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).