My new place has families of Eastern Water Dragons (Intellagama lesueurii lesueurii).
They mainly sunbake, even in the middle of the road, or perch on raised plantings in the garden.
Liking water, they do swim; I have seen one here jump into a bucket half-full of water– incidentally scaring the daylights out of me!
Often mistaken for a Frill-necked Lizard, they are beautifully patterned, with the most elegant long toes and fingers. Their heads are always up, questing, curious?
Last week a visiting friend, Jane, seemed to have special appeal as the largest Dragon, the male I assume, came up onto the verandah where we were sitting. He was almost under our chairs, pointing his spade-shaped head this way and that.
They are mainly insectivorous, but like all sorts of delicacies as they mature, so maybe he thought we had cake — we didn’t, just coffee.
While unafraid, these Dragons are wary, so I wasn’t game to get up to fetch my camera. But Jane had her phone camera, so took these great pictures.
I am very grateful to have them as my resident wildlife.
Just next to historic Roto House and its café is Port Macquarie’s famed Koala Hospital.
Started in 1973, and now with 200 volunteers, this special facility treats rescued and injured koalas, runs a vet clinic and a conservation breeding program, and offers up close and informative experiences for visitors.
The first time I went was near midday and all I could see were furry balls, fast asleep. Koalas do naturally sleep a lot, to save energy.
Next day I was there at opening time (8.30) and it was quite different. Here helper Geraldine is feeding a medicinal paste to CW, hit by a car, and left with only one eye and brain injury. He will never be able to be released into the wild.
CW was more than eager to take his treatment, and Geraldine wiped his mouth when needed, just like a mother would.
The pens are roomy, with cleverly designed and shaded structures; fresh gum leaves are placed in each every day. About eight food tree varieties, like Swamp Mahogany and Tallowwood, are grown on a separate property.
There are pens for the permanent residents and closed-off, more private pens for those being rehabilitated, to be released back into the wild when ready. With free entry, the Hospital relies totally on donations.
Visitors do get to see how cute and furry are our iconic koalas… and they also get told how at risk they are. From habitat clearing, from disease, from dogs and cars – from our ‘progress’ in fact.
Australia holds the world record for the extinction of mammal species. How shameful is that!?
In 2022 the koala was officially listed as endangered.
How shameful is that!?
John Williamson was so ashamed when he visited the Hospital and realised the koalas’ plight that he wrote and recorded the song, ‘Goodbye Blinky BIll’, which included the lines:
‘I don’t think I could stand the shame, knowing that I could Have saved the world from losing something beautiful and good.’
And yet, despite the enormous bushfire loss of native forests, our governments are still approving the removal of large areas of koala habitat, be it for logging or coal or gas or housing.
As for the Moolarben coalmine expansion near Munghorn Gap Nature Reserve north of Mudgee. Or the Vulcan South mine in QLD.
With coal and gas mining spreading in the NSW N-W, the Independent Planning Commission said, ‘If coal mining and koalas are to co-exist, then a robust strategy for koala conservation is essential.’
Indeed, but that cannot mean the sham get-out-of-jail system of offsets.
Well may koalas turn their backs on us, given we are doing that to their desperate declining situation. It is predicted they may be extinct by 2050 at this rate.
Where are our priorities?
Who will dare say NO to the developers?
Or who will explain to our grandchildren… and to the world;… how we let this happen?
My verandah railing was obviously the watching point for feeding time by the previous owners, and the pigeons, brush turkeys and lorikeets took a few weeks to realise that I was not going to be doing the same.
Only the lorikeets have kept trying their luck.
There were hundreds of lorikeets at my old place, noisily loving the paperbark blossoms. But I rarely saw them still and up so close.
Their colours are ridiculously bright and beautiful, compensation for their unmusical screeching.
In the recent wet week, pairs have taken to sheltering on the verandah. While there, they take it in turns to preen each other.
I know it was likely fleas they were after, but it seemed affectionate and charming, to be mutually grooming even when their feathers were somewhat bedraggled and damp.
Bald Rock National Park is near Tenterfield and this mightiest of the many mighty granite domes in our tablelands region is truly impressive. In fact, it is the largest granite dome in the southern hemisphere.
For once I was able to screw up my courage and brave the slanted walk across the top surfaces, leaning uphill and trying hard to ignore the downwards pull I always feel. White dots tell you where is safe to walk, but they don’t know my imagination…
Yes, the view is 360 degrees, but for me more fascinating is that these huge boulders are ranged in a neat row on top — by whom and how?
Or that in sheltered cracks and dips, surprising plants manage to grow up here.
Like these aromatic shrubs of Prostanthera petraea, White-flowering Mint Bush, as delicate in appearance as any pampered garden plant; only found in such granite pockets in this region.
I admit I took the easier option of getting to the Rock, taking the Bungoona Walk which was gentle and extremely varied. While wallowing in the scent of masses of wattles, I loved the dominance of purple Hardenbergia, climbing shrubs and sticks or rambling over the ground.
Clumps of Flag, from pale lilac to deep purple, appeared now and then. Shouldn’t our national colours be purple and gold instead of green and gold?
Another special regional plant I spotted on the way was the perennial Coronidium boormanii.
Of course the track eventually had to encounter these Granite Titans, tossed like marbles to balance at the foot of Bald Rock itself.
I not only fear and avoid heights, but caves and looming overhead rocks, and yet the track leads you through many tight spaces like this.
I know they have poised like these for eons, but still I duck and scurry through, hoping they do not choose to move at last… not right now.
I found Bald Rock National Park one of the most interesting for me. The campground was good, apart from the sad sight of a very ill quoll, probably blind and perhaps dying, (once rescued, likely from a dog attack, and released here) who came nosing around.
House-sitting for a week on a property that is designed to welcome wildlife, I was treated there to the songs of some of our most melodious birds, like this Pied Butcher Bird, whose young was heading to join it.
The other glorious songs came from possibly my favourite songster, the Grey Shrike-Thrush.
All day honeyeaters jostled and swung as they fed in the native small trees and shrubs planted to attract them.
To my great nostalgic delight, a family of Eastern Red-necked Wallabies grazed unconcernedly below.
On the young banksia tree one bloom stood out, demanding attention in its rich green amongst the creams and browns.
On the verandah a large skink sunned itself. I had thought it to be one I was used to, an Eastern Water Skink, but the colours were too dull. Perhaps at a different stage of its life? I’d appreciate any further clues…
So I had my wildlife treats… as well as reminders of how very slow young kookaburras are to get their adult laugh right, and how very repetitive are their efforts!
My Mountain wildlife refuge was 90 minutes from a town, so too far for lazy folk to drive up into the forest and dump their unwanted pets… like cats.
In my decades there I never saw a feral cat, and only once did I see a wild dog. No danger of confusing the latter with a dingo, as sadly, after the government’s bounty on dingoes, and ‘the dogger’ visiting the area, I no longer saw our regular big ginger one or heard the distinctive howling from up the far valleys.
I did have Spotted-tailed Quolls, even nesting in my shed, so maybe they kept the cats away. Small mammal and reptiles and birds abounded, so the thought of my fascinating fellow wildlife being creatures being devoured by an invasion of cats is appalling.
My most plentiful parrot was the Crimson Rosella, beautiful and musical.
Cat eating a crimson rosella. Copyright C Potter
The Bimblebox Nature Refuge seems a long way from towns in our coastal hinterland NSW terms but it is surrounded by ‘farms’: large scale cleared grazing properties where it mostly seems neither trees nor Nature, distances nor environmental responsibilities matter much.
A farmer like my late father would say of Bimblebox, ‘It’s just bush.’ It was the accepted rural attitude. When Dad visited my mountain forest block in the 70s he said, ‘It’d look all right if it was cleared a bit; especially with a few fat Herefords on it…’
And the price of cattle is high right now, so what price a small and rare Squirrel Glider possum which needs old tree hollows for its nest?
I want to share these thoughts from Ian Hoch, at the ‘coalface’ caring for Nature at Bimblebox. Those who have read the Bimblebox book will know that Ian is a philosopher and poet as well as deeply committed to caring for the Refuge… to doing that hard work it daily involves. Last time I shared was mostly about efforts to halt the exotic flora invasion.
Below he talks about the feral fauna, on seeing this Frogs Friday infographic featuring the Squirrel Glider. The ending will resonate with me forever…
The Cat Wars
Enigmatic this little fella; don’t think he’s supposed to be here. I found one dead up on the netting and pretty sure it was Sonya (Duus) who sent it away to be identified as a Squirrel. Didn’t have the white tip which distinguishes him from the Sugar Glider.
From what I read and understand, these more delicate and vulnerable mammals were doomed from the day Cook claimed possession and liberated his pigs on Cape York and explains why Conservancy and Heritage go to all the trouble with exclusion fencing.
I’m as sick of finding bird feathers around water troughs as I am tired of shooting and trapping cats. All my efforts only create a temporary void for another tabby. After 150 years, predator and prey must have established an equilibrium of sorts with the native species either cat- savvy or exterminated, and populations of both being sustained by availability of food and refuge.
I don’t know what to do about it but do know (as child of a cat lover mum) that top of menu for moggies is small birds and gliders. The rarer the tastier. A fluffy tail usually the only reminder of the delicacy that was.
I have to fence roos and rabbits from this native plant nursery to tackle the same problem in the floral realm. The sweetest species don’t get a chance to reproduce. Especially those already on the edge of their range and resilience.
You might say hardly makes any difference, we’ve never really noticed their presence nor lament their loss and that’s true until you’re holding a Sugar baby or watching them glide in the moonlight between tall ghost gums, and it’s then you know what you’re missing.
I’ve seen 3 or 4 other elusive marsupials that I don’t think are listed on those sham EIS. And whether they’re listed or not is hardly the point. As the designation implies — we’re a nature refuge. The idea is to maintain habitat for wildlife for its own sake, not just for the things we happen to notice.
At the same time we wouldn’t kid ourselves these ephemeral or vulnerable species will be here for much longer. Or not without our concerted efforts to cater for them.
Huge counter influences are at play out there now (at sister property Kerand) in the wake of the regional scale, near complete transition to full-on production. We’re in that shakedown period and in 20 years we’ll know what’s been able to cope, and so far it doesn’t look too promising. At Kerand, it’s likely to have been 90% reduction in 50 years. I think that’s called decimation.
Can’t see how we can avoid the same from happening here. Or not at this rate. Not without ridding the place (or select parts) of pigs and cats and rabbits, buffel and secca. Ironically and cruelly those highly adaptive foreign species, unburdened by co-evolutionary checks and balances, are just way too strong for the unique niche and specialist natives.
It’s been that way the world over for centuries. Just so happens the tail end of the colonial frontier has swept through the central west in our lifetime. The ecodynamics are in continuous flux, goes on by the minute – and much we never know. Foxes and deer and goats and hares and cane toads have all come and gone from here but pigs and cats and rabbits found a perfect home and pick the eyes out of the local smorgasbord.
As I understand, cats are at their most populous and gargantuan right across the arid zone. They’ve evolved into pumas and devastate what’s left of all those wee dainty bopping bundles of fluff that live out there in the spinifex.
We might yet get to appreciate the bunny and the tabby, and not torment ourselves with reminders of squirrel gliders.
Pumas indeed! A feral cat carrying a sand goanna in its mouth. Picture: Emma Spencer
Strolling through Wingham Brush Reserve on the slightly elevated walkway, looking from side to side, I spotted a reptile in the leaf litter.
This was the first time I have ever seen a critter other than bats, brush turkeys and an occasional small bird there. It’s the massive strangler fig trees and the dim dry rainforest world around them that most attract me.
So was this a bluetongue lizard? There was something odd about the shape, the scales… and the head.
Moving to see the head more closely, I decided it wasn’t. But what was it? It was remaining absolutely still, despite our voices and footsteps… and a fly hanging around its face.
I was very excited to look it up and see it is a Land Mullet (Egernia major), one of our largest skinks, reaching up to 60cm. I had only ever seen one once before, at my Mountain.
It is called a Land Mullet because of its large shiny fish-like scales and because when it moves, it does look like a mullet swimming.
Preferring rainforest or nearby, it apparently often lives in burrows, so I was lucky to see it out sunning itself, unblinking, unswimming.
After my last odd waterbird visitor, the Royal Spoonbill, I thought I had spotted another strange long-legged, long-beaked bird down there in the wetlands.
But when it settled its ruffled feathers and assumed a more familiar stance, it revealed itself to be not really odd at all.
Perhaps oddly out of place, as there are no cattle here, and I think it is the quite common Cattle Egret.
I have usually seen it in groups around cows in paddocks, some often perched on the backs of cows.
Native to Africa and Asia, they were introduced to Australia in 1948 – as was I! – and have spread successfully into new territories, including America.
Equally common, and perhaps equally out of place, was this Long-necked Tortoise, seen wandering in my dry back yard, heading uphill from the wetlands.
As it still had damp mossy patches on its back, it can’t have been lost or misguided for long.
I stood very still as It looked about carefully, fixing my feet at least with those gimlet eyes.
Then it turned itself about and, very purposefully and surprisingly swiftly, headed downhill towards the water.
There is a low old paling fence to be negotiated but, as I later saw, it found the worn parts and dug away until it was on the watery side where it belonged.
But why had it left and what led it to think there’d be water up here?
These wetlands are a boon in attracting wild creatures; after all, water is life.
A glimpse of white down there in the wetlands, seen from my deck as I was hanging out washing; triple blink. What on earth could that be? Camera grab, race down to the yard, tiptoe to my fence.
The strange creature’s spoon-shaped bill said ’Spoonbill’ of course, although I have never had one visit me, here or elsewhere.
But it seemed to have a neck that could swivel 360 degrees. Cleaning its feathered back? Or scratching?
Apart from acrobatic ablutions, that long beak is used for sweeping shallow waters for food.
The black bill and legs and the red eyes tell me it is a Royal Spoonbill, confirmed by the impressive crest of head plumes I glimpsed earlier.
With the crest lowered, it looks more like a bearded elder, with hair hanging over its collar. And did it just yawn?
The weird and wonderful denizens of and visitors to even my little patch keep me in touch enough with the wild to survive in a town. Almost…
The greyheaded flying fox colony in Wingham Brush is enormous: about 200,000 at peak times.
As the sun hits their trees in the morning, the chatter and activity sounds like every bit of a peak time.
I am fascinated by these creatures, watching their deft acrobatics as they stretch a wing or hang by one ‘foot’. Their soft fur looks like golden peach fuzz in the sunshine, and their pointed ‘foxy’ faces dare anyone to call them ugly or scary.
To fit so many into this colony, they are of necessity crowded, but the chatter and movement doesn’t sound irritable; it sounds like morning gossip.
‘So, how did you go last night?’
Where the sun is less strong as yet, they are tightly bundled in their leather cloaks, strung like Christmas baubles.
These two were interacting without fuss, but what was the larger one doing to its smaller mate?
In the reclaimed Brush at Wingham, Brush Turkeys abound. In daytimes, they are usually seen scratching amongst the leaf litter.
Today I entered the Brush on the still-dark side. It was too early for their routine, and I caught them napping. This was the first time I had seen them roosting on branches.
Neither of these looked happy at being disturbed.
You can see from the overall shot how dark it was in their part of the Brush — and why the photos are not great!
But a little further on the daylight had penetrated to the ground and other Turkey families were at it already.
Amongst the gloom I was struck by this Strangler Fig in a very real pose of strangling. Can I watch that with my Jacaranda?
As a farewell treat, the early sunlight perfectly highlighted this small spiderweb in my path.
Every evening, after sundown, before dark, in what I guess we can claim as twilight, a seemingly endless stream of bats fly over my place, heading out for the night’s feeding.
From my deck I watch the streams of flying dots, fascinated as the odd one turns back or the strands split up, until the sky is too dark to distinguish them.
They are clearly heading for different feeding places, but how do they decide who goes where, and why do some individuals get their signals mixed up?
The ‘bats’ are actually Grey-headed Flying-foxes, and have about 20 different calls. They navigate by sight and find food by smell. So maybe the meandering individual’s senses are just a bit off that evening.
More numerous than my head can guess at, but in the thousands seems right. They come from their home in the regenerated Wingham Brush.
Thousands of Grey-headed Flying-foxes literally hang out there by day, small swinging parcels wrapped up in leather shawls.
Even if you don’t look up into the Giant Stinging Trees, the Strangler Figs and many other rainforest trees, you can’t remain unaware that this is their place — the smell, for a start, and then the chattering and squeaking, the restless movements above, even when they are supposed to be sleeping.
I find them fascinating, and delight in having such a thriving colony in my area. These ‘Flying Foxes’ — quaint name! — seem very social. Some hang by one hand and air their wings, others visit next door camps.
So each time I watch the flying dots pass over, I give thanks that at least one species still has enough habitat here. I hope enough destination feeding forests will remain too, of eucalypt blossoms and nectar, of native fruits like lilli-pillis.
If not, we force them into ‘our’ patches and complain.
