Mustering: the First Yard of the Year.

  There was tension and anticipation building amongst the group as the date for the first muster of the year approached. As we drove in and out of the homestead paddock each day, we could see bull catchers appearing from under tarps, yards being reinforced and hay arriving just as the skies were clouding over.

  We had seen this four years ago and were eager to be part of the game…However, we aren’t of particular use unless we’re helping to set up the yards and move vehicles before and after the muster…BUT in return, we get a front row seat in one of the bull catchers!

  Bull catchers, four in this case, are old utes (landcruisers of course) with the roof, windscreen, doors, and seatbelts removed and replaced with steel panels all around to help ‘encourage’ the cattle/buffalo in the right direction…For those of you worried about safety with the lack of these relatively necessary structural components, their absence actually makes it safer for the driver and passenger should a cow or buffalo want a ride, so to speak.  You can get out and start running for safety!  On the front of the catcher are usually two old tyres (tires), wired to the bull bar that helps to buffer the animal and car should they hit at speed. On one bull catcher is a motorised “arm” that can be used to hook buffalo or cattle around the neck and restrain them.

Naughty bull in the arm!

  The set up of the yard is quick with many hands; the panels are pinned and roped together to form pens—one for the cattle, the other for the buffalo (they do not play nicely together). Hessian wings (burlap for our American followers) are then set up like a V from the pens out about 200m on each side (see photo). The hessian is held up by star pickets and wire ties, so all a matter of illusion really…but the animals don’t know that!

  Out here the terrain is so rugged that you can barely navigate it in a 4WD, let alone have any chance of getting out of first gear to chase cattle!  But these guys have been doing this for awhile, and can run down a stray cow no matter the kind of country.  Well, everything has limits, but if you saw where these vehicles go you’d be impressed.

  Most of the cattle are kept within a paddock not far from the homestead, but aging fences and naughty buffalo that can bulldoze their way through anything unscathed means that some of the cattle mustered the year before have now found their way to some far flung part of the sanctuary. There are also cattle that have been missed in previous musters or are so mad that they were deemed not worth the effort. This all means that there are several areas that are mustered every year, in all corners of the sanctuary. 

  The only way to round up the cattle is with a helicopter. The pilot does most of the work, pushing them towards the yards, while we all sit and wait on the outside of the wings of the yard. It’s an ambush of sorts, and sometimes camouflage is employed to disguise the bull catchers so the animals don’t see us and run away.  When the mob comes close we are off and running.  Speed is the aim so as not to give them much of a chance to think about what’s happening or where they are headed. The four catchers close in on them, racing their way across the flats, dodging trees, termite mounds, pig wallows, logs, rocks and any other type of obstacle that might just result in either you being flung from the vehicle or busting something on the catcher, neither an ideal outcome.  All four catchers converge at the neck of the funnel, forcing the mob into either yard, depending on the species.

  When all is said and done, they get loaded up into the big trucks and get taken to the yards near the house for processing.  All very simple sounding, and some of the most fun you’ll have on four wheels. 

Friends!

In the midst of the madness over the past 6 weeks or so, there has been some severe lack of posting on our blog.  All apologies to friends and family that read our posts, and in the next week (before our next trip begins...more on that later) we'll try to update you all on what's been going on up here.  Having said that, here is a post about our friends coming to visit way back in June:

To the managers’ amazement, we actually have friends crazy enough to want to visit!!

The scene was set; we had talked the talk while staying with Sally and Landon in Darwin in April. We were now thought to be harbouring the biggest fish in the NT that hook themselves…Disclaimer: our fishing adventures, as previously stated, are catch and release only, as this is a wildlife sanctuary. It was all well and good until they decided they might just have an opportunity to come and visit!! 

This was great news though: never did we think anyone would be crazy enough to voluntarily drive the 300km’s into the middle of nowhere on some of the roughest, rockiest, most corrugated roads in the country. But luck was on our side - a date was set in June and marked on the calendar.

Landon had given us a tray of lures and a rod- Ethan was the most excited about the rod as he could make it lefty! He had also been given the down low from Landon in May on each type of lure and when to use them. I, meanwhile, had bought myself a new rod and reel as I was fed up with spending more time on the bank with the line in knots than actually in the water…

We headed out at every opportunity prior to Sally and Landon’s visit, eager to find the perfect spot that would deliver us the goods. It seemed like the new rods and lures were not popular with the local fish…only the undesirable ones. We began to panic! No one could even get a hit, let alone land one! We emailed Sally and Landon with the bad news and let them know that we would understand if they cancelled their trip.

Sally and I weren’t too concerned about the situation as long as there were books to read, wine to drink and shady trees… Fortunately for our social life, the boys weren’t deterred and we excitedly made plans for the weekend.

We met them on the way in to provide some running commentary and guide them through the washouts and tight bends in the road. We quickly ate some lunch, then headed out for the afternoon. We never quite caught the big one… although I may have hooked it, battled it and saw it roll on the surface before it snapped my line and left me with nothing. Landon definitely caught the most fish and Ethan the biggest. Sally and I had a relaxing time, while also trying our luck from time to time. Ethan and I picked up a few tips from Landon on the art of barra fishing and I’ve decided it’s all rather labour intensive and may or may not be worth the effort. Despite the lack of fish, we enjoyed camping out for one of the nights and were treated to some excellent meals cooked up in their Weber Q.

The weekend was topped off by making a trip to Barunga Festival, an Aboriginal community on the road back to town just 80km’s from Katherine. Sally and Landon were meeting friends from Darwin and we were invited to join, we agreed and were not disappointed. Some 3,000 people attended, many from the communities all across the NT. Gurramul, a world-renowned Aboriginal musician (who even played for Barack Obama), was the main draw and it was just perfect under the stars.

Thanks to Sally and Landon for a fabulous weekend and bringing all the food and conversation we had been missing!

Camera Trapping

Morning wallaby conference.

Hmmm, what IS that?

   One of the cooler things that we get to do out in the bush is set up camera trap arrays. The cameras are fantastic (and expensive) pieces of technology, using infrared technology to detect motion and snap 3 successive photos. This is all well and good when an animal walks by, but as we found out these past few weeks, sometimes the cameras are too good at detecting motion.  The cameras we brought in back in April had been out somewhere else since February, and we were to offload the pictures and get them ready for the first big deployment of the year.  It didn’t take long to realize that some of these cameras were actually taking pictures of nothing, every few minutes, for weeks. This was because of their proximity to grass and other plants, and every time the wind blew it tripped the sensor. This means that we sometimes had over 11,000 images on ONE camera, mainly of grass blowing in the wind. And of course, we had to go through every image to see if there was anything significant caught on camera. As we scrolled, rapid fire, through the photos, we could literally see the grass growing. Out of those thousands of photos (probably near 60,000 from that session), we probably got a couple hundred animal sightings. Suffice it to say; we have resolved to completely clear ANY vegetation in the future that might trigger the camera. So far, our arrays have not yielded the thousands of pictures that we got previously, mainly due to the fact that we bulldozed a helicopter pad around the cameras.  That’s an exaggeration…we do value nature, but sometimes our sanity is also important.

Busted...

Another fun element of camera trapping are the photos of animals trying to figure out what that camouflage box is that’s strapped to the tree. More often than not, these are dingoes, birds, or wallabies (as you can see from the photos provided). Unfortunately we had one that got chewed and broken by a rather rude dingo. Normally this doesn’t happen, so you get pictures of mouths or noses right up close to the sensor, sniffing and licking.  Some of the camera sites also have lures attached, such as feathers, bits of CD, and our favorite, the ‘meow-meow’. These sophisticated black boxes emit a constant ‘meowwwwwwwwwww! Meowwwwwww!’ once you flip the switch. It sounds like a slightly tinny, wailing cat trapped inside a box. It is without surprise, then, that dingoes and other animals are curious about what that ridiculous noise is out in the bush. So far, we’ve had one stolen by a dingo that we think was bent on shutting it up (see photos). Luckily, it was found only meters from the camera. Sometimes the occasional human is even caught on camera...a rare and threatened species way out here. Other than the occasional curious creature, not a whole lot exciting was found on the cameras from this first deployment. However, this is an ongoing project, so stay tuned for further developments.  

Figuring out if the meow-meow is food. 

Sounds like a cat, must be food!

A species that's difficult to ID...

   

     

Fish Tales

   Ever since our arrival in the NT, we’ve been hearing about barramundi fishing.  It seems like everyone is an angler, and everyone knows someone who’s caught a ‘metre long barra’.  As amateur anglers ourselves, always willing to cast a line when available despite our less than stellar skills, we decided to pursue this activity once settled at Wongalara.  Even though barra is an excellent eating fish, we’re not supposed to catch and eat on the sanctuary, so we’ll settle for catch and release for now.  This is the tale of our first barra encounter.  Needless to say, there will be more.

Tegan's monster.

  Borrowing a couple of the managers’ old rods and lures, we took Frank out to the Wilton River, one of the major rivers that flow through Wongalara.  It’s actually where we get our drinking water from now that the rain water supply is used up.  Since none of the roads had been graded yet, the ride out towards the river was a bit bumpy, and after about 30 minutes came to a washout that we didn’t feel the need to try and cross.  The track runs parallel with the river not far away, so we parked and got geared up for some fishing.  To be honest, we expected a whole lot of nothing.  Personally, I’m not much of a fisherman, something I’ve proved time and again in the presence of Tegan over the past 4 years.  We have no technique to speak of, and whatever I looked up on the internet about how to fish for these monsters was pretty self explanatory: cast and reel slowly, with the occasional twitch of the line.  We threw our lines in the water, and within a few casts Tegan actually hooked what turned out to be a massive 80cm long barra!  We couldn’t believe it.  With such luck right from the beginning, it had to go downhill.  Not for Tegan, as she hooked 2 progressively smaller barra within the next 10 casts.  She was making it look easy.  I, on the other hand, got a couple bites but that was it.  Sadly though, all the fun and games came to an end and over the next couple hours there were no more fish to be had except one little catfish that I think ran into my hook and caught itself.  Tegan’s skill probably had the rest of the fish in the river talking and staying away anyway.  However, our first attempt could be considered a resounding success.  They’re out there, and they’re biting.  By the end of this adventure we might actually have some decent fish tales to tell.    

Reptile Trapping

   The date was approaching I had been dreading but looking forward to at the same time…. Reptile trapping… Considering I hadn’t swung a mattock for over 3 years and the days leading up had been far too hot to do anything other than read my book under the air conditioner, the next 2 weeks were bound to be a struggle. My positive outlook that I was going to be ‘fine’ to manage without Ethan began to change as my volunteer numbers went from probably 4 to definitely 2. I began looking at past years data and emailing previous people who had lead the survey to find out just how much trouble I was in. Another ecologist was quick to respond by telling me that they had been flat out the previous years and one of her volunteers had suffered heat stroke on the first day and to get the earliest start digging as possible! Just brilliant!

Northern Spiny-tailed Gecko

   Ethan and I collected the volunteers in Katherine from the always reliably late greyhound bus and headed back to Wongalara… Arriving in record time, they had set up camp before sundown; so far a good start. On the drive out we tried to answer as many questions as possible without crushing their spirits about what exactly was in store…

   Up at dawn to get the most digging out of the way by lunch, it was a slow start. By 1:30 we finally had 9 sites in and all jokes and chatter had subsided, as people were too hungry to talk! Being the team leader, I had to lead by example… not admit to my volunteers that I felt as if I could pass out several times during the morning and definitely hadn’t drank enough water even though I was on everyone else’s case to “drink more” and frankly didn’t really care about lunch as I would sooner throw up. Everyone showered, ate and had a bit of a lie down before heading out a few hours later to open the pitfalls and funnel traps. I think everyone got a great night sleep except for me… dreaming of reptiles and the chance that I had forgotten all my reptile knowledge.

   Ethan helped check half the traps the next morning then headed for Darwin to catch a plane to New York! The first day checking sites is always slow as your new volunteers ooh and ahh over the species that will later be so common you groan when you see another one in the pit… But this is why they are here, to learn and see all the species they have never seen before. We finally checked our last trap around 10:30 and took a short break before beginning the task of putting in another 9 sites with a man down! We were starting to get faster… or our attention to detail was waning. Either way, we were back at the homestead for another very late lunch. We had caught a lovely blind snake in the mornings' trapping and hadn’t had the time to properly ID him at the site so had bought him back with us. The task consumed the rest of the afternoon as we all tried to count mid body scales on a squirmy worm that smelled terrible! 

Blind snake

We were back from checking traps and opening the new sites around 7:30pm and the news that the managers had enough dinner to feed us as well was very much appreciated. The next three days just involved checking the sites morning and night so we managed to find a little bit of spare time for bird watching and a night time spotlight. On the third day we awoke to rain… not just a sun shower, but serious rain that fills pit buckets quicker than you can drive to the site! We left the homestead in a hurry only to discover that the rain was yet to reach our sites, but was only minutes away. Luckily the manager’s daughter had agreed to help us that morning and we split up and sped around all the sites checking them and putting the lids on the buckets. By the end we were all soaked through, except for Christina, who had managed to pull wet weather gear from nowhere! The sites remained shut for the rest of the day as the sky threatened more rain.

Baby goanna!

   Soon was to come pack up day, when we packed up each site and headed to the other enclosure to repeat the whole process again. We had smartened up this time and had got our set up time down to 30mins per site. The managers' daughter had once again agreed to help us out and arrived just in time for the digging- we had 11 sites in by lunch! These two set up days we stayed out and spent the rest of the day relaxing next to a small spring in the shade and bird watching up at a nearby wetland.

   We were getting towards the end of the survey and people were getting tired. I arrived in the kitchen one morning to find one volunteer with a bowl full of muesli already at the table. I switched on the light and heard him laugh behind me… He had realised that he had poured himself a bowl of ant-ridden muesli and hadn’t even noticed in the dark! I tried to convince him to throw it out, but he soldiered on and finished the lot! Needless to say, the ants had taken advantage of our hectic schedule and had managed to get into a lot of our food!  They're rather cunning in the art of war.

The trapping team

   The end of trapping was soon approaching and we looked forward to rolling up the last fence and covering the last pit fall bucket. I took the vollies into Katherine and we treated ourselves to Asian noodles and a tub of icecream! One of the volunteers caught the greyhound back to Darwin while Christina decided to stay the night so we could head out to Edith Falls the next day to hunt the elusive Gouldian Finch.

   All in all, it was a very successful two weeks! We caught enough animals to keep us very busy, ticked lots of new bird species, listened to good music and had many laughs. I can only hope the next group of volunteers is as good! Although next time there will be 5 of us, so easier times ahead.

Work Activities: Trapping for the Other 99%

   If our readers haven't noticed, over the past month or so we've been a bit slack on the blog.  This was mainly because we lost internet for 10 days, and then I went home for a couple of weeks.  That being said, we'll summarize the activities that took place during this time in the coming days.   
   The first couple of weeks when we got here involved trapping the native rats, which means traipsing around the enclosures that are part of this project, laying out traps at each of the specified sites.  These are opened at night, and checked in the morning before it gets too hot.  This is repeated for 6 nights to ensure that a good estimate of the total population is obtained.  By the end of this time, we were definitely over the smell of a big rat in a trap.

One of our rats caught on the camera trap.

  During this time, we also collected the infrared cameras that had been deployed throughout the enclosures in February.  Camera traps are great tools that let you see things you cannot, like cats and lizards and LOTS of waving grass that unintentionally sets off the sensor (more coming on that one).  Let's just say that sorting through 10,000 photos from ONE camera is not the most riveting of activities.  You literally watch the grass grow.
  In the time that I was at home, Tegan had the task of conducting the first reptile survey (she'll tell you all about that soon).  This meant picking up 2 volunteers that had previously signed up, digging in the trapping sites, and recording captures.  Reptile trapping is always exciting though, as you approach the traps every morning and afternoon in anticipation of what might be there.  Will it be something never before seen on Earth?  Or will it be another boring brown skink that you've seen a thousand times previously?  Before this adrenaline rush, however, comes the digging.  In this particular case, it involves digging for the better part of an entire day, just to do a quarter of it all.  For those that don't know what we're talking about, I'll give you a quick introduction to reptile trapping.  

Lizard's-eye view of the drift fence.

   You have a trapping site, usually a square, and within this site there are buckets that have been previously dug in so the lid is level with the ground.  A shallow trench is dug, connecting the buckets; in the case of Wongalara, you connect the buckets to form a T.  This T is 30 meters at the top by 30 meters at the bottom.  Next, a 'drift fence', a 30-40cm (1+ foot) high plastic fence, is unrolled the length of the T.  In this case, you have 60 meters of fence. Once this is unrolled you hammer in one end and pull the fence tight to hammer in the other. You then go from one end to the other hammering in smaller 'pegs' that hold the fence in place and along your trench. This task is made easier if the person digging the trench has actually made you a straight line between the two buckets. Otherwise you end up a ridiculously tight fence that wants nothing more than to be above ground or horizontal with the ground. This is not ideal. To successfully act as a barrier for wildlife and direct them into one of your buckets, the fence must not have any daylight showing underneath. So to make sure of this, you go back along and fill the trench back in along the fence.

Funnel traps.

Lastly for our set up we have funnel traps, which are ideal for catching the larger reptiles…particularly snakes.  We have two pairs of these on each fence and they are covered in a sheet of insulation to keep our reptiles cool during the heat of the day.  

   When you check traps, you go along and see what may have fallen into the buckets or crawled into the funnels.  How many reptiles do you get on any given day?  There are a few external factors that contribute to this, so we can't really say.  For more answers, stay tuned for Tegan's report on the survey effort while I was at home. 

   Well, it doesn't seem like much, but these activities have basically filled up our days since we arrived.  In the months ahead, we'll have a few more tasks to complete, the most exciting of which will be cat trapping.  We'll explain more as the event draws near, but let's just say we'll be up all night to probably catch a whole lot of nothing.