What a way to start the day: diarrhoea!

I love a good “adventure rally”. Why? Because nothing is coming the other way. 

When you are 45 and you have a spouse, multiple teenage kids to feed, a couple of credit cards, a mortgage and a stressful job then you have all the fuel to fire a major mid-life crisis. Thankfully, clubs like the Trail and Enduro Motorcycle Club of WA are there to save us from ourselves. 

Let’s face it, if it weren’t for the annual KTM Adventure Rally we would all be getting our backs, sacs and cracks waxed, drowning ourselves in fake tan, buying a ’68 ‘Stang, a pair of Wayfarers and cruising the sunset strip with Don Henley cranked to 12 on the wireless. 

The KTM Adventure Rally is our mid-life anti-crisis; our preventative medicine. 

At 45 responsibilities weigh heavy when we are out riding trails. I don’t know about you, but the faster I go the more I worry about who is going to manage my business on Monday morning if I am in traction. And that is exactly why I love the Adventure Rally: Because nothing is coming the other way and I can immerse myself wholly and completely in my ride. 

Adventure rallies are non-competitive so, providing you can temper your own ego, the only thing you need worry about are the A-grade enduro riders that will use solely for the purpose of gaining additional traction out of a corner. You don’t need to worry about having a head on collision with another bike, quad or buggy, as you would every time you ride in one of those fish bowls that local governments call a ‘designated riding area’. You don’t need to worry about being harassed by rangers for riding in a catchment or quarantine area and, best of all, there are little signs along the entire route that tell you where to go and when you are about to encounter a widow(er) making obstacle. All you need to do on the KTM Adventure Rally’s is breath; ride; repeat. 

 No better way to see a sunrise than through the haze of exhaust smoke! I think there were birds singing. Not sure, actually?

I have attended several. More often than not, my bike won’t start in Park Ferme and I am OK with that as there are more than 250 other riders that can give me a bump. I ride a bike that is brilliant once it starts, but it is an electric start with no kick start back-up; who can guess which bike I ride? And herein lies one of the greatest attributes of the rally: It does not matter what you ride because it is not a race. You can be on a 130kg KTM 500 Adventure tourer or a crusty old Maico or XR. Your bike can be as reliable as sunrise or as fallible as…..well, let’s not name names. And that is why I come back year after year. So you can only imagine how disappointed I was when my digestive system decided to explode 15 minutes out from the start of the event. I don’t even know what it was I ate the night before, but it wasn’t pretty. Nevertheless, I buckled up my duds and got on with it.

It simply does not matter what you ride: whether it weighs a tonne like this KTM500 set up for safari (136kg at the curb) or it it is old, gnarly and ready to rip your arms off like this insane 2-stroke Maico 490

Once you get going there are two loops (the first being 65 km and the second being 35 km) to keep you entertained. And if you are better than me, which most people are, you can ride the second loop multiple times. This year dust was an issue, but more often than not it is boggier than Shrek’s back paddock. Nevertheless, it was pretty easy to find a gap among the riders where the dust had cleared and you could more confidently put the hammer down. 

Unfortunately for me, after less than 5km my back brake faded to nothing and I was compelled to ride like ‘Miss Daisy’ for the remaining 60 km of the first loop. I think I may have been passed even by the local fauna.

Remembering that this was not a race, I resigned myself to relax and enjoy the tootle through the scrub. Will I be back next year? Of course, I will.

I Shall Love You To Death

Every year since 2013 I have spent several weeks, during April and May, on an island in the Kimberley. I have been monitoring a population of Northern Quoll and, to be honest, I thought I knew a fair bit about these grouse little marsupials.  But after my last trip I now know that all I know is that I know very little.

The truth is that field surveys are but a snap shot in time from which you can interpret very little. What you see over a couple of weeks (even if you visit year after year) may reveal something about a population, but it reveals little about the individuals that comprise that population. And when you are studying a highly evolved top order predator that lives faster and dies younger than James Dean, a couple of weeks a year is simply not enough time to comprehend what individuals must endure during their very short time on planet Koolan.

Northern Quoll are a great study species. This is not because they are an iconic, predatory mammal that is under severe threat of extinction, but because they have an amazing, complex and extremely brief life history.

A mother gives birth to several young, more than half of which are male. She nurtures them on the teat in the pouch for a few weeks and then deposits them in a den where she cares for them for several more weeks before they make their way out into the big bad world. Once independent they enjoy a very brief but accelerated period of growth as the bolster their body reserves before they hit sexual maturity and the breeding season begins. During the breeding season the females continue to build their body reserves while the males cease feeding and commence a copulatory marathon that will, ultimately, lead to their death within a few short months.

The ecological advantages for the population of male semelparity (death after a single year of mating) are obvious. The massive male die-off reduces competition for food between young emerging from the den and adults remaining in the population at the time of emergence.

The advantages of multiple matings are also pretty obvious. Multiple mating promotes sperm competition so only the best of the best swimmers make it to the egg. This should result in the fittest and strongest babies.

The cessation of feeding in males also reduces predation pressure and increase food availability right about the time that the females are trying to maximise their body condition in anticipation of parenting a batch of parasites that will literrally suck the life out of them.

The driver for multiple mating in the males is quite obviously a shift in hormone balance. But what happens when that balance shifts too far? Is it possible that the desire to mate multiple times in an effort to sire the greatest number of the fittest babies could decend into a voracious sex frenzy where females are seriously injured or even killed during sex?

As previously reported in this blog, the damaged caused by the males is intense, as they bite hard on the neck and grip the females tight in amplexus around the ribs, digging their claws in and causing quite significant injury. In 2016 I surveyed Northern Quoll in late June, no more than two months later than I normally would and I observed something that I had suspected; the males were merciless when it comes to copulation.

But what I saw in 2018 defies explanation and it sure as hell appears to serve absolutely no evolutionary purpose. During our survey we discovered a female that had been literally mated to death. The female was found in the immediate vicinity of a male; both were contained in a storage unit within which they had made their way.  As the photos clearly show the female has bite marks all around the neck and bite marks on the tail. There are also wear marks around the neck and front limbs from what I can only imagine is a savage amplexus.

What benefit can the individual, the population or the species derive from this sort of behaviour?? Is this a common occurrence in the wild or did it occur purely as a function of the situation?? Is it a case of Fishers Runaway Sexual Selection gone wrong?? That is, the drivers behind semelapirity have simply gone past the point of no return.  I dont know; I am not sure I want to know.

Who am I kidding, of course I want to know. Dont you? 

Orange Book Worm

Not including my doctoral thesis, my honours thesis, any of the assignments I did at University and completely ignoring all of the reports that I have written at work as a biological consultant for Animal Plant Mineral I have written close to 30, 000 words. That is 133, 000 key strikes (not counting deletes or rewrites) written of my own volition. 

Why? Because I enjoy it. 

I didn't do good in school, but I was good at catching reptiles. I never envisaged that I would spend my days sitting in front of a computer, but with blind luck as my life's liaison officer I ended up working for a biological consulting firm doing exactly that: Sitting in front of a computer entering data and writing reports documenting the field biological surveys I would undertake. As an aside, I found this (the first computer I ever used) in an eclectic little shop in Singapore.

In those early days (still now) one of the greatest gifts I ever got (more good than any other) was the opportunity to learn to touch type. I did (or tried to do) a week long touch typing course paid for by my employer. I sucked at it; really, I did! It was, in fact, Miss Mavis Beacon that saved me. If you want to learn to type good, check her out. Now as my fingers glide across the keyboard like Sally Whitwell (check her out too!! Australia's most amazing pianist) glide across the keys of her Stuart and Sons, writing has become a form of catharsis for me. 

Does anybody read it? Not really, but I don't really mind. If what I write is interesting enough, I will slowly pick up an audience. As Kevin Costner once said "If you build it they will come" (actually, he did not say it, the voices in his head said it). And so I write. I write when I can't sleep: I write when I am travelling: I write when I have something to say: I write when I am bored: I write when I am agitated. I genuinely enjoy it. 

But write here write now it is another writer who's work I want to share with you. Miss Eva La Demon (@orangebookworm). 

She is only 14 - yes, fourteen. Eva also reads prodigiously; to the point that it causes her parents some concern. In her world Vitamin D is a fictional deity and outdoor activities are something that only people like Bear Grylls engage in.

Eva has just started reviewing books on Instagram and the way she captures the essence of the novels she reads is exceptional. For example, in describing her favorite character in the book Strange the Dreamer she writes "He is so well written that reading him watch paint dry would still be exciting." I simply love that line. What's more, she does it within the limitations of Instagram's interface.

Do yourself a favour when next you are searching for a book to read. Check out Orange Bookworm Reviews by clicking the link or searching @orangebookworm on Instagram. 

20 Trips 75, 000 kms Traveled

Trip 20: Brisbane to Darwin to HOME

Purpose: Regulator Liaison Meeting

Total Distance Traveled: 6, 108 km

Distance Traveled Year to Date: 75, 205 km

Last night and the sun sets on a manic 2017

Frequent flyer?

There really is not much left to say. 

At the beginning of the year I said “This is what I do for a living. It is not always unicorns and rainbows but when I am working hard I feel like I am hardly working.” I take that back: I am wrecked. Twenty trips and over 75, 000 km travelled. Dozens of different beds I have slept in and innumerable filthy showers I have washed in. I have packed and re-packed my bag so often I don’t even bother to unpack it anymore. I just dump it when I fly in and pick it up when I fly out. Would I do it again? I think I would, because there have been moments that have further defined me as a person and as a biologist. Those moments are usually realised when I am way out in the outback where I am so alone, but I am never lonely.

Was it worth it? As a business owner I should be content that clients just pay the bills; a fair price for a job well done paid on time and without question. It rarely happens quite like this but for the most part we have always been in receipt of what we were owed.  But sometimes clients go over and above with special thanks or kind words. That helps. It makes a tough job that much easier.

How appropriate then that my last journey for 2017 should end this way.