Volunteering at Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary

We were back in the UK over Christmas, which was definitely more of a social visit than travels worth documenting on this blog, but a week after we returned to Melbourne Lachy and I had made plans to head out again. You may remember that a year ago we visited Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary, a wildlife sanctuary run by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. On the 7th of January we were due to head back out there, but a monsoon up in the north-east meant we ended up spending almost another week at home before it was possible to fly out and get picked up.

Last time, as part of a big group, we'd flown direct to Broome and then in a charter plane out to the sanctuary. Easy. This time there were no direct flights, so we flew out to Perth, then Broome, took a Greyhound bus to Derby, then flew out with Operations Manager Dan Swan (Swanie) in a tiny Cessna plane. And there were a few nights spent in hotels in between (some with broken air conditioning...) when transport wasn't possible 'til the next day. It goes to show what I've become used to that the trip still felt like a breeze compared with the living nightmare of a UK-AUS flight.

Camels on Cable Beach (Broome) - the first time I'd seen them up close!

Since we'd been out the year before, we knew what to expect in terms of accommodation, so we were well prepared - except on one front. There hadn't been much rain when we came out the previous year, and this time round one road we had used now passed through a fast-flowing river. The rain seemed to have brought the flies out. I don't remember being troubled by mosquitoes last January, but this time we were eaten alive. I'm terrified of spiders, but I got used to having them in the shower with me - the mozzies on the other hand nearly drove me to an early grave.

Usually they have volunteers there in the dry season because the sanctuary is so busy with the Wilderness Camp tourists and all the wildlife surveys that are being conducted, so we were kind of out-of-season volunteers. The main task we were set to was the herbarium. Eight boxes of pressed plants to be alphabetised, catalogued and mounted (fortunately they had already been identified by experts!). We also went out on a trip collecting plants from the escarpment next to the camp and did some detective work to identify them ourselves, which was oddly satisfying. We helped out with odd jobs around the camp, like fixing stairs and making railings.

Plants!

Living in the city I've become more interested in birds than I ever was in the UK, which I put down to the fact that they're pretty much the only wildlife I get to see day to day. So I was pretty excited to find out that there's a Mornington Bird List - a list of all the birds around the camp with check-boxes - because if there's one thing I love, it's ticking things off lists. Probably the most exciting bird we spotted was a brolga, but I didn't have my camera at the time. They are huge, crane-like birds that usually wander around in pairs, but this one was alone. I had to do a double-take when I spotted it because I thought I'd seen a flamingo or something in the bush.

We also saw dingoes this time since they hang out a lot near the hut we were staying in. Hearing them howling in the night was so eerie and awe-inspiring. By day, they looked more like big-eared, scraggly dogs, but it was still an impressive sight. One morning I heard something like a door slamming, which was vaguely concerning since our hut was in the middle of nowhere, and I went downstairs to have a look. A red shape went bouncing away from the bathroom and then stopped to have a look at me. It was a wallaroo, and not the only one that we saw hanging around the hut early in the morning.

the guilty wallaroo

One of the coolest things we got to help with was setting up camera traps on the escarpment. These are really tough cameras that can survive in all weathers and are triggered by heat. We collected them up again just before we left and, though the images weren't of great value to science, we were amazed by what they had captured! We had only seen two goannas on our trip so far but we captured no fewer than three different species of them with the cameras, as well as a few selfies taken by a wallaroo and a couple of echidnas.

the explorer

We intended to do lots of walking while we were there, but the time flew by so fast that when we left we'd still only been on one walk, at a pretty poorly chosen time of day (it was HOT). It was a very valuable experience for the two of us in terms of food - we had to bring all our food with us on the plane, so we had to plan carefully. We got a bit sick of rice and pasta, but since we got back we've been much better about planning our food shopping for meals, and not running down to Woolworths three times a day. We also got to know a group of amazing people living in a close-knit and friendly community out on what is essentially an island of civilisation in the bush.

There won't be much travel this year what with our wedding coming up and lots of things to be saving for, but it isn't really travel when it's in the same country, right? Even if the country is the size of the United States? So we can go back again in the dry season without feeling guilty? Yeah? All right then.