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.