Enclosure

The crocs are going to be a little pissed off when they arrive. If you were happily sitting out the front of your house one day, minding your own business and then suddenly some bastard throws a net over you, ties you up, gives you a little grope to see whether you’re male or female, blindfolds you, and then drags you to some place you’ve never been before and lets you go, well you’d probably be a little pissed off too.

Ideally we’d like our crocs to stay around, hopefully have a little romance and, all things going well, pop out a few kids. If we chuck them straight in the water after their capture ordeal, chances are they’ll take the first exit they come across and will disappear back down the river in no time.

To (hopefully) stop this we’re going to ease them into their new home by putting them in an enclosure for a week or two after we bring them to the wetlands (add ‘forced imprisonment’ to our charges of ‘kidnapping’). This will give them a chance to calm down and will allow them to familiarize themselves with the area. It also gives us a chance to keep an eye on them for a while so we can make sure they’re fit and well after their move.

Obviously this means I need to build a temporary enclosure to put them in. After my stint in Ecuador at the Santa Martha Animal Rehab Center, I’ve got a little experience in knocking up makeshift, low budget (i.e. dodgy) animal pens. I go through a few designs on paper. The crocs need water, enough that they can submerge; they need direct sunlight to warm themselves and they need shelter from the wind and the sun. They can’t really jump over fences of any reasonably height but they can dig under them.

I get my volunteer labour force cracking. While a few of them wire mesh together and rig up supports I set to work preparing a site. I find a spot where the bank isn’t too steep on the shore but drops fairly quickly once underwater. This gives the crocs enough water to play in while still allowing them to easily slide in and out of the water. Unfortunately the bank is covered in waist-high weeds and the shallows are choked with reeds. These have to go.

I have a crack at the weeds with the whipper snipper but the thicket proves to be too much for it. I dig out a rusty old cane knife from the back of the tool shed and using my machete skills from Ecuador manage to clear out the bulk of the weeds after a few hours work. You just can’t beat a good, old-fashioned machete for getting the job done.

The reeds in the water prove a little more difficult however. For these I have to get into the water and dig out the roots with a shovel. My volunteers make a token effort to get into the murky water but none are keen to go in much past their ankles. I’m on my own for this one.

I’m waste deep in the water when I begin to feel things wriggling against my legs. It’s not a pleasant sensation. Lifting my legs reveal hideous, alien-looking, black worms wriggling against my skin: leaches. I swipe them away quickly and carry on but I can’t go more than a few minutes without a fresh swarm homing in. Eventually one gets me and it’s a monster, as long as my finger and twice as fat. There’s nothing pretty about it either.

You hear people talk about burning leaches off with a cigarette lighter or pouring salt over them so they’ll drop off. I’m sure these are all highly affective techniques but I’d like to see you bother with either of these when you’re waste deep in water with a giant, black, slimy leach stuck to your leg, sucking blood out by the litre.

I grab hold of the little bastard, rip him off and peg him as far as I can. It’s all done in one swift, instinctive movement; the brain has no say in the matter whatsoever. When the brain does finally kick in, it has no complaints (in fact it’s quite complementary of the distance the thing flew) and simply adds the hopeful thought that something will eat the evil little bastard before it gets back to the safety of the reeds.

The bleeding doesn’t stop of course; not for days. I finish ripping out the weeds as quickly as I can (the volunteers, reluctant before, are now not going anywhere near the water). The job is finally done and we put up the fencing, furnish the cage with a little sand and even decorate it with some nice logs. I can only hope my blood has washed away before we get any crocs in there developing a taste for it.

Sleeping With the Enemy

For the last few weeks I've been sleeping in a tent on my own, near a small lagoon in an isolated area at the back of the reserve and cooking my meals over a camp fire. The reasons why are long, complicated, slightly nonsensical and not at all interesting. Let’s just accept the fact that I have been and move on.

After a couple of weeks of this bush living, it was time for me to move back into the main accommodation area. I packed up my camp and cleared out my tent. In doing so I discovered a squashed snake under my foam mattress. Obviously he’d snuck in one day while I was out and then I'd come home, jumped into bed and must have squashed the poor fella underneath.

Judging by the smell he'd been dead a fair while. I'd actually noticed the smell a few days before but had assumed it was just my own poor personal hygiene that was the cause and had made a mental note to wash more often. In fairness, the mattress was masking the worst of the stench and it was only when I removed it that the full force of the odor was released.

I have no idea what type of snake it was and the fact that I'd flattened the thing's head made it difficult for the wardens to work it out too. I can only assume it wasn’t poisonous since it didn’t bite me but maybe I unknowingly pinned it with my body weight before it had a chance to have a go. Either way, I now check my bed a little more thoroughly each night.

Slave Labour

A trial run with my now completed raft works well but leaves me with no doubt about just how much work I have in front on me. At best the raft can take about two-thirds of a cubic meter of sand in one load. This is roughly as expected but with 40+ cubic meters of sand to move, I'm looking at about 60 loads. For my trial run I have only one other volunteer, a slender (and quite attractive) Dutch girl and it takes us nearly an hour to do one run. At this rate I'm looking at about 60 hours of hard, manual labour. Had I gym membership, I'd have cancelled it, quick smart.

Clearly the solution is to get more workers. A quick check of the available funds (zero) rules out any plans of hiring anyone. We have at most four volunteers at any given time and it's now past peak tourist season so even less are coming through. Even the cute Dutch girl is heading back to Denmark (despite my continual efforts to convince her to stay). I need another solution.

Providence provides. It just so happens that a group of 20 school kids, all around 15 years of age, are on their way up for a day of weeding as part of their 'education' (although I applaud this dedication to Australian bush, a cynical part of me can't help but wonder if maybe the teachers just wanted a free holiday). We chat to them and everyone agrees that a leisurely day working on a sand bank for crocodiles beats a day of hard yakka, chopping trees and poisoning grasses (fools!).

Eventually the day arrives and I give my slaves, err … volunteers a heartwarming and inspiring story about the reserve, the wonders of nature, balanced ecosystems and crocodiles and their beach sports. Enthused, they rush out into the morning heat with a shovel each and a couple of wheelbarrows shared amongst them. They dig in and joyfully fling sand everywhere, occasionally getting some of it into the waiting barrows which they then roll onto the raft and unload. It's a flurry of activity and positive energy, and it lasts for all of fifteen minutes.

They quickly realize that shoveling sand for hours on end in direct sunlight is not the joyous experience I made it out to be, even if there is a raft to play with and some vague mention of crocodiles. The group splits into two: the diligent and the lazy. This division is a universal feature of the human race and happens in all work places in all corners of the globe. A couple of the group are solid workers and they settle into an easy pattern, loading and unloading sand. They even seem to enjoy themselves.

One guy in particular excels. He’s a small, wiry kid but he's got a fair bit of strength to him. He also knows which end of the shovel is which, and even more impressively, knows how to fill and drive a wheelbarrow. I get the feeling that he doesn't get much of a chance to shine in the classroom and he's relishing the opportunity to finally be good at something. Whatever the reasons, I'm not complaining; my sand is moving.

By the end of the day we’re all wet, sandy and tired. There's been a few bandaids distributed as well (although some were used more for their placebo affect than for any real need). The raft has held but it now has an unhealthy looking bend to it and a few of the joints are not quite as solid looking as they were earlier in the day. Just under half of the sand has been moved. There's still a decent chunk to go but I'm now looking at a far more manageable pile to deal with.

The kids head home, generally feeling good about their day's labour. The next part of their trip is an expedition out to the barrier reef however. I suspect that for most this reef trip may rank higher on there score card than my forced labour but you never know.

Tough Love

Working in conservation is not all about cuddling koalas and playing with kangaroos. Sometimes to get the job done, you have to get a little nasty; you have to be a little heartless and unkind.

Pigs are one of the worst animal pests we have on the reserve (competing with cane toads for the title). They eat anything and everything; they stomp about in the mud, digging through plants with their snorts and grunts, trying to find frogs, grubs, crustaceans and anything else edible or close to edible. Their fat little hooves rip up the ground everywhere they go and they travel in herds of 10 or 20, leaving havoc and mayhem in their wake.

Pigs are recent occupants, like us white fellas. The first ones snuck ashore with Captain Cook when he crashed his ride up near Cairns around 1770 (although there's now some speculation that earlier Asian visitors might have brought some through first). And just like us white fellas they've thrived here, out-competing just about everything and throwing out the balance that keeps the whole engine ticking over. The Aussie landscape has no effective defense mechanism against this invader.

Shooting doesn't really work; it's more of a last resort. Pigs might be ugly but they’re not dumb. Fire a shot into a herd and you'll most likely take one out, but before the smoke’s cleared the rest will have scattered into the bush. Next time those pigs hear you coming, they'll start to move a little earlier and you might not get so lucky with your first shot.

By the time you've taken out a few, those pigs will know that the sound of an approaching 4x4 is not the happy jingle of an ice cream van come to delight the kids. They'll be gone before you come over that last gulley. In the end you're left with a herd of super pigs, as skilled in the art of subterfuge and camouflage as a team of crack SAS troops. It is simple Darwin evolution in a species that has proven be particularly good at that game.

Dogs can be used to fine tune this process but dogs aren't real particular when it comes to hunting. To be fair, it's probably more the case that the type of hunters that you get out bush, that use dogs and think a Sunday night pig shooting is a good way to spend time, are the ones who are not too particular rather than their dogs. We're not overly keen on wiping out the local population of super rare Buff-breasted Button-quail just to get rid of a few pigs.

So this leaves the traps. These are large fenced off areas where the trapper throws old scraps. He leaves these traps open for a while to let the pigs get used to them and then when they are coming and going, he rigs the door to drop shut. Since the pigs travel around in herds the traps should close on a big group at a time and these can all be 'disposed of' in one hit.

Our traps have had a little success but the reserve is still overrun by pigs. We see them often, sometimes the little bastards are arrogant enough to go rummaging just outside the visitor centre at night.

It was late last night when I was driving through the reserve to get to my campsite. I rounded a corner and there in my headlights were three piglets, trotting down the path. In that moment I was judge, jury and executioner. The verdict was passed and the accused was found guilty of crimes against the balance of nature.

I put my foot to the floor; the Jackaroo roared forward. Two piglets scattered but the third was caught in my path. It was a quick end, no worries about that. Had I been in a smaller car I would have had doubts about a clean kill and would have pulled back. When my Jackaroo hits something however, there's little left behind.

So there it is; the confession of a cold-blooded, remorseless murderer. Though it may tarnish the misguided perception some may have of me as a tree-hugging animal-lover, this is the real world. We are earth's gardeners; to make the garden grow you have to kill the weeds.

And I've no doubt, that should we not manage to restore the balance we've damaged by our own undertakings, then just as it did with the piglet, nature will send bigger gardeners to deal with the little weeds called humans too.

Maiden Voyage

My sandbank needs to be around twenty meters long, five meters wide and 30 to 40 centimeters deep. That's about 40 cubic meters of sand to move, which is no small task. It takes five dump trucks to bring the sand into the reserve and pile it up on the shore of the lagoon. Heavy equipment exists that could just pump the sand onto the island but that costs money, which is a resource we don't have. I decide instead to use a resource that we do have in abundance: volunteers.

I draw up a design for a raft to cart the sand across, like a giant floating wheelbarrow. I pick up some old plastic drums from a cleaning supplies shop in town and then nail together some wooden struts to form a frame. I start with a prototype. I use only two of the four plastic drums so the prototype is only half the size of the intended vessel. I put the frame together, largely making it up as I go along.

Finally the ship is ready for a test run. Not wanting to risk my precious sand, I instead decide to use the expendable volunteers as my first cargo. Three of us jump on, and I'm careful to choose the lightest volunteers. Since the raft is only half of its intended size it is not overly balanced and there are a few rocky moments. I grab some old water containers and we strap these off the side like an outrigger canoe. The end result is not pretty but it holds.

We paddle out past the reeds and turn to come back again. At this point another volunteer turns up and decides he wants to join the crew. As we pull up near the small wharf to let him on, the three of us all lean to one side at the same time. The raft flips and we go with it. We bob among the lilies trying to gather up the plastic drums and bits of wood as they start to drift away. It's at this point that I learn that lotus lilies, like roses, may have pretty flowers but their thorns are not for show. By the time we've climbed ashore we're all ripped to shreds.

After this obvious success of the prototype I forge ahead with the construction of my masterpiece. The good ship Endeavour is ready to sail. I am reluctant however to christen it in the traditional manner of smashing a bottle of Champaign over the bough; I'm not entirely sure it will withstand the blow.

Life's a Beach

Most of the sandy banks on these inland waterways come from sediment run off. Over the years the rains carve out handfuls of sand and then carry them down stream, bit by bit. As the rivers bend and twist down towards the ocean they scatter the sand they've brought with them and eventually craft a nice sandy beach, good enough to sit and fish from while the billy boils over a nearby campfire.

The waterways on the wetlands, being recently man made, haven't had time to build up beaches like this. They might never manage it. Humans are the masters of efficiency and control. We like things straight, rigid and direct, so the irrigation channels that fill our lagoons don't have the gentle meander that nature would have given them. Add to that the various damns and drains that the water has to pass through and there's not a lot of sand coming our way.

Our crocodiles need a beach however. Being cold blooded they need to lie about in the sun to regulate their body temperature. They also use the sand to bury their eggs and these bake slowly for several months until the young hatchlings burst out and clamber to the surface (usually to be devoured by the waiting birds and other reptiles). Without a beach our crocodiles won’t hang around and within a few days they'll be heading back downstream.

'Beach engineer' is not a job I’d ever anticipated having so I start with little knowledge and a plan to learn as I go along (my usual approach). There are several possible spots along the bank of the main lagoon but all have problems: the site is too close to the walking trails; the water is too shallow; the banks are too steep.

Fifty meters off the shore, at the far end of the lagoon is a small island overrun with weeds. The bank of this is perfect and it has the added benefit that being on an island it will be harder for the feral pigs and dogs to get on and cause trouble (both can swim but at least we'll see them coming). It's perfect; except for the tiny complication of actually being able to get sand onto it.