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End Game

Time to unravel the construct that had become my seemingly routine life in Australia. Having stayed in the same place for over 75% of the time I spent here did provide some sense of routine to things here down under - however strange that might seem after I have been back home in Arlington a week from now.

First I had to drive to Perth from Western Flora Caravan Park. That was fine. I had to stop a number of times along the way trying to get the best picture I could of a Christmas tree plant. Maria's request, as she needed this to make Christmas cards.

I arrived back in Perth on Monday afternoon. It had actually been cloudy, raining occasionally, so there was not my usual blue sky view of the city from the hotel balcony. Tuesday morning was a day of shedding things. The truck and a good bit of field equipment all needed to be brought back to Curtin University. I spent a few hours there, after returning stuff and getting some paperwork straightened out. As strange as my goofy everything-is-backwards truck seemed, it was stranger still to leave the University without my own transportation. I hopped on a bus, made my way back to the hotel, and had some lunch. Then it was back to the bus and a final downtown shopping trip. I spent a few hours there and then took the bus back to my hotel room. I had a few letters to get off in the mail and then began trying to fit all of my things back into two suitcases and a backpack. With that straightened out I went to bed, setting the alarm for 3:30 AM Wednesday morning. I had a taxi picking me up at 4:20.

My travels, translated into Boston time (14 hours behind Perth time).....

• 2:20 PM Tuesday (18th) left the hotel
• 4:30 took off from Perth airport
• 7:20 arrived in Melbourne
• 9:00 left Melbourne
• 10:00 arrived in Sydney
• 11:40 PM left Sydney - the long flight begins!
• 12:34 PM (Wednesday, 19th) arrived in LA; had to collect my bags to go through customs, only one of my two checked bags made it to LA
• 8:00 PM left LA
• 1:30 AM (Thursday, 20th) arrived in Boston

Unlike my trip there, I did not sleep very much during this 35 hour marathon. So I was happy when I was able to finally walk away from an airport terminal and the planes but I was tired when Maria brought me home to Arlington. I got into bed about 2:30 and woke up at 3 in afternoon.

My late arriving bag was delivered to my front door the next day.

The first time I drove my car was not strange, other than I did try to use my windshield wiper controls to turn on my blinker.

And so my trip comes to an end. Lots of great memories for Maria and I and in many ways we could not have planned such an interesting adventure if we tried. I definitely enjoyed my time away but am certainly not about to move to Australia anytime soon! It is good to be home.

The view from my front door the day I left (November 1)

and the view out my front door when I returned....

Ninghan Station

The closest possible place, and really the only place for many miles around, we could stay was the station (Ninghan) just north of the station where we were working (Mt. Gibson). Based on the boundaries I could find on a map of the area this station is more than twice the size of Whitewells (250 square miles). Fortunately the station homestead was only a half hour ride from us. Staying there was an experience I will never forget but, for many reasons, is not something I would be eager to do again.

I think the idea was the station was a better option than camping out. From my perspective it was way worse.

Driving north from the Mt Gibson range on the Great Northern Highway, you arrive at a pull off to the Ninghan homestead and then drive down a gravel road about 4 miles. The closer you get to the settlement the worse the grazing degradation. The landscape is a classic example of overgrazing and how it can alter the vegetation and the landscape. The soils here are all red and by the time you arrive at the homestead the red earth is almost all that remains. The landscape looked like the earth had been scoured and it effectively has been - presumably through a centuries worth of grazing by many, many sheep.

Our accommodations were in a small house. There were a few bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a washroom (sink and shower). All the rooms were quite small. The dunnie (aka the outhouse) was a small shack out back. Interestingly enough it contained a flush toilet. The house and dunnie was surrounded by a wire fence, presumably creating a yard, but our yard was the same as what was all around us - red dusty dirt. The house was situated in the midst of a compound with numerous buildings. Across from our front door, a few hundred feet away, was another larger house that was presently occupied by a group of people that were contracted by the mining company to collect seed, for the mine restoration work, from Extension Hill. To the left of this were trailers that were divided into small single rooms that I presume consist of little more than a bed. Some off these were currently occupied by sheep shearers that were working at gathering the wool from the sheep that you could see wandering around. To the other side of us, set off a little further than the other buildings, was the owners living area. It was just beyond a windmill and an area of relatively lush trees that formed an odd grove of palms, eucalypts, and a giant fig tree. Somewhere beyond the often squeaky windmill and veil of greenery, which appeared as a veritable oasis in the desert, was the owner's actual home.

This is all interesting and exotic - how exciting to be at a sheep farm, in the middle of know where, in the Australian outback, during sheep shearing time. And I am normally just the fellow for seeing and enjoying such things. The shine came off the apple pretty quick when it came down to practical matters concerning why we were staying at this place. We were out all day (I left the Caravan Park at 8 AM the first day I was at Extension Hill) and needed a place to sleep, eat dinner, prepare for going out in the field for a full day, and a place to sort biological samples and sort out field notes. A shower would be a bonus but in the past I have been out fighting forest fires for over a week without a shower, so I can easily deal without that. This was a good thing because the only towel we were provided with was a dish towel. The other fellows used some shirts for drying after taking a shower, I just didn't take one during my stay.

The first thing that Ben did when we arrived was to prop open the front and back door and to crank open some of the windows. The windows consisted of glass louvers with no screens. It was early evening and it was beginning to get blustery. The wind blowing freely through the house cooled things down nicely. I brought some of my things in and began to get settled into my bedroom. There were two single beds and, taking Ben's advice, I pulled one of the flimsily mattresses off its wire frame and put it on the floor. No sheets, just a cotton cover on the mattress. Once we found some matches to light the gas burners on the stove we could begin cooking. It was starting to get dark and this of course meant putting the lights on. Being there was a new moon, our lights served as a beacon for insects near and far. As a myrmecologist I naturally have a curiosity about insects, so of course most people would think this would be a great opportunity for me. And it was. The only problem is it is difficult at best to try to prepare a meal, or enjoy it, or work at a table when there are so many critters around. Things were flying in your face, landing on your neck, and of course make the requisite buzzing sounds as they traveled from around the light, to around your head, and back to the light again. I have encountered and dealt with such a problem before in other places but never like this. One would think the wise thing to do to solve this problem would be to close the doors and windows. Unfortunately this was not a good solution as the doors and windows were not able to be shut even near tightly. There were plenty of gaps that were inches wide.

Someone left our the gate into our yard open and during dinner a kangaroo came into the house. It was about three feet tall, sniffing at everything in sight, and clearly looking for handouts. Shortly after a large spider scampered in across the floor. Chris was not fond of spiders, and the kangaroo was annoying, so we were soon trying to steer our accumulating wildlife out the doors. Once we got the kangaroo out of the house, he was not willing to leave our yard, so we had to continue to leave the gate open. The only vegetation around was some very small patches of gray plant material that looked like the barest remnants of some dead herbaceous plant. There was a bit of it in our yard and some beyond our fence boundary. Apparently our yard plants were in better shape than the plants that were not fenced in. The kangaroo proceeded to graze in our compound, you could hear him tearing bits of plant from the ground - it sounded like rope being pulled apart. It has to be a tough life being a grazer in this place.

Later I was sitting at the kitchen table, sorting samples, when I heard this deep, loud buzzing at the door. I turned, saw a very large wasp near the floor just in front of the door, and quickly jumped up to push the door closed. I did manage to shut it out, at least for that moment. I asked Ben, who was in the next room, if he heard the buzzing of the wasp I just saw. He said no and asked if it wasn't perhaps a large beetle, since wasps usually do not fly at night. I thought this was sensible and figured I was mistaken; maybe it was a beetle I saw. I was hoping I would not find out as there were plenty of places this thing could get in if it was persistent. Later that night I was lying in bed, reading, when I heard a short burst of the same buzzing at my bedroom window. I had no idea what my window even looked like as it was covered by a curtain. I dismissed the thought that the noise I heard was the same critter as before, despite the fact there were at least a hundred moths in my room. I assumed things were coming in my room via the bedroom door. It turned out the large buzzing critter did get in my window, it was a wasp, and it made its presence known by loudly circling my bedroom light. After a few minutes of trying to coax it out of my room by turning the light out in my room to draw it out to the adjacent living room, Ben was able to catch it between a colander and cutting board. He was going to release it but I suggested we keep it till morning; letting it go would only give it another chance to return.

I checked my bedroom window and discovered it was a porous as every other part of our house.

Our electricity was a little dicey too. When the living room light was off it would flicker about every 5 seconds. Sort of like a very slow strobe light. Ben went to try to turn the switch on and off to see if maybe the switch wasn't somehow responsible for this problem. In groping around in the semi twilight he first managed to grab a metal piece that was part of the front door doorframe (they door was wide open, after all) and got an electric shock. In the end, we took the lighbulb out of the socket. The next night my bedroom light was doing the same flickering routine.

My sleeping was restless the first night, in part because it got quite cool. There were no sheets or covers so I had to get up and put on more clothes. I also thought I got woken up a few times by mice running across me. There clearly were mice in the house, and I have been in a few similar rustic lodging situations where mice will run across and over you while you are asleep, but I wasn't sure if I had imagined it or not.

When I woke up there was a bunch of food stuffs piled on the table. Despite the fact we had put everything the mice could get into into the refrigerator, during the night they were incessantly scratching away at a box full of canned goods left on the counter. They made such a racket they woke Ben up and his only recourse was to move these things onto the table with the hope they would not be rediscovered.

Our first morning in our little house we ate breakfast, prepared our food we would eat in the field during the day, and left.

We got home even later the second night. Lucky for us Ben knew the seed collecting folks staying across from us. We actually crossed paths with them on Extension Hill a number of times. We had talked about the mine operation, the plants, and other things related to our work while we out working during the day. Their plans had changed during their visit and our second night there was their last night at the station. They had a lot of food that was going to be left over so they invited us over for tea (seemingly everything is called tea here - breakfast, lunch, dinner, and even just having tea). Ben was quite happy about this since much of the fresh food he was going to cook had frozen solid in the refrigerator. Our neighbors prepared a huge meal that we all enjoyed, except for the fellows working the barbeque. The gas ran out in the middle of cooking the meat (the barbeque and gas were part of the accommodations with their house). They had to shift food from a large full grill to a much smaller set of pans they could use on the stove. They went through many panfulls of food in order to get everything cooked. After we were done eating and having some pleasant conversation, I was talked into giving a presentation to everyone about the work Maria and I had done in North Eneabba. I had mentioned to someone that I had put together a powerpoint presentation that I gave to some folks the Caravan Park, so it was just a matter of taking out my computer and using the slides I had already prepared. After my talk it was time to return to our lovely house.

I did not think the insects could be worse than they were the night before. They were. It was like a constant barrage of them bouncing off your head, flying in your face, and landing on you. I easily had over a hundred moths in my bedroom by the time I went to sleep.

This night I roused from my sleep by the mice. I awoke to some strange scraping noise and after a foggy few seconds realized the noise I was hearing was not good. Something was in my stuff. I turned on the light and shortly after a mouse emerged from my bookbag, perched on top of it, looked around (I must admit it was awfully cute), spotted me, and decided it was time to run away. Unfortunately the scraping noise that woke me up was still going. It soon stopped and out of my field bag emerged another mouse. It repeated the performance of the first mouse: perch on top of the bag, look around, see me, and run
away. Looking in my bags revealed the mouse in my collecting bag had chewed the plastic top of a vial that was full of granola bar bits (my ant bait). That noise I heard was the mouse clawing in the vial, presumable trying to reach further down into it to grab the food. Somehow the half of the plastic top that was left was somehow thrown out of that bag and had fallen into my book bag. The first mouse I had seen must have been working at getting whatever little bits of granola were stuck to the plastic top. After I turned the light off and lay there for awhile I did feel a mouse run across me. Apparently I was in their way, considering they lived in the house and I was just visiting. I hazily remember shooing the mouse away from some other stuff, after I had of course put the treats they had gotten to earlier in a more secure place, later in the night. Even so I slept better that second night than I did the first night. It probably had something to do with a few long days and not having a very restful night's sleep the previous evening.

The next morning we ate breakfast, got our stuff out, and left the station. Ben and Chris were returning to Perth later that morning, after we spent some time together in the field. I could have stayed at the station for longer, on my own, if I wanted to work at Extension Hill longer. If I had a sleeping bag I would have slept somewhere at the mine site and stayed another night. I was not going to stay at the station again. In the end I decided it was good that we had found out all we did in the little bit of time we had spent working there. I left that night to go back to the Caravan Park in North Eneabba.

Extension Hill Iron Mine

December 12

The purpose of my trip to the Mt. Gibson area is to lend a hand with some conservation work. Extension hill is a large ironstone mountain that is going to be mined for hematite and magnetite. The mining will effectively eliminate Extension Hill and replace it with a large, deep open pit. A waste rock dump will be created on part of the flat land at the base of the hill. This will cover 2 square miles of land under 130 feet of rock. The mining agreement between the government and the mining company stipulates there must be environmental mitigation. This includes the specific requirements that they create a new hill, adjacent to the one they are removing, that will be restored with the native floral communities that are currently found on Extension Hill. They must also restore populations of two rare plants that are only found on a few ironstone mountains that include Extension Hill. One of these species (a Darwinia) is
only found in one other place, the hill adjacent to Extension Hill, and there is some evidence its seeds are dispersed by ants. The plant can establish itself and grow right on exposed layers of iron stone, as you can see in the picture.

The botanist from Kings Park, Ben Miller, wanted me to help him see if ants are in fact moving the seeds of this plant. Anything else we could discover would also be helpful. Considering I could only spend a few days working on this problem, it would be good to discover anything useful.

Fortunately the Darwinia can be propagated from cuttings. The park has some of these cuttings growing in their greenhouses in Perth and they are trying to figure out how to grow plants from seeds. Many, many plants in Western Australia are adapted to the fires that have naturally occurred here in the past. This means many plants have evolved adaptations where seeds can only begin their transformation from a viable seed into a new plant when they are stimulated by a fire. This may mean they need to be heated while they are in the soil bank. It can also be that the seeds are held on structures on a plant that only allow the seeds to be released when the plant experiences the high temperatures associated with a fire. The seeds of the Darwinia do fall from the plant after the seed is set but there are some conditions associated with fire that are necessary to initiate the seeds to grow. What those conditions are remains to be worked out.

The part the ants play in this story are their ability to move the seeds and to potentially place them in a location that is favorable for their germination. Amazingly enough we were able to find an ant that was moving the seeds. The species is very similar to the ant that Maria and I were studying on the sand plains of North Eneabba. Our few days of work revealed only the barest beginnings regarding the details of the interactions between the plants, the seeds, and the ants but it was a good start. I thought it was quite likely we would not be able to find out anything during my visit to Extension Hill. Chance does favor the prepared but having some luck (the weather cooperated, we found seeds around the nest entrances of the ants, etc.) never hurts either.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire

December 11

Today I left the bush to head out to - the bush. I am going to the Gibson range, which is about 150 miles east of where I was staying in North Eneabba. The folks I have been around for the last month tell me it is pretty remote so I think I am in for an adventure. I will pass through three little towns (Eneabba, Three Springs, and Perenjori) before I get to the gravel road that connects with the Great Northern Highway at the Mt. Gibson range.

The trip started well. Pack all my things in the truck, stop in Eneabba to pick up a few supplies, and then on to Three Springs. The roads that small number of little towns scattered around here have mostly been paved one lane roads. You travel on the single pavement track and watch for oncoming vehicles. When someone is coming you move your left two wheels onto the gravel shoulder, put your right wheels left of center of the pavement, pass the oncoming traffic, then get back in the middle of the road again. For those occasional places where you cannot see ahead of you very well the road is paved wider and you keep to the left side of the road.

I wanted to stop in Perenjori to get gas - last chance - and so when I went through town and found no gas station I began to get a bit nervous. Both the time I had to get to my rendezvous and my gas were running low. My only choice would have been to backtrack forty miles to Three Springs. There were no gas stations ahead of me for well over 100 miles. It turned out the gas bowser (pump) was at the farm supply store north of town.

One hundred miles into my journey I reached the end of the paved road. The landscape changed from open farmland (I had just passed finished crossing the wheat belt) to a seemingly endless sea of thick brush. I had arrived in station county. The soils where beginning to change from sand dominated to a richly colored red soil. The bush here was well developed with the plants typically six to eight feet high. There were few trees, with most of the plants being in the form of large bushes. The land was undulating, allowing me to see across the landscape in many places. The bush went on in all directions to the horizon. Occasionally there were other smaller sand roads that would cross or terminate the main road and I would also occasionally cross through a fenceline by going over a livestock grid in the road.

Stations are tracts of land, typically quite large, that are leased by the government to people who run stock on the property. The leases were drawn up early in the 20th century and were for 99 years. Many are them are beginning to come up for renewal. The first large station I traveled through was Wanarra. The next one was formally called Whitewells but had been renamed Charles Darwin Reserve. The lease had recently been brought from the former owners by a conservation group. They were working towards restoring much of the 250 square miles of bush on the station grounds to a more natural condition. Despite the fact leases can be bought and sold, there is a requirement that stock be maintained on the property at all times. Presumably Charles Darwin were running sheep, the traditional station standard. Throughout both stations there was evidence of older structures for stock, such as the occasional windmill, water tank, and water trough. The windmills were and in some cases still are used to draw water up from wells. There is also plenty of fencing but since the road runs through the station not much of it lies parallel to the road.

Forty three miles of dirt road and I arrived at the paved Great Northern Highway. Directly in front of me was Extension Hill, which is part of the Mt. Gibson range. A few hundred feet south of me was a gated road that was the main access to this hill and my planned rendezvous location. A botanist from Kings Park in Perth was supposed to be there at 1 o clock. We were both on time. I had met Ben at Kings Park in Perth and at the Ecological conference, so we were not meeting for the first time. He did have a student, Chris, with him. Chris was going to give us a hand hand and get started on his own project, studying the dynamics of soil seed banks in the Mt. Gibson range.

This picture shows the view of the gravel road taken from the top of Extension Hill. The paved Great Northern Highway is hidden by the vegetation. The graveled area that you see in the left to right orientation is an airstrip. No supporting structures, just a long graveled area that ends at the gravel road I traveled on.

This next photo shows a road train on the highway, revealing that there is actually a paved right going through the sea of bushland.

Road Train

Driving on the left side of the road is one thing. There are other tweaks to the vehicle and some slightly different road hazards here that add to my general state of confusion as I remember Maria's mantra to me - stay left. Luckly she was here for a month and could keep gently reminding me of this on a regular basis. I have only driven on the wrong side of the road once. It was only for a brief stretch, when I was making a right turn in Dongra. Fortunately no one was driving towards me at that moment, despite the fact I was in town and there was plenty of traffic.

The most important first step in driving on the other side of the road is to remember to get in to the truck on the right side - literally. This seemed to be a relatively easy adjustment and I don't have much of problem with this anymore. The blinker versus the windshield wipers is another story. Whenever I try to put on my blinker I almost inevitable turn on the windshield wipers instead. It could be I am not getting better at this because I am not driving much. Lack of practice is leaving me a poor study. Most days my most adventurous drive is to cross the highway at the entrance to the Caravan Park. Then when I do have to go somewhere away from Eneabba, it is generally a long way to go before I need to turn. Another surprising thing is that I seem to have lost my intuitive senes of being able to use my mirrors. Since my brain feels like everything is backwards, it just does not occur to me to use my mirrors - I am forever looking all around me in those situations where I would normally look in my rearview or side mirror.

Gas goes for $1.35 to $1.45 a liter and there are roughly 4 liters to a gallon. The first time I filled the truck, I was shocked when I looked at the dials on the pump and saw them moving so fast. It took me a moment to realize that the quantity of gas was liters - the gallons seemed to be adding up awfully fast! It costs around $80 to fill my tank and I go roughly 400 km (250 miles) between fill ups.

Road trains are trucks that can have up to three trailers and can be up to 120 feet long (the truck in the picture is not the largest I have seen). I don't think road trains are allowed in Perth as I did not see any on the highways there. Western Australia, on the other hand, is mining country and there are a lot of these lumbering beasts out here. This part of Australia is in fact undergoing an economic boom since the Asian market is buying up natural resources at a furious rate. Traveling any distance on the highway here means you will get stuck behind a few of these large trucks. The country highways I have been on have all been two lanes and are quite windy. It has been interesting trying to find a good place to pass and then actually attempting to get past 120 feet of truck as quickly as you can. There are passing lanes every so often but they are a little to scarce along some longer stretches of the road.

Driving out in the country in the U.S. after dark, in many areas, means you have to watch out for deer. Here you need to keep an eye out for kangaroos. Fortunately I have not seen any in the little bit of night driving I have done. There is pleny of evidence that they get hit often enough. There are dead roos on the side of the road and, in working just off the highway in the bush, there are plenty of kangaroo bones. The folks who run the caravan park also have a number of kangaroos they have raised from joeys - individuals they adopted because people found the joeys after their mothers got killed on the road.

All in all, a big change from driving around Boston.

Perth Again

November 30

Back to Perth to get Maria on her way back home.

We got settled into our old hotel, got a good nights sleep, and began our first full day in Perth at Curtin University. You can see by the picture that late November is quite different than what we experience as northerners. The campus is quite nicely landscaped, as many Universities are, and it was lovely to walk around the grounds. We met up with my collaborator, Maria got set up to work on the internet, and we finished up our few hour visit by having lunch on campus. Our next adventure was to visit Freemantle (~ 25 km from Perth). So began some serious shopping for Maria. We also had a nice dinner at the downtown shopping area there. It was a be seeing many more people in an hour than lived within 50 miles of us in Eneabba.

The next day was a downtown Perth day. I took the bus (powered by Natural Gas) to the bus center, walked a few hundred feet to the convention center, and crashed the Australian Ecological Society Conference. My collaborator was speaking at 9:30. It was strange to be at a science conference, it just happened to be going during the time we were in town. It was also interesting to see the scope of the Australian ESA meeting; the american ESA conference is at least ten times as large (attendance wise - a few hundred versus many thousands). In the U.S. it truly ends up being an exhausting experience to try and go to all the talks that interest you, to try to see all the posters that seem interesting, and to visit with all the folks you need to talk with. Like many things in Australia, the pace and feel of things was much more relaxing. At break I was talking to an Australian myrmecologist from Darwin (I surprised him when I walked up and said hello - Dave! What are you doing here?) when Maria showed up for her promised visit. She left to go to the shopping area and I ended up staying at the conference past 2 PM.

I then spent a few hours walking around the downtown shopping area, in part to look around the stores and to see if I could find Maria. The shopping areas in the major cities of Australia are set up differently than we are used to in the U.S. There is usually a street or two, stretching for a number of city blocks, that only allows foot traffic. There are store fronts on both sides, large stores underground, and other walkways that are perpendicular to the street that open into what are best described as an inside mall. Needless to say all of this shopping space and the people it held made my searching around for Maria a futile experience.

Maria and I met up at the room and after awhile we headed back downtown to eat dinner. I made a mistake in getting dressed - putting on my flip-flops instead of sneakers - as we discovered when we found most eating establishments downtown would not let anyone in who was wearing "thongs." Who knew? We did finally find a nice place and had a lovely dinner.

Up at 4 AM on November 30th, out the door and drive to the airport, and Maria was off for her day plus trip to get to Boston. I went back to the hotel and slept for a few more hours. I met up with one of the scientists in Perth for breakfast downtown, went food shopping, and was on the road to Eneabba early in the afternoon.

So much for the big city. Back to the land of Ronnie the Raven, Roxy the kangaroo, and the the hopsitality of Alan and Lorraine at Western Flora Caravan Park.