Wambiana Cattle Station

Posted on Sunday, May 17th, 2015 at 12:10am

Sorry for not posting in so long. I honestly just haven't been in the mood to write lately.

Originally started on Tuesday, May 5th, 2015 at 7:01pm (oops)

Hey peoples! I'm back from semester break. If you can even call it a break lol. Let me put it this way, the times I woke up in the morning for the first 7 days of break were 6:30am, 5:30am, 5:30am, 3:30am, 7:30am, 7:30am and 5:00am. It was well worth it though. I'll write about Orpheus Island in the next blog. I'm going to focus on the trip to the Wambiana Cattle Station in this one.

We arrived at Wambiana around 11am on Saturday, April 25th. We dropped our stuff off in our accommodation, which was literally a large shed with small free standing bunk beds, girls on one side of the dividing wall, guys on the other. It was interesting to say the least. After that, we had an hour of introductions and safety information etc. We also met the family that owns the station. After lunch we got into our groups and headed out to the different sampling sites. We started in a biome known as Pandanus which had a ton of large spiky plants.

(Continued on Sunday, May 17th, 2015 at 10:05pm)

In the Pandanus biome we were taught how to create and set up pit traps. A bucket was set into the ground and we dug a very shallow trench that stretched 5m on either side of the bucket. Then we hammered wire posts into ground along the trench and used those to hold up a piece of fabric. Then we filled in the trench to stabilize the fabric. The logic of pit traps is that animals run into the fabric and then, because they can't climb it, run along it instead. If they run the right (or wrong, if you're the animal) way they fall into the bucket and can't climb out. Basically if you looked at the trap from above it looked kind of like this: -----(--)----- with the - being the fabric and the ( ) being the bucket (Actual pics are posted in the usual spot). At the ends of the pit traps we set up two funnel traps, one on each side, for those animals who ran the wrong (or right) way. After 8 sets of pit traps and funnel traps were set up, we set 50 Elliot traps and four cage traps with bait in them. Lastly we set up three camera traps in hopes of "catching" a dingo.

After all that we went to the lagoon to conduct about an hour's-worth of waterbird surveys and learned how to identify them using the field guides.There is only one species of pelican here in Australia and they're really impressive birds. If you think the pelicans in the states are big, you should see the ones here. We saw seven of them sitting down by the water. After the waterbird surveys we got back into our jeep and returned to the homestead for a home-cooked meal. When we were done, everyone left to go spotlighting. I wasn't feeling too great at this point, I was probably dehydrated, so I decided to stay behind, shower up and then get some sleep.

The next day, Sunday, we got up at 5:30am for breakfast. Then we headed out to a new site to check the traps and see if we caught anything. The site that my group and I went to was the box site named for all of the box trees there. I found a little lizard in one of the funnel traps and someone else found the same species of lizard in another funnel trap. Due to the drought, that's all we caught. We relaxed for little while waiting for the sun to come up further before we started an active search for reptiles. We saw several grey kangaroos and it turns out that they were being chased by a dingo. Unfortunately I was a little too far away to see the dingo but some of my group members were only a few meters away when it ran past. We spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon back at the homestead identifying the animals that everyone had caught at the various sites. Again, because of the drought there were relatively few animals caught so we got a lot of down time. I used the time to relax and read. I was on semester break after all. In the mid afternoon we got back into the jeep and traveled to the bendee site, again named for the trees, to open the traps back up. We got another few hours of down time at the lagoon afterwards. Then came my favorite part: kangaroo surveys. We drove around in the jeep counting and identifying the kangaroos we saw. We made a quick stop at the riparian site to see what it looked like and then continued our search. This is when I say my first wallaroo and my first red kangaroo. Red kangaroos are really incredible animals. You don't realize just how big and powerful they are until you see one in person. When we returned to the homestead it was dinner and then spotlighting like the previous night. We went back to the bendee site after releasing some captured frogs back into the mostly dried up river where they were caught the night before. At the site we found a rare lizard and lots of little wolf spiders. We also saw a few smaller marsupials and rodents as we were driving. When we got back to the homestead there was a bon fire. I stayed for a while and then turned in for the night knowing that my busy week was only starting.

The next morning we were up at 5:30am again, then breakfast and checking the traps at the ironbark site. We caught a bettong in one of the cage traps and a possum in another. Other than those and another lizard, the traps were empty. We then did a bird survey and a vegetation survey before heading back to the homestead to identify a few more animals. Then we got on the bus and headed back to JCU.

Pics have been posted for some time. Hope everything is going well back in the states!

Later peoples!