The Kimberley with the Australian Wildlife Conservancy

In my second summer of 2013 (that is, the southern hemisphere summer - and the first dual-summer year of my life!) I was lucky enough to get the chance to visit Mornington Widlife Conservancy, where the privately funded conservation charity, the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, is working to preserve Australia's unique wildlife. I was particularly lucky in getting the opportunity to see a side of the operations that many tourists wouldn't usually be able to see.

Before this Christmas the longest flight I'd ever been on was the four-hour flight from Edinburgh to Athens. Now, having flown around the globe to reach Australia, the four hours from Melbourne to Broome seemed like nothing. Barely time to open your book!

Once we'd landed in Broome it was necessary for us to take a chartered plane to the remote Mornington Conservancy, where the roads and runway are red earth, and colossal termite hills the size of cows rise up above the grass in all directions. I'd never seen anything like it.

Zoom in. That thing that looks like a hut? It's a termite mound

On the runway I met the head researcher, Dr Sarah Legge, and the head of operations, Swanie. Then, over the next hours and days, I met a stream of incredible, dedicated scientists, ops and admin staff. Hours' travel from a town, living in flood-territory huts on stilts where a door left open may well mean a python sharing your bed, these extraordinary people are conducting research, making pizzas and raising children.

It was the oppressive 40 degree heat making my heart race, but I'd fallen in love with Mornington.

Bustards, spotted on day one. Australia's second-largest flightless bird

On our first afternoon we swam in Fitzroy Gorge, where the answer to 'are there crocs here?' was 'we've never seen them here'. A few of us swam to the far shore (I took a rubber ring... I've never been a strong swimmer) where we climbed up onto the rocks and saw Aboriginal rock art on the overhang. Despite being thousands of years old, the handprints were still vivid. I know I'm employing a fair bit of hyperbole here but the sunset was spectacular.

My photography skills can't do it justice at all

When I mentioned my interest in working in conservation Sarah was more than happy to invite everyone to take a closer look at the work they're doing. First, we were invited on a 'cat chase'. Exactly what it sounds.

Feral cats are causing huge problems for native mammals in Australia, each cat consuming roughly five of them per day. That adds up to a lot of mammals. At Mornington, Hugh McGregor is conducting his PhD research on the cats, and has tagged a number of them to track their movements. He needed to re-catch one of them to replace its tracker, and we were invited along for the ride. 

When we set off it was about five o'clock and still by no means cool; on the first day I'd had something of a panic attack about my body's ability to cope with the heat, but I'd adjusted to an extent when we set off walking at a fast pace into the bush.

Pretty soon we were fighting our way through some tall and (really, bloody) sharp spinifex. And we were getting no closer to the cat. After about twenty minutes we had to stop; one of the dogs, a Spaniel not quite made for the heat, had over-exhausted herself by running full pelt and covering about five times as much ground as we had. She lay down and stayed down while water was dribbled into her mouth. Our party had to split in two: those who would go after the cat - at a run - and those who'd stay with Sarah and Sally. 

I ran for about a hundred yards before I realised I was making the wrong decision. I was barely coping with the heat at a fast walk; I knew my limits. Lachy and I turned back and found Sarah. Once Sally had almost recovered, Sarah picked her up and strode through the spinifex carrying her while me and Lachy struggled along in her wake. 

Sally was restored by plenty of water and a dip in the river, and the second group returned one cat later. They had caught the cat and done the necessary maintenance without the need for even a sedative. Exhausted, we were back to camp just in time for stone-fired pizza. 

For our second lesson in applied conservation we were up at 4 o'clock the following morning to check on quoll traps (Hugh having stayed up with the traps all night following the cat chase!). The northern quoll is one of Australia's native marsupials, and their population is monitored at Mornington through trapping nights, during which the quolls are monitored in minute detail, including being tagged and weighed. 

Quoll-weighing

With Hugh monitoring the traps overnight some quolls had already been caught and released. Luckily, when we arrived, two of the traps were occupied! We were privileged to see some of Australia's native nocturnal mammals up close, and they were promptly released afterwards, shooting off before any of us could manage to snap a picture. Hence the lack of a picture. Feel free to Google.

The days we spent at Mornington were the highlight of my Australian Christmas holiday (and that's really saying something). Our daily adventures included helicoptering in to a campfire breakfast atop Fitzroy Bluff - undoubtedly the most spectacular breakfast of my life - to rock-hopping up a dry riverbed to a billabong below a dry waterfall, where water monitors shared the pool with us and a spirit (or a strange wind) stirred up trouble around the teapot.

Your typical Aussie breakfast...

The most memorable moment of the trip, however, is undoubtedly when our al fresco dinner on top of a hill took an unusual turn.

It was the rainy season during our trip, and we watched as some unbelievable rainstorms swept across the savannah. Lightning lit up the bluffs like the Battle of Helm's Deep was taking place beyond. And then one came rolling over us...

As we prepared for dinner, our hearts were stopped as lightning struck about a hundred metres from our dinner spot. The younger members of the group were shocked into tears, while one person worried his eyes had been damaged as he'd watched the bolt strike. I saw it from the corner of my eye and it certainly made me jump.

A few minutes later, someone noticed, a hundred metres or so away:

A bush fire had started.

Realising that the wind was blowing towards us, and with the fire rapidly expanding, the staff raced down the hill shouting to us to stay where we were, breaking off tree limbs as they went. Within ten minutes they had beaten the bushfire out.

Just your standard day working in conservation in the Kimberley!