Australian Bush Life

Koala climbing down a tree where it crosses ground to a new tree.

We do not have Koalas - Phascolarctos cinereus living on our bush block, but I am lucky enough to have Koalas at some of my field sites where I work with Helmeted Honeyeaters – Lichenostomus melanops cassidix. There is something fundamentally Australian about the Koala and my recent close encounter with one was such a magic moment.

Whilst waiting quietly for my survey birds to return I was startled by a large Koala coming down the Manna Gum – Eucalytpus viminalis next to me. The site is along a creek bed so hosts many of these large trees which Koalas do love. The Koala was quite happy to wander down onto the ground and across to a new tree right next to me. He was also quite happy to pose for some photos so lucky for me I had my camera on hand.

The major threats to Koalas are loss of habitat, dog attacks and car strikes. This loss of habitat seems to be the bane of many species and is a constant pressure on maintaining biodiversity. Particularly when habitat is lost and replaced with roads (car strikes) and homes (with pet dogs).

Koala climbing Manna Gum - Eucalyptus viminalis.

It is possible to live in harmony with Koalas but they need trees to survive. Some of their key habitat trees in Victoria are Eucalypts (both for eating and living in) such as E.viminalis – Manna Gum, E.camaldulensis - River Red Gum, E.obliqua – Messmate, E.melliodora – Yellow Box and many of these are not small trees! Hopefully those who choose to live in Koala habitat are also choosing to live amongst trees (particularly large ones). There is a full list of trees on the Koala Foundations website.

Fencing is a barrier as Koalas need to come to ground to move between trees – is it something we can choose to live without? Dog attacks are frequent as the Koalas are most vulnerable when they are on the ground moving between trees. Maybe choosing to live in Koala (wildlife) habitat could reduce the need to have a pet dog? Car strikes can be reduced where roads are generally small (freeways are major wildlife barriers) by simply driving carefully to protect wildlife i.e. slowing down and taking care to avoid hitting wildlife.

Dog sitting without owning a pet.

We have chosen to live in the Australian Bush to enjoy the local wildlife and all it can offer.

We would consider to own farm animals to assist us with food production such as chickens or other poultry. Hey and we also consider our worms from our worm farm as pets – are we mad?!?

We would never own a cat as we both know how much damage cats have wreaked on biodiversity in Australia. Owning a cat is just something we could not morally do.

We know that we may be seen as “different” as owning a pet is so mainstream in Australia, but we hope to highlight some of the benefits of not owning a pet cat or dog.

• Saves money – no vet bills or pet food bills
• Reduces our carbon footprint by avoiding buying pet food (particularly meat)
• Can holiday anytime and anywhere (including National Parks)
• Don’t need to build or maintain fencing
• Don’t feel guilty about not looking after them (during long work days) or not walking them
• No pet hairs or smells all over our clothes and furniture
• No barking, which actually can really destroy peace & quiet!
• No doggy (or cat) poo to pick up and manage
• Our local wildlife are more likely to be around when no pets are present

Sadie helping with garlic brading - not!

Another option we have found that fills this “pet” niche is that we often “doggy sit” a couple of local dogs for short periods. This is a fun option and more like a holiday when we look after them.

Wombats are elusive animals, being nocturnal they come out at dusk and are gone by morning. We have never actually seen one on our bush block, but they leave evidence – almost daily. We recently caught some video footage of a local wombat one on a nearby property which was pretty cool.

Wombat poo surprise!

They really are the funniest creatures. We get a laugh everytime they leave behind a scat. They have some weird desire to poo in strategic locations. Usually this is up high, it seems that they are marking their territories. Once after we had finished some tree plantings we couldn’t understand why the tree guard (protective surrounds) kept getting knocked down. Eventually we realised through evidence that a wombat had placed a poo on top of the wooden stakes that were holding up one tree surround. We would love to see a wombat backing in and lining up to deliver his poo surprise at a strategically raised location.

Here is a recent example on a step edge in our garden. This scat is only one day old and already breaking down, being vegetarians their scats are decomposed very quickly by micro-organisms. We wonder what amazing locations we will come across next that will give us the next laugh.

For more information on local wildlife…

Finally I was in the right place at the right time. Wombats leave evidence of their presence, new wombat poos are around every morning, but we rarely see them. On this evening at dusk I just happened to be out with my camera in the local area and spotted a wombat who walked right past me. They are the cutest and funniest of wildlife that we have visiting our bushblock.

Wombats are herbivores and on our bushblock mostly graze on grasses. They really like the indigenous Weeping Grass – Microlaeana Stipoides and the wallaby grass species on our block a favorite is Velvet Wallaby-grass – Austrodanthonia pilosa. By having these herbivores around they are our sustainable lawn mowers - which we love!

Bush Rat - Rattus fuscipes. Volunteering trap and release program.

We spent the last weekend doing some volunteer work around Lake Mountain near Marysville. The area was severely burnt during the February 2009 bushfires and we joined up with some local Parks Victoria staff to set and bait “Elliot” traps amongst new growth of ground cover plants. The aim was to trap and release to see if we could find some of the rarer small mammals that were previously recorded in these mountain areas and see what had survived the devastating bushfire. We were particularly looking for a threatened species the Broad-toothed Rat - Masacomys fuscus.

Unfortunately on the day we helped out we didn’t find any Broad-toothed Rats but that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there! We did find lots of our native rat more commonly known as the Bush Rat – Rattus fuscipes. This Bush Rat is pretty cute, more softer looking than the introduced Brown and Black rats and have quite a different diet of native vegetation, fungi and insects - whereas the introduced ones eat pretty much anything and everything which can be devastating on the environment.

The native Bush Rat can be easily identified from a Brown or Black rat by the length of their tail, which is shorter than their body length. Brown and Black rats have tails longer than their body length.

We chose to volunteer our time to understand more about the local indigenous plants and wildlife in our local forest. Trapping animals gives us the chance to see animals that we may otherwise never see, as they are generally shy and nocturnal. The Bush Rat habitat relies on having good ground cover vegetation, habitat logs and leaf litter to provide food and shelter. Maybe this is why we also don’t see them on our bush block as many of our neighbours have cleared away their ground cover vegetation, habitat logs and leaf litter reducing the quality of their bush habitat.

Bush Rat in Elliot trap - ready for release.

As we live quite close to this mountain area and being a National Park (state government land) we believe that the land, forest and all it’s animals are the responsibility of all Victorians. It is really up to us to get involved, to find out what is out there and learn how we can continue to look after what we find.

The Short-beaked Echidna, Tachyglossus aculeatus who regularly visits us found some water in an old tyre and decided to take a bath. Old tyres can provide water habitats that don’t dry out as rapidly as more open water sources. We take care though as they can also be mosquito breeding grounds too.

More about Eric the echidna who visits us….

Flinders Ranges Yellow-footed Rock-wallabies at waterhole.

We recently visited both the southern and northern Flinders Ranges in South Australia. They are very beautiful, although a little weedy as they have had some serious disturbance through agriculture and feral animals like goats since european settlement in Australia. Having visited the southern Flinders Ranges about 15 years ago I was unable to spot a Yellow-footed Rock-wallaby – Petrogale xanthopus. We knew that the S.A. Parks system have done a lot of work since that time on removing feral animals like foxes and goats, which directly threaten the survival of Yellow-footed Rock-wallabies. So we hoped that this time around we might be lucky enough to see one (or more).

Classified as vulnerable to extinction by the Australian Government we really hoped that we could get a glimpse of one of the most beautiful mammals in Australia. The Yellow-footed Rock-wallaby – Petrogale xanthopus.

After 2 weeks we saw about 20 Yellow-footed Rock-wallabies at a number of locations in both the northern and southern Flinders Ranges. The first one was the most exciting, but the last ones were the most memorable. We were told that they regularly came down to drink at waterholes at dusk so we planted ourselves at a likely spot to sit quietly and wait. Down came Euros and other kangaroos but no Yellow-footed Rock-wallabies.

Flinders Ranges - Euro (kangaroo species) at waterhole.

Getting dark and starting to think we were out of luck we quietly packed away our things and started to get up off the rocks. As soon as we turned around we realised that there were 3 right behinds us. They are so quiet we hadn’t even heard them arrive. As we also had been so quiet and were moving so carefully we hadn’t startled them even though they were only a few metres away. We spent about 10 minutes staring at each other and then we moved off gently and quietly allowing them some time to get down to the waterhole and drink. It left both of us bush dudes feeling like we had shared something really special with this beautiful wild species.

The most important thing about enjoying an encounter like this is researching with locals to find the right place and then getting there early, being quiet, patient and willing to accept failure of not seeing what you are looking for.

Other biodiversity travel stories……

Eastern-grey Kangaroo joey first light after the bushfire.

There are many tragedies after a major bushfire event. We were lucky that we didn’t loose our house just all our sheds, garden and bush around us. But the emotional trauma is still huge especially when it comes to the loss of all the local wildlife that you are so passionate about.

Here was one sad story of a brave little character. We found this young joey at first light the morning after the bushfire. She had lost her mother and was all alone. She was big enough to be out of the pouch and probably couldn’t keep up with her mum in the confusion. We managed to catch her and take her inside to assess her health. The situation was not good. Her feet were very badly burnt. In fact you could see bone. We managed to contact our local Wildlife Sanctuary but with the bushfire situation still critical they themselves were in evacuation mode an unable to take her, but gave us advice on how to treat her in the short term.

n-grey Kangaroo joey burnt feet cleaned and bandaged.

We cleaned and dressed her wounds. She didn’t flinch once even though it must have been so painful, 2 of her toes even fell off. We gave her plenty of water to drink and a nice comfortable, quiet and safe place to try to recover. After 2 days we were able to take her to our local Wildlife Sanctuary where unfortuntely she had to be put down. We were so sad, but knew this was the right thing to do as her wounds were really bad.

On the brighter side the local mob of Eastern-Grey Kangaroos (probably her relatives) have bounced back and there is now quite a large group who continue to survive and hop through our block bringing us much joy.

It is really important to get expert advice (preferably local) on how to treat and manage wildlife if you ever find one injured or orphaned as otherwise you might actually hinder their chances of survival not help them.

Meet our echidna who visits us regularly – we decided to call him Eric. We saw the echidna in the first couple of weeks after the bushfire. He survived and as echidna food (ants) were plentiful after the bushfire it provided him with plenty to eat. The ants after the bushfire were amazing and they took full advantage of the abundance of eucalypt seed that was all over the ground dropped by the tall trees in the couple of weeks after the bushfire event.

We have seen Eric the echidna many times again since the spring following the bushfire. We never see echidnas over the winter due to echidnas going into a kind of semi-hibernation called torpor through the colder months to conserve their energy.

Eric bathing in an old tyre…