Last oz volunteer day 18th Dec

My last volunteer outing in Australia was a simple a 1 day jaunt to Melbourne Wildlife Sanctuary. This is basically a piece of land near the University which has been (badly) fenced in as a piece of native woodland. The university are currently in the process of replacing the fence with a proper one which is designed to keep cats and foxes out (a bit different from the electrical fences in South Africa which are designed to keep animals in).

Beside the actual sanctuary are the office buildings and a well set up native plant nursery. They is also had a small lake which seemed to be teeming with frogs judging by the noises coming from it. Around the buildings cheeky magpies roamed. I only discovered how cheeky the magpies were when during lunchtime one of the rangers sandwich was swiped by while he was momentarily distracted. The place also had purple swamp hens which came right up to the buildings also looking to snatch a morsal or two.

We were not actually doing any chores in the santuary itself but ended up working on a piece of land set aside as a sort of corridor between the sanctuary and another piece of native woodland.

One of the other volunteers turned out to be a Scottish girl so I thought it was ironic that are primary work was to pullout thistles! Another twist about this particular place was that it was full of black wattle - a plant I had to pull out in South Africa. Here, however it is a native species and is incouraged to grow.

After Lunch we planted some kangaroo apple tree saplings (so called because their leaves look like a kangaroo's foot) before heading back to the CVA office.

Its a pity we never got to go into the actual sanctuary and its also a pity I never bothered taking any photos (I can't remember why now - probably my batteries went dead again). It was still a nice way to end my Aussi volunteering.