Wild Australia
Roger Funston
©
Copyright 2024 by Roger Funston
|
Photo of sharp-tailed sandpipers by Steve Wilson courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. |
Today,
I walk a 10 mile transect over coastal dunes and along brackish
lagoons. We are keeping a list of the migratory birds we see, eastern
curlew and bar-tailed godwit, critically endangered, red-necked
stilt, vulnerable. These birds fly 8,000 miles from China and Siberia
to winter in Coorong National Park. It is April 1984, autumn in
Australia. Soon these birds will migrate to the Northern Hemisphere
to summer.
Yesterday,
I spent the day watching whimbrels, sharp-tailed sandpipers and
red-necked avocets through binoculars, poking their bills in the
mudflats. The day before we cored in these mudflats to see what
invertebrates live there, trying to better understand behavior,
important food sources and habitats needs.
The
flight time from Los Angeles to Adelaide takes 19 hours with
layovers. I lose a day upon arrival but will get it back when I
return home. It’s another 80 miles by car to Coorong National
Park, a natural area with high biodiversity. This is my first time
traveling internationally. I have used all of my vacation days, sick
leave and holidays from work to take this trip.
Coorong
National Park is located on the southern coast of Australia on the
South Sea, where the South Pacific and Indian Oceans meet. Mixing of
the Southern Sea and the Murray River create estuaries of fresh and
saline waters, world class wetlands that are endangered because of
reduced freshwater flows and drought. Vulnerable southern belle frogs
and heath goanna live in freshwater. Water birds, such as
sharp-tailed sandpipers, pied oystercatchers and red-capped plovers,
scurry across saline lagoons and mudflats. The Coorong has one of the
largest pelican rookeries in Australia.
Our
team is half Aussies and half Americans. The Principal Investigator
is environmental scientist David Patton from the University of
Adelaide. One of the Research Assistants is nicknamed Hulkie. Hulkie
is a bear of a man but is really a teddy bear. The other assistant is
an American who just started. He introduces himself by saying, “Hi,
I’m Randy”. The Aussies snicker. It is not a good thing
to be randy.
The
rest of us are short-timers in a long line of volunteer field
biologists. The mix of participants is both surprising and wonderful.
An executive with Esso, an engineer from Australian mining company
BHP and a phone company account rep from Orange County California who
has brought along two large trunks filled with numerous wardrobes.
Perhaps we are all closet environmentalist shedding our day jobs to
revel in our passions.
The
Aussie accent is much stronger away from the cities. It takes a bit
of effort in the beginning, but gets easier over time. Some of the
Aussies take every opportunity to tease us about our American
accents. One has to learn new behaviors, even for simple tasks like
crossing the street. In the US, we always look left then right before
crossing. A bad idea on a busier street in Australia. More than once,
I entered the right side of the car. “Oh, are you driving?
We
live communally in roadhouse lodging, sharing cooking, stories and
laughter. Cards games played at night. The Aussie winner shouts out
“You beauty”. Tea and bilkkies mid-afternoon. Evening
barbies. Singing around the campfire, looking at the stars (bush
telly).
Learned
a lot of Aussie slang: dog’s breakfast (complete chaos), she’ll
be apples (it will be alright), whoop whoop (middle of nowhere),
bonzer (awesome) and whinger (complainer)
The
days are long. Tired at night, but a good tired. I will probably
never see these people but I still have fond memories of this time
and place and the people I worked with forty years ago.
After
finishing three weeks of volunteer work at Coorong National Park, I
head to the Great Barrier Reef before returning to the US. My
choice, Heron Island via helicopter. My flights from Adelaide to
Sydney to Brisbane are running behind schedule. It is after 4:30 pm
before I arrive at the Brisbane airport.
I
meet two young men from the helicopter company who rush me to the
gate. Copters only fly during the day and sunset this time of year is
around 5:30 pm. The ride takes about 30 minutes. One of the men grabs
my luggage and the other starts strapping a parachute onto my back
saying, “Whatever you do, don’t pull the ripcord until
you are out of the helicopter”. No one had said anything
before about a parachute. It’s too late to back out now.
I
climb into the co-pilot seat, put on the headphones, and off we go.
We fly about 500 feet off the water. The view is spectacular. The
chatter through the headphone has a strong Aussie accent. An
uneventful flight. Luckily, no parachute jump.
Heron
Island is a tropical coral cay, 2,600 feet long, 980 feet wide and 12
feet tall at its highest point. The reef and island are teeming with
wildlife. Today, Heron Island is an upscale resort and well-known
UNESCO World Heritage site. Back in 1984 it
was less well known, having only recently been designated. It had
modest bungalow rooms and was a hangout for nature enthusiasts and
honeymooners.
Rich
stands of grand devil’s claw cover the middle of the island.
The tree’s leaves are sticky. The black noddie terns use the
leaves to make their nests. Sometimes, the seeds adhere to black
noddie’s feathers so they can no longer fly. They starve and
fall to the ground, fertilizing the nutrient poor sandy soil.
The
thousands vulnerable leatherback turtles, who live in the ocean, feel
the call of land in deep memory and return to their place of birth to
nest from October to May. This swarm of nesting turtles on the beach
will soon return to their ocean home. Tens of thousands of nesting
endangered wedge-tailed shearwaters will soon migrate north to the
Arctic. Year-round residents include eastern reef egrets, sacred
kingfishers, buff-banded rails and Capricorn silvereyes.
The
shallow coral reefs await. I rent mask, snorkel and fins and spend
many enjoyable hours in warm water gazing at white and black-nosed
sharks, shovel nosed rays and pink whiptail rays. Swimming turtles
are foraging for food. Colorful schools of tropical fish I can’t
identify congregate, all of one mind, turning at the same sharp
moment.
During
mid-day low tide, I walk on exposed and semi-submerged coral to view
damselfish, small snails, anemones, worms. Enjoy a few days of
strolling on white sand beaches at sunrise and sunset. Without the
coral reefs, there would be no beach.
A
tiny, photosynthesizing organism, a zooxanthellae, makes its home in
the coral’s body tissue, converting sunlight to energy,
providing essential nutrients and giving coral its bright colors.
Higher ocean temperatures, due to global warming, stress the
zooxanthallae, causing them to die or leave their host, a process
called coral bleaching. Fish leave, black noddies starve, grand
devil’s claw trees die.
Heron
Island is a lovingly protected marine sanctuary in delicate
ecological balance and peril. I had the privilege of experiencing
this marvel before today’s more dire climate change threats. I
hope it’s not too loved by eco-tourists. I pray it avoids
ecological collapse. I want to return some day. I hope my
great-grandchildren can too.
Roger
Funston came to writing late in life after a long career as an
environmental scientist. He worked on projects on four continents.
Roger writes about his life journey, his travels and things he has
seen that you can’t make up. His works appears in several
anthologies including Drifting Sands, woods Reader, Last Stanza
Poetry and Oregnaug Mountain Poetry Journal.
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