Location: Nattai National Park, NSW

Hanging out with: George

Connection: George and Serena met at the University of Sydney when they were doing their Masters in Wildlife Health and Population Management course. George then volunteered for Graeme during his PhD fieldwork and since then George and Graeme have worked together on many fieldwork jobs across Australia.

We spent a day with George on his current job of catching koalas in Nattai National Park . The koala population in this area has been dubbed “the forgotten population” as people didn’t even realise they were there. A bushfire went through a few years ago and many koalas were found dead after trying to escape the fire by crossing the road and then sadly were hit by cars.

Since then, the council has been pro-active in trying to get some information regarding the koala population in the area. This is where George comes in. He has tree-climbing licence (yes you need a licence to climb trees) and special equipment to ‘encourage’ the koala to climb down the tree so that it can be caught. These koalas are getting full health checks by a vet and then radio-collared so that their movements can be tracked.

However, on our day out, even with 12 people searching for koala (three of whom started at 4am in the morning), we didn’t find a single koala that day. That’s the life of a wildlife ecologist. A few days later George sent us some photos of his successful catch which included a mum and joey.

Although Graeme and I didn’t see a koala, it was a beautiful day to be walking in the bush. I also got a little distracted with bird watching. I saw a beautiful wedge-tailed eagle that was only 5 meters away on a tree branch at eye-level. Couldn’t get the camera out in time but the image will stay in my memory for a long time.

 

Summary stats

• Location: A farm half-way between Gunning and Collector
• Hanging out with: Steve and Emma
• Connection: We met Steve through our friends Pete and Kia (best to remember those names as our tour of NSW is essentially based around visiting Pete and Kia’s friends and family, with the exception of our Sydney friends/family)
• Weather: -7°C the night we arrived

We departed Melbourne around midday on Friday 3^rd July. Victoria didn’t really get much of a look-in, aside from a brief stop in Wodonga to visit Graeme’s godparents, Aunty Joy and Uncle Tony.

First destination, Carmarthan (did I spell that correctly??), Steve and Emma’s property half-way between Gunning and Collector. And as I predicted, Graeme did not sleep in the camper on the first night as he said he would, which is lucky because is got to -7 degrees that night.

A touch of frost

Steve and Emma work full-time in Canberra, plus run their farm, plus expecting a baby in August! That’s an awful lot on their plate so we were happy to help out around the farm. We had some “fun” weeding the paddocks and burning off unwanted plant material which meant a few bonfires to warm us up.

Tyson has taken to farm life like a duck to water, riding on the back of utes and meeting cows, horses and chooks for the first time with out causing too much trouble.

And no visit to Collector is complete without having a meal at the local pub. It was probably about 5 degrees inside the pub but the publican clearly thought it was warm enough since he was walking around in shorts, thongs (flip flops) and T-shirt and didn’t feel it was necessary to get the fire going in the dinning room.

We have 6 months to get from Melbourne to Perth and our main aim of the trip is to see the northern coast. We are also limited by the start of the wet season so ideally we’d like to be out of the tropics by mid- November at the latest.

The map shows our general plan. We’re on a tight schedule until the Wildlife Disease Association conference in Maroochydoore at the end of July, but after that we’ll be cruising along at our own pace.

So consider this your open invitation to come join us anywhere along our path. You’ll have to bring your own car and equipment though. If you want to join us somewhere out there then please email us.

 

 

I’m new to this blogging thing so it might take a while until I get to know what I’m doing.  The idea of this blog is so that friends and family can follow us on our adventures.

In July we are heading out for 6 months on a 4WD trip around Australia. Currently we are busy packing up our life in New Zealand and preparing for our Australian outback adventure.