North Queensland wildlife and the environment
I visited Broadwater camping ground in 2015 and when I returned recently I found that it hadn’t changed much except that more of the damage from cyclone Yasi (2011) had healed in the meantime.
There are wide open grassy areas with scattered tall eucalypts, picnic shelters and amenities, and camping sites for vans and tents. With almost no mobile phone service (there’s just a very poor, intermittent, signal from one part of the picnic ground) it’s a good choice for a digital detox.
We joined Wildlife Queensland’s Townsville Branch recently to walk the Edmund Kennedy Track on one of their rare excursions beyond the local area.
The occasion was a joint expedition with the Cassowary Coast branch to commemorate the anniversary of Kennedy’s landing in 1848, and it was combined with a visit to Ninney Rise and a very convivial dinner at the nearby Bingil Bay Cafe. (Yes, that’s a free plug. Anyone who makes a laksa as good as theirs deserves one.) The weekend will be written up on the branch blog in due course so I will focus on the Track.
Reposted from Wildlife Queensland’s Townsville Branch Blog
In the face of the ongoing, horrific and completely unprecedented devastation of wildlife and habitat across our country please consider making a donation to the wonderful wildlife carers and rescuers desperately trying to help those animals that have survived. Many will have severe injuries and all will find their familiar territory transformed to an alien landscape without shelter, food or water.
Below is a list of some of the Wildlife Care and Rescue groups dealing with this crisis in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Queensland.
If anyone has information for Western Australian groups covering the fire-affected areas (I believe mostly in the SE of the state at present) please let WQ know. Or indeed any other organisations in particular need or which you can vouch for – this list can be added to. It is only a small selection – but we are truly in uncharted territory and these groups need your now more than ever before. THANK YOU!!
Continue reading “Helping Our Wildlife In Crisis”
I have known for some time about a Mahogany Glider (Petaurus gracilis) research project undertaken by the good people of Wildlife Queensland, but that’s almost all I knew until they scheduled a visit to the site last Sunday as one of their regular monthly walks.
Their monitoring site straddles Ollera Creek an hour North of Townsville, between the highway and the coast. We gathered at the Paluma turn-off before driving in convoy through well-timbered grazing land to the beach near the mouth of Ollera Creek.
Perfect winter weather enticed fifteen walkers to join the Wildlife Queensland monthly excursion on the Sunday just past. The group met at the Freshwater bird hide (see Town Common map (pdf) if you’re not familiar with the park) at 9.00 and ambled along the causeway (someone called it a “dam wall”) to the foot of Many Peaks range near Bald Rock, then up to the top of Mount Marlow, the highest point of the range. I walked down it a year ago and commented that “I would rather go down it than up” but really, going up wasn’t too demanding. Continue reading “A stroll up Mount Marlow”