Origin that puts together a team each from Queensland and New South Wales to compete. As Steve explained, it didn’t matter what real team you played for now, if you were originally from QLD or NSW you had to be on that special team. They get a few practices in and then play the best 2 out of 3. I didn’t really pay attention to the game, but QLD won (as Steve, from Brisbane, was hoping they would). In fact, when they played the final game 3 weeks later (we were back in Kununurra by this point), QLD won the whole thing, for the 8^th year in a row!

Okay that was a lot more detailed than I was planning, and I’m running out of time to run over and post it on Ian’s computer, so that’s it for now. We’re heading out tomorrow to go to the Bungle Bungles, and I’m not sure if I’ll have internet there or not. I’ll try to get caught up with the rest of the Mitchell trip by the time I get back (we’ll see).