Our Trip to Currawinya National Park- by Lois and Chester Wilson (August 2006)
TWINS AT LAST Being a volunteer for the Save The Bilby Fund’s Visitor Bilby information nights and having four days leave, my husband and I headed for Currawinya National Park in mid August. Our dear friend Peter McRae has been there almost full-time since the release of bilbies inside the predator free fence. We were privileged to see the fence and help him track and trap two of the ten bilbies he had released inside the fence. Peter wanted to catch two males. He found which burrows they were in, set the traps in daylight and collected the animals at about 10.30pm that night. It wasn’t until lunchtime the next day (when they would be very sleepy) that we proceeded to change the transmitter on their tails, as the batteries were due to expire. Imagine our surprise and delight to find we had trapped a male and a female and she had two tiny (one cm long) joeys inside her pouch. THE FIRST KNOWN BABIES TO BE BORN INSIDE THE CURRAWINYA BILBY RE-INTRODUCTION FENCE
First Pouch young (twins) at Currawinya
Mother Being Released into her burrow WHY TRAP? The tracking transmitter on the bilbies tail has a battery that only last for three months. If it should expire, Peter can no longer track where that animal’s are, so he has been tracking, trapping and changing transmitters before the batteries go flat. With the idea in mind to stagger the times that these batteries will expire so that he does not have to catch all the animals in the same week. The information collected when an animal is trapped is essential at this stage of the release process and this information includes,
Bilbies Burrow at Currawinya
TRACKING BILBIES Inside the predator free fence at Currawinya the current bilbies have 29 square kilometres’ to roam and dig burrows. Peter McRae has three tracking towers inside the fence to help him pick up the signal from the tail transmitters on the bilbies. Once he knows the general area in which a bilby has burrowed for the day, Peter walks through mulga scrublands with a hand held contraption listening to the strength of the “blip blip blip” to locate the actual spot. As you would realise this can take a long time. Peter numbers the burrows and records their position using GPS.
Tracking tower inside fence
Peter McRae tracking bilbies with hand held trackers ALL IN A DAYS WORK Changing a transmitter on a bilbies tail took two of us working together and just over an hour. We waited till the middle of the day when the bilbies would be the sleepiest. Considering how little this animal has been handled it was very cooperative. Often Peter has to do this job on his own, I am sure at times he wishes he had more than two hands. Holding the bilby firmly we removed the old transmitter from the tail cutting the Elastoplast with small sharp scissors. The skin under the plaster was closely inspected for any irritation and shaved ready for the new one. The first piece of Elastoplast went once around the tail and we mix araldite to seal the edges to reduce the amount of sand that can creep under the bandage. Next the transmitter was glued onto the Elastoplast and placed on top of the tail and then this was wrapped with more araldite as a very neat package. The transmitter we used weighed only five grams.
Tail Transmitter on Bilby THE VEGITATION What will be the changes now that we have 29 square kilometre’s of mulga lands no longer being grazed by sheep, cattle and goats and no longer are the reedy claypans that were once a haven for feral pigs to wallow? Have we done more than provide a predator free area in which to breed bilbies? Certainly the recent rains have brought on vegetation. Under the mulga, here and there, are intensely green carpets. Flowers were out the showy daisy and the emu bush. Even the mulga fern was there. Echidna and bilby scrapings exposed the termite’s nest where they have been feeding. Seed collecting ants and their nest were also vulnerable as food for the animals. Then a different digging with a different shape showed where a bearded dragon had dug up a trapdoor spider to eat. What a privilege it was to walk and wander, listen and see, the signs of life at Currawinya.
Showy Daisies after rain on Currawinya
Mulga Ferns THE LAKES
At present the lakes on Currawinya are dry- that is until you try to walk across the expanse of dry crust and find that the further you travel towards the middle of the lake, the more the mud clings to your shoes and the harder it becomes to walk. The dried shells and skeletons of turtles are mostly collected on the beach and of course the bird life has disappeared. Only three times since European settlement have the lakes been dry like they are now. There are other water points at Currawinya and recent rains have filled the reedy ponds that are dotted throughout the landscape. There must be hundreds of them all buzzing with life after the long, long dry.
Dry Lake Numalla
Foot Burrow at Lake Wyara THE FENCE Now I know what Peter McRae did all these years when the drought was so severe that we could not release any bilbies inside the fence. He supervised and worked at providing the “best electric fence in Queensland” (solar powered). These are not my words but of men who built and know electric fencing. I was amazed at how sophisticated the equipment was. How carefully it had been planned, mounted, protected, earthed and maintained. With provision for its supervision from the rangers station some 10- 15 kilometres’ away. Congratulations Peter and the Save The Bilby Fund and everyone who has help to make this possible, a job well done.
Bilby Re-introduction Fence at Currawinya |
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