Would you like fries with that?

Trip 7: Perth to somewhere in the far north-west Kimberley

Purpose: Biological Reconnaissance Survey

Total Distance Traveled: 4914 km
Distance Traveled Year to Date: 20,305 km 

Chicks are cute but would I think twice about eating chicken? No.

Calves are cute, but would I think twice about eating beef? No.

Lambs are cute, but would I think twice about eating lamb? No.

My world revolves around reptiles. Would I eat one? Of course I would. I have been to restaurants where crocodile has been on the menu and I have indulged without guilt or hesitation. As long as the little brute had a good life and died humanely, I feel no contrition if it's final resting place is my dinner plate. I am certainly not afraid to try new things and the novelty of eating crocodile has long since passed as it has been commercially available for years.

Could I catch one, kill one, and eat one? No way. Not a chance. Absolutely not. I have always maintained that if I ever came across a fresh road kill I would give it a try. But in 25 years of field biology I have never found a road kill that I was certain was fresh enough to eat in a situation where I was able to get it into the camp fire coals in good time.

If ever I was to get the opportunity to try anything on the scaly smorgasbord (e.g. goanna, snake or turtle) it was going to happen in the company of traditional owners. So imagine my delight when I returned home from a day in the field one of the traditional owners, had bopped a giant Varanus panoptes or Sand Monitor (goanna for the layperson) on the head and had it in the coals in prep for the nights supper. Bucket list moment.

Goanna cook up Phase 1. The entrails are dragged out of the throat and the animal is seared in the super hot coals before being cooked more slowly deeper under sand and coals.

A claw on which to gnaw

Whilst we were conducting our biological survey, the traditional owners were on country en mass for their annual burn off. They call it 'right way fire'. The objective is to target specific areas that have not been burned for more than three (3) seasons. In these areas the litter load is building to a point that a bad fire at the wrong time of year will wipe out every single thing that is flammable: the grasses, the shrubs and the trees giving the fauna nowhere to retreat during the fire and nowhere to refuge after the fire. The result of annual 'right way fire' campaigns is a patchwork or mosaic of burnt, recently burnt and long time burnt land providing safety from extreme wildfire but also contributing to broad-scale habitat hetrogeneity in the local vegetation creating developmental, regeneration or successional stages of growth.

What a privilege it was to be out on country with them to see the landscape burn: that might sound macabre but it really is a natural, powerful and beautiful event: also a very necessary one.

Fire burning a spinifex primary dune between the ocean and a tidal inlet.

Just a note: Everyone thinks helicopter work is glamorous. It is not. It means you frantically run around getting from the drop zone to the pick up point knowing that for every 15min you are late you have just cost the client nearly $400. All that with an entire working day's worth of food, water and survey gear on your back.

Jekyll and Hyde

Trip 6: Perth to Koolan Island

Purpose: Northern Quoll Annual Monitoring Phase II

Total Distance Traveled: 3768 km
Distance Traveled Year to Date: 15,391 km 

Little baby boy Northern Quolls are born in about August all cute and clingy. They spend quite sometime time in the safety of a den before they bound out of the den full of life and ready to take on the world. 

Over the wet season, which is the season when biomass productivity goes through the roof in the Kimberley, young boy quoll indulge in the absolute pursuit of food; large invertebrates and small vertebrates, mixed with plenty of fresh native fruit and vegetation.  Everything is on the menu is and the objective is to eat as much as possible in an effort achieve exponential growth. At this stage they are still incredibly adorable. They fit neatly in the palm of your hand and their fur is so full and fluffy and lustrous.  Though they are still relatively small and ridiculously cute, they are quite a handful and can give you a nip that will immediately bring tears to your eyes. 

In only a matter of a few more weeks they are nothing short of robust. Chunky and full of fatty body resources that they have invested immensely in acquiring. They are large, strong and have a certain presence; not to mention generous set of 'jatz crackers' that would equate to, in human terms, having a boxing speed-ball hanging between your stems. At this point they are still adorable, but in a 'blokes down the pub on a Friday night' kinda way. When they bite, it hurts.

And then.......well, the desire to mate overwhelms them and everything changes. Male quoll embark on a suicidal mating spree and in doing so tear through all their body fat and just about every other metabolic resource available to them. And when all of that runs out a surging flood of corticosteroids is liberated that keeps them pounding away long after their sexual batteries should have gone well and truly flat. 

This excess activity feeding off a hormone overload, rather than the standard metabolic processing of food or fat, results in a total shut down of an eventually exhausted immune system, which climaxes with gastrointestinal bleeding causing a brief but painful demise. 

Days out from lights out the once gorgeous little baby boy quoll starts to literally fall apart. The feet and ears hemorrhage, scab up and start to peel ways, patches of hair fall off, the tail is denuded and looks like a rotting carrot, they sweat profusely and smell profoundly. To top it all off this once delightful little creature becomes a rabid beast when in 'Shag to Death' mode: Click to observe.

Shortest Field Trip Ever

Trip 5: Perth to Minjar Gold Mine via Rothsay Grave

Purpose: Declared Rare Flora and Threatened Fauna Survey

Total Distance Traveled: 1007 km
Distance Traveled Year to Date: 11,623 km 

No mining operation is ever approved by the State or Federal Government without at least one or two commitments to ongoing environmental management. Were that not the case, I would pretty quickly be out of a job and singing for my supper: one can't consult or advise if there is nothing to consult or advise on. 

Poor consultancy sometimes leads to commitments are ill-advised and onerous and they achieve very little for the environment and leave a foul taste in the mouth of the proponent who is obliged to honor that commitment year after interminable year. But for the most part, well conceived and constructed commitments generated by sound environmental practitioners can go a long way to reducing the total cumulative impact of mining on the environment.

As an example, one of Animal Plant Mineral's clients is obliged to undertake relatively intense grid searches of any ground forecast for disturbance because most of their tenements covere areas known to support Declared Rare Flora. They commission us to search for this cute little plant called Stylidium scinterlans or the Glistening Trigger Plant. I normally struggle to get enthused about plants, but this is a special little thing; it is magical and it really does glisten in the sun like it has been smothered in pixie dust. It only grows in a very, very specific microhabitat in the appropriate soil type, on the appropriate land form with the right aspect and very precise drainage. When one finds a population it is pretty difficult (even as a hardened field hack) not to jump up and down like a pre-schooler, giggling softly and doing fairy claps.

So when I got the call the other day to get into the truck and drive the 500km to site to walk some proposed drill lines I most happily obliged. What was particularly interesting about this commissioning was that the search area comprised three drill lines not much more than 200m long. Based on the accepted methodology for grid searching this comprised a total walking distance of as near as makes no difference to 2km! Even more epic, was that they welcomed two ECU Conservation Biology Grads (Sarah Flemington and Alannah Rowe) along to the mine, accommodated and fed them, inducted them and then allowed them to assist with the survey.

We did not find any Fairy Dust Plants but we did find evidence of a bush chook: otherwise known as the EPBC Act (1999) Listed Vulnerable Malleefowl and the Grads did get to see some amazing trapdoor spider burrows.

Nearly 12 hours driving for less than one hour of work. Am I complaining? Hell no!! Where to next? 

Quollanteering in 2017

Trip 4: Perth to Koolan Island

Purpose: Northern Quoll Annual Monitoring

Total Distance Traveled: 3768 km
Distance Traveled Year to Date: 10616 km 

When the Koolan Island Iron Ore Operation spiraled from full production into care and maintenance in under 12 months a lot of things changed in an equally short space of time. A little leak in the sea wall separating the main mine pit from the ocean became a catastrophic collapse over a 12 hour period and instantly put 300 odd people out of work. It was devastating for those employed on the Rock and it was equally as devastating for the company. MGI had been successfully running the operation since they built the sea wall, drained the main pit and commenced mining in 2006; MGI had made Koolan a success where others had failed. The collapse of the sea wall was as surreal to watch as it was unexpected. I did not see it, but fellow Animal Plant Mineral staff were there on site when it happened.

Main Pit from the air looking north east across the Rock.

Main Pit as seen from one of the viewing platforms before the wall collapsed. It is deep; very deep.

This photo shows the sediment laden water filling the pit to capacity

Koolan Island is the most amazing proving ground for young biologists trying to cut their teeth as field ecologists. It is a remote island in the Kimberley where conditions are as bad or worse than one could ever expect to experience in the Kimberley. The humidity is insane with all the heat of the Kimberley channeling into a little rock that sits amidst a vast ocean. Breezes are a luxury seldom experienced and easily forgotten as, for every ridge, there seems to be a dozen still and listless valleys. Vehicle access is adequate around the mine, but ridiculously challenging everywhere else which is most of the places we need to go during our annual Northern Quoll Monitoring survey. The hills are disgustingly steep, the ground is absurdly slippery and the vegetation is oppressively thick.

However, it is an awesome place to work, the animals are cute beyond reckoning, and if you survive the working day you can retreat to a nice air-conditioned room with a comfy bed, a hot shower and a great meal of a night. To top it off, virtually every room has an ocean view.

The Northern Quoll

Mount Gibson had generously welcomed student volunteers in 2015 after only a small amount of campaigning by yours truly. But the sea wall collapse cast some doubt over the practicality and safety of using volunteers in 2016; in the absence of a full nursing staff and operating medical center it was considered a risk not worth taking. I can understand that. However, the company welcomed students back in 2017 and, for that, I am forever grateful. 

One of the reasons I love working with volunteers is because they make you think about different ways of doing the things that you have done the same way a million times over. As a crusty and fractured old field ecology stalwart, one tends to get set in one's ways. For instance, I have always mixed bait by hand, which involves sticking my hand in a bucket of peanut butter, scraping oily fish out of a tin and grinding the two ingredients together with endless bags of rolled oats. When I have finally achieved a mixture with the right consistency, pliability, texture, adhesion and stench I spend hours rolling it into little balls to put into traps. I've done it for years and years: 25 in fact and it is a very necessary part of my job.

It is only when I seek to demonstrate it to the next generation that I realise how stupid the process sounds and alternatives quickly become apparent: almost as if to save from the embarrassment of appearing to be not to distantly removed from a pre 'industrial revolution' peasant.

During the Koolan Island annual quoll survey, I have been manually mixing bait by the bucket load since 2013. How daft of me not to have realised that, the entire time, I have had access to an industrial kitchen with industrial appliances. Thanks to the 2017 quollenteers, the quoll now enjoy a much more refined blend of rolled oats, peanut butter and tinned tuna and I have so much more free time in my day.

The other great thing about volunteers is that they have to be rewarded for their efforts. With all that free time we were able to enjoy the island by boat and do a spot of fishing.

Saturation Point

Trip 3: Perth to Koolan Island

Purpose: Ecological or Landscape Function Analysis

Total Distance Travelled: 3768 km
Distance Travelled Year to Date: 6848 km 

Our work is strongly seasonal. If you want to get the best results from a biological survey you simply have to go when the animals and plants are at their most active. 

There is no point doing an amphibian survey in the western woodlands in the middle of summer: there is no water and there will be no frogs. If you want to catch frogs you go when it is cold and wet and miserable. 

Similarly there is not much point doing a reptile survey in the Kimberley in the middle of the dry season when conditions are delightfully mild with dry moderate to warm sunny days and crisp nights. If you want to catch snakes you go when it is hot and wet and miserable. 

So why am I on Koolan Island in the peak of the monsoon season doing a survey that has absolutely no relatedness to, or dependence on season at all?? 

I have absolutely no idea. It seemed like a good idea at the time! The only thing I do know is that it’s good to be back up north again with Animal Plant Mineral.

Though, in this heat and humidity, I am struggling to remember exactly why. Here are a couple of reasons why I am NOT glad to be here: 

1) My normal resting heart rate (sitting or lazing around) is 48 - 50 beats per minute. If I am truly relaxed I can get it down to 39 BPM, but I am lying under the shade (?) of an Acacia tree and my heart is pounding out 104 BPM;

2) I have just wasted a good minute or so looking for my sunglasses as my vision is hazy and my eyes feel strained and glazed as I try to decipher the blurred lines in a melange of sun and shade. My sunglasses are, of course, already on; 

3) I need to wipe the sweat from my sunglasses so I can actually determine up and down from left and right, however, barely a square inch of my wrist to ankle clothing is dry enough for that purpose. The only bit of me that is dry is that little bit of my pants cuff that sits over my boots; 

4) The rock berms that I have to move along are incredibly unstable and, that being said, I have just lost a leg either side and landed flat on my face. I have neither the strength nor the motivation to get back up on my feet again;

5) It can’t more than a half hour since my last tumble and the rock that I was just standing on gave way seconds after I stepped off of it. Whilst reflecting on small mercies, the rock that I stepped onto gives way and I have, this time, fallen flat on my arse;

6) I have just lost my only pencil. I walk back and forth and back and forth along the flat terrace on which I am working desperately searching for it because I simply do not have the energy or inspiration to stagger only a few contours up to the car to get another one;

7) I cannot contemplate taking in any more water because I have consumed such copious quantities today, yet I have not peed since I woke up 10 hours ago; and

8) I am doing a survey that is, unlike most, not at all seasonally dependent; what that means is that there is absolutely no reason why I should be here right now. I could be doing this survey in July when the maximum daytime temperature is 28 not 38^oC and the humidity is an order of magnitude lower and exponentially more reasonable than it is right now.

Whatever the case, the conditions have not beaten me this time: they never have and I hope they never will.