Stewart Island, New Zealand

3rd - 4th Feb

Stewart Island was another of my ‘must see’ destinations in New Zealand and one of the reasons why I opted for a car rather than a bus pass.

I drove from Queenstown to Invercargill in time for lunch and after much flapping around eventually managed to find the local Information office where I was able to book the ferry, accommodation and an evening guided tour on the island all for later on that day.

I actually had a whole afternoon to kill in Invercargill which from what was available is a lot of time!

I found the obligatory Irish pub and had my obligatory bangers and mash. In my time of travelling around Australia and New Zealand I was starting to become an expert on Irish pubs and their bangers and mash (I have never found proper champ). This was by far the worst I had ever tasted. The sausages tasted awful – I wasn’t sure if they were actually supposed to taste like that and was pretty sure they were off. Being a true softy I did not complain and tried to stomach as much as I could before leaving half of it (had to finish the pint however!)

I was at a lose for something to do in the afternoon then I remembered that the Information centre was actually part of a museum complex so I went back and asked how much it cost to go in. Nothing was the reply – you can leave a donation at the end of your visit.. Exactly what a backpacker wants to hear.


As well as being a museum and art gallery they also house a rather impressive tuatara exhibit.

Featured Animal: Tuatara

The tuatara is a reptile which has been around for over 150m years. It may look like a lizard but the two species are in fact the only remaining members of a very old line of reptiles and they only exist in New Zealand. The Invercargill museum has been successfully breeding the commoner species Sphenodon punctatus (don’t ask me how to pronounce it!) and have over 50 specimens. It has also been trying to breed the much rarer Sphenodon guntheri which only exists on one off shore island. All remaining wild tuatara from both species are confined to off shore islands due to introduced pests killing off all the mainland animals.

Heres more info from Wikipedia.

As well as the tuataras the museum houses an art exhibitions (mostly modern art and not really my cup of tea) and a rather good exhibition on Maori culture. There were also ones on local history including one about the ‘Worlds Fastest Indian’ which at the time I skipped over but now wish I hadn’t. Two weeks later I happened to watch a movie staring Anthony Hopkins which was called the same name. Its about Burt Munro who successfully set the world speed record for motorcycles (under 1000cc) in the 60’s using a vey old make of motor bike called Indian.

Again more info from wikipedia (hey I’m lazy!)

For the entrance fee of nothing (I did pop $2 into the donation box) it’s a very good museum and deceptively large as I ran out of time walking round it and had to motor down to the Stewart Island Ferry.

The trip over to stewart island took about an hour and was pretty choppy. It also has the distinction of being one of the most expensive foot passenger ferries I have ever been on - $120 return which is scandalous! Once on the island I quickly made my way to the backpackers and booked into a rather small 3 bed cabin – which luckily I had all to myself.

So whats so special about Stewart island? 26,000 Kiwis that’s what (The bird not the people) Stewart island does not have any stoats (it does, however, have rats and possum) this has meant that kiwis do rather well on the island. In fact it is only place in New Zealand where it is possible to see them during the day.

I thought all I had to do was arrive on the island, go on the evening tour and I would see loads of the wee critters. As per usual I had not done my homework. When I went on the evening tour (with an Irish couple from Cork/Kerry and an old American couple) I quickly realised that we were not going to see any kiwis and in fact in order to have a good chance of seeing them you had to go to the other side of the island which takes two days hiking!

Because of that I was slightly disappointed with the evening tour as our guide only managed to show us 1 possum! In fairness the tour does not claim that you will see kiwis or any other wildlife and is more geared towards history and flora – I should have looked more closely before I booked it.

The next morning I had to make the decision to either stay longer on the island or get the ferry back that day. After the disappointment of the previous night I decided to get off the island that afternoon but before going I booked a return boat trip to Ulva island which the Irish couple recommended – and I am so glad I did.

Ulva island is a small island in one of the bays of Stewart island and has been irradicated of all intoduced pests including rats and possums. This means that only birds exist on the island.

The ferry over was actually just a small boat which a local guy charged $20 return for the 5-10 minute trip to the island (again a bit of a rip off but I didn’t care) It went from a bay just over the hill from Oban, the main (only!) settlement . Once on the island you can walk around marked trails searching for the elusive wildlife.

The 3 hours I spent on Ulva made the trip to Stewart Island all worthwhile. It was full of birds which seemed to have no fear of humans at all. I seen loads of Tuis but also some birds I had not encountered before such as the saddleback which does not exist on the mainland and red and yellow crowned parakeets. The Stewart island robins were especially easy to get close to – one hopped right next to my leg at one point.

The only down side to the trip was that as well as the other people who came on the ferry with me there was also another boat with a guided tour and three further lots of middle aged american tourists from a cruise ship anchored in the bay. I kept bumping into at least one of these groups – complete with their state of the art headsets so that everyone could hear their guide. As well as the headsets they all seemed to wear brightly coloured raincoats, walking poles and stupid leggings. I just thought that it would be a nightmare to be on that cruise ship surrounded by such people!

Once back from Ulva I made my way back to the hostel via a marked track around the coast and then headed back on the 3pm ferry to the mainland.

3 hours later I was in my next hostel up the east coast in the heart of the catlins area of New Zealand..

Animals I have seen:
Saddleback
Stewart Island Robin (subspecies of New Zealand Robin)
Yellow crowed Parekeet
Red crowned Parakeet
Kaka (smaller relative of the kea)

Animals I HAVE NOT seen
Kiwi – any species!

facebook photos

Glacier Hike - Franz Joseph, New Zealand

28th-30th Jan



Before I arrived in Franz Joseph I phoned ahead and booked what looked to be the best hostel going by BBH ratings. Booking was a long drawn out process as the Kiwi girl on the other end of the phone didn’t seem to understand a word I said. It doesn’t seem to matter if I say my name is Ray, Raymond or bleeding Rasputin nobody seems to understand me the first time. For this booking I had to resort to police mnemonics.

Kiwi: I am sorry could you repeat that name please.
Me: Its Ray that’s R for Romeo, A for Andy, Y for Why don’t you bloody understand me I am speaking English!

I arrived at my Back packers in Franz Joseph at about 6pm. An English girl was on reception and when she heard my voice she said – ah yes you must be the Irish guy who phoned earlier. The Kiwi girl said there would be an Irish guy arriving who she couldn’t understand. Just as well the English girl could.

Once I had booked in I had to decide what to do tomorrow. I knew I was going to the Glacier but I did not know how or for how long. I started asking round via phone texts to people I knew had already been here. The 3 options were:

1. Don’t do a guided hike but simply walk to the base of the glacier and take photos. I immediately dismissed this option. I did not come all the way to New Zealand to not walk on a glacier.
2. Option 2 was a half day walk which took you onto the ice for about 2 hours
3. Option 3 was a full day hike which had you on the glacier for at least 5 hours.

The problem with option 3 is that it was described in the brochure as adventurous and for fit people. I was neither!

I still had not decided by the time I went to bed after a ‘couple’ of pints at the local bar.

Early the next morning I went round to the guide place and booked myself onto the full day hike – what the hell you only live once!

DM was going to come with me but we decided to leave Taz behind as it may prove to be too risky:

DM explaining to Taz about the risks



Poor Taz – don’t worry we left one window slightly open and some water for him to drink – I am not cruel!

At 9am I went back to get kitted out along with over 40 other people who would be doing the hike with me. A looked around at the other people trying to gauge how fit they were from age, weight and height. I saw enough old, fat or tiny people to ensure that I had nothing to worry about.

Each person was given an overcoat, leggings, hat, gloves, boots and most important of all ice crimps for putting on the boot soles. Then it was onto the bus and the 10 minute drive to the start of the hike. To get to the bottom of the glacier meant that we had to walk at least 2km from where the car park was – over some rough terrain as well.

Before we started walking up through the valley to the actual glacier we were put in groups of 11 – 4 groups in total. Rather than have the guides decide who went were we were asked to assess ourselves in terms of how fit we are. The ones who thought they were the fittest would be in team A. They would be ascending the glacier the quickest. The next 2 groups would be for people who thought they were quite fit and the last group would be for the people who wanted to take it nice and slow. They would still get there – just not as quick as the others. Guess where I went – Group D!

After we had sorted our group out our guide Kevin asked us to introduce ourselves to the rest of the group. I knew I had chosen the right group when the first guy introduced himself

‘Hi I’m Steve, from Ireland and my biggest drinking injury was….!’

And so it went round the rest. Each saying there name, where they were from and what there biggest drinking injury was. I thought I had them stumped when It came to my turn:

‘I’m Ray from Ireland and my biggest drinking injury was breaking my Elbow’ I looked smugly around me thinking ‘Beat that’. The next guy beside me said well Mine wasn’t a drinking injury but I did have a motorcycle accident and lost my foot which was sewn back on. Okay he beat me!

It turned out that most of my group were from a Kiwi Experience bus. As well as Steve there was 3 cork girls (all nurses), and 5 English Guys – one Doug was well into his 50’s. It was going to be an interesting hike

We started our walk to the glacier which went through forested areas as well as rivers and rocks. By the time we got to the actual glacier we were all quite poopped. At the bottom of the glacier we were shown how to put on are crimps then it was up onwards and upwards onto the ice.


Are we nearly there yet?


Upwards onto the glacier


DM helps with the icepick carrying


It soon became apparent thet some people were fitter than others on our group. One of the English guys – a big guy called Steve was not enjoying himself at all. I thought it was great and not half as bad as imagined.

We went through Ice caves:


And crevices:


and up steep ice stairs:





Getting further and further to where we would stop and have lunch (which we had to have prepared ourselves) One of the Cork girls Midge had already munched through about 2 chocolate bars by this stage.

It was soon after Lunch that Steve gave up – he just was not enjoying himself so Kevin was able to put him in a group that was already descending the glacier.


The crew minus Big Steve

The rest of us went on up the ice sheets getting into ever steeper crevices.



Everything was going great until our Guide Kevin decided to try to get past us all by scaling a vertical ice wall:



2 Seconds after this photo was taken he slipped and fell to the bottom dislocating his shoulder!

In all credit to him he carried on with the rest of the trip even though he was in agony. One of the Cork girls offered to give him some pain killers which he refused more out of Pride then common sense.

The journey back down the Glacier was more dangerous than on the way up. Partly this was due to being tired but also because Kevin had decided to go at a breakneck speed so he could get down in time. I nearly went over on my ankle a couple of times. Eventually we all got off the glacier and started the long march back to the bus which seemed to take an eternity (why is does it always seem twice as far when you go back down a path!).

Finally we were in the bus and heading back to the hostel. It was exhausting but I think that was because of the time not the distance or the effort – I am really glad I did the full day.

That night we all met up again in the Kiwi Experience peoples hostel to partake in some beverages. Kevin even turned up to say that the Nurse had looked at his shoulder and he should be back at work again next week!

The next morning I had planned to go and do a half day Kayak at Okirito Lagoon which is supposed to be a very famous wetland area in New Zealand. Sadly it started raining so I decided it would not be a good idea to be out on a lagoon so I started on my way to Wanaka via sight seeing stops like Fox Glacier and the blue pools on the way.

Facebook pics

Nelson, New Zealand

25th - 27th Jan
At Noon on Sunday I picked up my hire car which I would be using for the next 32 days. It turned out to be a small Mazda Masio. It was a funny looking thing which looked sort of like a miniature people carrier. It had lots of stone chippings at the front which was good – I would rather have a beat up hire car than a brand new one. This one was anything but brand new – it had 160,000 km on the clock and it was also an automatic (they all seem to be automatics here).

I went back to the backpackers and put all my stuff in, said goodbye to Brecht and I was on my way.

My first stop was supposed to be Kaikoura (see glossary update) but instead I decided to drive all the way to Nelson to meet up with my Friends Lloyd and Deirdre. It was a Long journey – over 400k and I had to stop every now and then for food and naps but I finally made it at around 7pm that night. I had been in touch with Lloyd about where they were staying which was supposed to be the Paradiso so I phoned them up and booked in for two nights. However, when I got there I discovered they had moved to another backpacker place in town because they did not like the Paradiso (the kitchen was a mess and it was too rowdy the previous night) As I had already booked in before I knew this I had to stay there for the next two nights!

After checking in to my rather small 4 bed dorm (top bunk of course!) I went to Lloyd and Deirdre’s far better hostel to meet them. It was good to finally meet somebody I knew from back home. After some food and beer I said goodbye to them and headed back to my noisy hostel. The next day we would be wine tasting!

Raymond and Lloyd's Wine Tasting tour:



With special guests Taz and DM

Deirdre had very kindly volunteered to do the driving while myself and Lloyd (who is from Belfast too) sampled the wines:

Our first winery was supposed to be ‘The Grape Escape’ but it was no longer doing tastings – not a good start.

So our first proper tasting was at a place called Seigfried’s which was owned by an Austrian family. We paid $6 each for about 6 wine tastings which was refunded if you bought a wine – which Lloyd did – so he got his money back. I decided that it would be a very expensive day if I bought a bottle of plonk at each winery.

Stop two was at a place called Kaimira.


From the outside it looked as if the place was a just a warehouse but when we got in it had all these funky looking pictures and furniture – very original. Our taste master (or what ever they are called!) turned out to be a very nice English girl who gave us both big measures to taste of each wine – and they were free! In the end we both bought a bottle of wine each.


Sorted!

After a stop off for some pics of St Michaels Anglican church we headed to our third winery at Woolaston Estates.


Church

Stop number 3


This place was very unusual – owned by a rich American and you could tell from the layout. It had an art gallery exhibiting VERY expensive modern art paintings. After our tasting (again free) we bought some more wine and decided to have our lunch in the picnic area outside. Deirdre had brought a all sorts of goodies to make sandwiches and nibbles out of while we slurped away at a bottle of Reisling from the winary. I have to say that if it had been me preparing the lunch it would have consisted of bread, ham and mayo and nothing else – that’s the difference between men and women (or is just between everyone else and me!).


As I was saying


The lines look straight to me!


$18,000 for this!


Sophisticated lunch

Back to the tasting!

Stop 4 was at a place called Neudorf which had more art work to admire (or abuse!)



Hey look at me!


More wine buying

Our final winery was at sunset valley which we got to just in time as he was about to close up. More wine purchases! I had 3 bottles by this stage and Lloyd and Deirdre must have had about 5 or 6!

Stop number 5


After the wineries we made one last stop before heading back to Nelson – A brewery! Here we could also pay for a tasting of their ales – fantastic!


I am doing my homer simpson drooling impersonation!


corrr!


Stop number 6


That's stop number 6


Did I say it say stop number 6?



Our Driver Deirdre is feeling the pace!



Deirdre - best wine tour driver ever!


Then finally it was back to Nelson – slightly drunk. After a minor walkabout the cathedral area while waiting for Lloyd and Deirdre to refresh we all went to a local establishment for some final drinks before parting company for the night.


Ah - paradise!

Before I left to continue on my journey I met up with Lloyd one last time to climb up to the ‘centre of New Zealand’ monument. After 20 knackering minutes of hiking up a hill we came to the rather sorry looking monument. This apparently marks the exact middle of New Zealand from North to South and East to West. Still the view was nice.


Centre of New Zealand - big deal!

I said my goodbyes to Lloyd and Deirdre and then I was on my way for another long journey back to Punikeiki of all places!

Facebook pics

Strahan Dec 2nd - Dec 4th

Now that xmas is over I can finally get some time to update the blog.

So where was I - oh Yeah Tasmania and Strahan. Strahan is a small town on the west coast of Tassie which basically serves as a starting point for very expensive cruises up the gordon river - which I did not do. You can also go on the West Coast Wilderness railway to Queenstown which is also expensive and which I also did not do. You can even do sightseeing tours by seaplane which - yep - I did not do.

What I did do is walk around the wharf area of the town which took about 10 minutes and then went back to my cosy cabins bunk and had an early night.

The plan the next day was to do a day trip to Lake St Clair and do a bit of walking before coming back to Strahan. Along the way I would do small detours.

So at about 10am I got in the car and headed out along the windy roads to Queenstown. Queenstown is bloody awful looking because its basically built in a quarry. It looks like a moonscape.

Next stop was Nelson Falls which was a 5 minute walk from the carpark and was an absolute torrent probably due to the recent rains. I got soaked with spray from it while taking this picture.



It should be like this! (from information board):



After Nelson falls I drove on for another 15 odd minutes passing by the carpark for the Frenchmans Peak bushwalk which is supposed to be an even harder trek than the overland. After another 20 minutes I stopped for another small walk - this time to the Franklin river - but it was quite boring with nothing of interest.

Back into the car and more driving along windy roads. I passed another carpark for the Frenchmans Peak trail. After about another 20 minutes of windy roads I started to wonder just where the hell the Mt St Clair turn off was. I was also wondering how it was weird to have 2 carparks for the Frenchmans trek when I turned a corner and seen the carpark for Nelson Falls. I had bleeding gone back the way I had came! I pulled into the carpark and sat cursing at my stupidity for about 10 minutes. (Its not a good idea to take your frustration out on a partly open bottle of water which went all over the place). I finally decided that it would take too much time to go back to Mount St Clair and decided to head back to Strahan.

My doubling back actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise as after some food I made my way to Oceans Beach for the sunset via Macuarie Head.

Rainbow and Boat at Macuarie Head

Sunset at oceans Beach

As well as a wonderful sunset I also got to witness another magical twilight animal moment. Thousands of shorttailed shearwaters (or muttonbirds as they are called) nest along the dunes of oceans beach and every night during summer they head back at dusk to feed their chicks. It was an amazing sight to see. I stood looking back at the dunes as these birds flew and squawked around me in the sky getting ever and ever closer to earth as they circled. They looked just like giant bats and some of them ended up coming very close to me as they flew about. I tried to take some photos and video but it was just too dark. Its just one of those things you have to see for yourself.

Here is some guff on a noticeboard about the birds.



The next day I left Straham and went the same route to Mount St Clair. This time I actually stopped at the Frenchmans Peak car park and myself Dm and Taz went down to this great ropebridge.


DM and Taz

Of course for Dm this was not dangerous enough so he tried walking on the siderails!

Dm Acting the maggot

This time I actually got to Mt St Clair and was able to do a small walk near the lake. It was not as spectacular as Cradle Mountain but was still a nice wee walk.

The Great Divide - on way to Lake St Clair

Lake St Clair

After the Walk I had a long long drive back to Hobart to finish off my trip.

ANIMALS I HAVE SEEN
Wombat - Cradle Mountain 1st Dec
Potaroo - Cradle Mountain 1st Dec
Shorttailed Shearwater - Ocean Beach 3rd Dec
Green rosella - Shraham 2nd Dec

Grampians - 9th Nov - 12th Nov

The Trapper family!

My first proper conservation Holiday in Oz was a 'Naturewise' trip organised by the Conservation volunteers, Australia. It was a 4 day all inclusive trip in Grampians National Park to trap and survey mammals. The Park has an ongoing fox baiting (that's poisoning to you and me) programme to try and keep the numbers down and they survey mammals in baited and unbaited areas to see what effect the programme is having.

I met our team leader Prue at 9am at the Melbourne office along with another volunteer Anita. We then had to drive for 3 hours up to the park to meet the rest of the volunteers at the YHA hostel in Hall's Gap were we would be staying. The hostel looked great - it was touted as an eco hostel complete with total recycling facilities and was very spic and span. I would say it was the cleanest hostel I had seen on this trip so far.

Two of the remaining volunteers, Kim and Barb, were already waiting at the hostel for us. Another group of volunteers had already been trapping for the previous 3 days and the remaining volunteers, Robert and Sue, were staying on from this group. They arrived soon after us with bad news - they had not managed to trap any mammals - just a couple of stumpys.

After lunch we went and met Mike the park ranger, who was in charge of the project, for a briefing on what we would be doing. For about the fifth time that day I introduced myself as 'Ray' and each time all I got was confused looks from the other person. 'Is that Roy? Rich? sorry I didn't get that' 'Its Ray!' 'OH you mean Raaay! ' as they pronounced it with their Australian twang which made it sound like they were speaking through their nose.

After the briefing we were dropped off in the centre of Hall's Gap so we could get essentials for the the coming night (you should all know by now what I am talking about when I say essentials - it's brewed, comes in bottles and is cold - yep - Iced tea!). That night we had a massive meal of moussaka (of sorts as the recipe was really for a pasta type sauce rather than real moussaka) and pasta with apple crumble to follow - and yours truly had to make the apple crumble! The food on this holiday reminded me of my National Trust holiday were you spent most of your time either preparing to eat, eating, cleaning up after eating before preparing for the next meal. Every now and then you did some work - in between eating.

Because we all had to get up at 5am (YES 5am!!!) the next morning (in order to be able to have breakfast and get to the rangers depot for 6am ) everyone went to bed early. The next day I got up exhausted having not managed to get any sleep and hastily grabbed some breakfast before everyone headed to the ranger station to transfer to the Parks Utes one driven by Mike and one by another ranger Sylvia. Then it was out to check the traps. The reason for getting up so early was quite simple. Any animal caught in the trap would be subjected to the lethal warmth of the Aussi sun if left too long so we had to make sure we got to the traps first.

We split up into groups and checked two lines of traps having first put on Gaiters to protect our lower legs from thorns and snakes. Me and my partner Sue soon found a trap with a stumpy in it and called Mike to come and process it. Each animal has to be weighted and sexed (if possible - stumpys are pretty impossible to sex) before being marked so that it can be identified if its re caught in another trap. For stumpy lizards the marking consisted of dabbing the top of its head with a white marker pen. So after the trapping programme we had a lot of lizards running around looking like they should be in a bollywood musical. Nobody else seemed to catch anything in their traps until Mike called out on the radio to say they had caught a Heath mouse.

We all ran over to see it. I am sure most of you are thinking 'its only a bloody mouse' but we were all dead excited to have finally caught something worthwhile. Again it had to be sexed which meant looking at its knacker region (it was a male btw) and then it had to be marked so that it could be identified if recaptured. For the mammals instead of a mark on the head they had the indignity of getting some hair cut off their backside. After weighing the mouse it was released back into the thicket.

Heath mouse


One cut and blow dry coming up!

On that first day we managed to get several stumpys, 1 heath mouse and an Antechinus which is a shrew like marsupial. Mike was able to show us its pouch in its back (it was female). There was also one unwelcome visitor caught in the traps on the first day - a red bellied black snake which is highly venomous. The Rangers waited until all the other traps had been checked before releasing the snake - from a very safe distance. The wee bastard had to be coaxed out of the trap before it finally slithered away.

Antechinus

Unwelcome Red bellied black snake

The good thing about getting up so early was that we were finished by 12 which meant that after we transferred back from the Utes to the CVA minibus we could go somewhere in the Grampians to have lunch. We drove to a place called Mackenzie falls for lunch then went for a walk to the falls for some photos. After that we went to a couple of picturesque viewing places on the way back to Hall's Gap. Tea on the second day was a Barby (it is Australia after all!) which consisted off burnt chicken - done by me on the BBQ before one of the other volunteers Robert took charge of it, loads of sausages, burgers, corn on the cob, potato wedges and enough tossed salad to feed a small army. Half the sausages and burgers end up being kept for lunch the next day.

Day 2 of checking the traps was not nearly as fruitful as day 1 I think we only got 1 heath mouse if that. In the afternoon after lunch and helping the rangers put together brochures for a major event happening the next day (see below) we went for a small walk beside a wooded creek. In 2006 the Grampians Park had a major forest fire which burnt away over 40% of the park. It was amazing to see how quickly the trees recovered but it was still a major blow to the park and we could still see the difference between burnt and unburnt areas on our walk. Tea that night consisted of Shepard's pie made from the moussaka leftovers from the first night and chicken burritos. Again there was just too much to eat and half the chicken and salad had to be packed up for lunch the next day. Before we started to eat the owner of the hostel rushed in and pointed out a brown snake making its way to the chicken house. I just managed to spot it before it disappeared into undergrowth. As with the red-bellied the brown snake is extremely venomous.

After dinner some of us went outside to see if we could spot any bats in the approaching twilight (avoiding the brown snake!) I thought the nightlife of Africa was loud until Australia. There were all sorts of bird and insect sounds especially Kookaburras. I always laugh now when I see an old tarzan film with a soundtrack of kookaburras in the jungle - its like a tiger in Africa!

The checking of the traps on day 3 had to be done ASAP. This was because we had been invited to see the event we had been folding brochures for the previous day. One of the major reasons for all the fox baiting that had been going on in the last 3 years was to pave the way for the reintroduction of Brush tailed rock wallabies back into the Grampians mountains. These small roos used to be common in Victoria but now only consisted of 1 remnant population away to the east of the state. This day was a culmination of years of preparation with the release of the first 10 wallabies. We got to the camp site where all the bigwigs made speeches to the all the guests of honour before being transferred by bus to the actual release site. Because we were only lowly plebes we had to wait for the second bus load to be taken to the site.

Reintroduction website - I am lazy enough to let it talk about featured animal!

News article

The release site of Morra Morra creek was set in a large gorge in the mountains. We got there just in time to see them release the last wallaby. Because they wanted to reduce the stress to the animals only a select group of film crews and dignitaries got to see the release close up. The rest of us had to be content with viewing it from the top of the cliffs. Still we did just about see the critter jump off into the bush (if you had binoculars!) and it was a great feeling to be part of the experience.

After the release it was back to hostel to pack up (and eat more!) before heading back to Melbourne.

We got back to the CVA hostel at about 8pm. I have to say really enjoyed the whole experience. It was great to get some 'hands on' volunteering where you could actually see the animals you were trying to help. The disappointing thing was the lack of animals in the traps which did not bode well. In both baited and unbaited areas the number of animals we caught were down on previous years. Of course foxes are not the only problem in the area - 2 feral cats were seen by us while we were travelling around checking the traps and as any cat owner knows they will anything and everything they get their paws on. Luckily a rock wallaby is too big for a cat.


Glossary Update:

G:
Gaiter: Noun, (For the non hiking people) Its a piece of fabric strapped to the bottom half of your legs to keep them from getting mucked up when hiking. In Australia they use them to avoid thorn snags or even worse snake bites. Not to be confused with Garters which would be very stupid thing to wear when avoiding snakes or Gaters which would certainly help avoid snakes but would probably bite your leg off.

Gramps: Aussi slang: Short for Grampians. As is usual Aussis will always try to shorten a word and give it an endearing slant to it.


Things that I have Learnt:

There is a bat in Australia (whose name escapes me) which was discovered to be in fact two species of bat but the only way to distinguish the species was to check the size of the bats penis. One of them has a penis larger than the other. Naturally the Aussis have nicknamed the two species big dick and little dick!

The Antechinus male has such a fierce mating season that they all die afterwards leaving just the females to reproduce the next generation.


People I have met/seen: (new category)

I forgot to mention before that the English Girl Jen I met in Perth had the unlucky distinction of having been on the flight from Singapore to Perth which decided to try and fly by itself. She was lucky in that she had her seat belt fastened but seen other people literally fly up into the parcel shelf. She says she seen someone whose head had actually gone through the shelf! Not a nice experience!

I seen a girl walking a ferret on a lead in the middle of Sydney - very weird.

There is a guy called Ciaran living in the hostel in Melbourne who had a 'bit part' in the film Angela's Ashes. When he told us we looked it up on Youtube and sure enough there he is as a teenager. Here is the link:

He is the one who shouts 'Langer'!

Angelas Ashes

AND FINALLY!

One animal we did manage to trap was of course the fiercest one known to man:



After he was released DM managed to catch and subdue an Emu for riding.



My attempt at making films - Dm riding an emu (don't ask) I was supposed to say Riding through the glen NOT running as in "Robin hood" - again don't ask!