Australian Reptile Park – Part 2

The Reptile Park has one of the biggest saltwater crocodiles in captivity.  Elvis is about 5 metres (15 ft) long and boy is he fast!  We got to watch a keeper feed him a chicken wing and the speed at which this huge beast could move and strike was shocking.

Salties can be extremely aggressive and have been known to stalk small boats in Darwin Harbour as well as attack and eat unwary humans.  They are excellent swimmers and inhabit rivers, water holes, lakes, and even the sea in northern (tropical) Australia, which means that even the beach is unsafe up north.  We’re too far south in Newcastle to have to worry about salties, which is a very good thing.

 We were lucky to see an echidna at the park because they are shy and often hide.  In fact, this one was hiding; it probably just didn’t realize that part of it’s back was showing.

Echidnas are very interesting animals.  They are monotremes, mammals that lay eggs and also nurse their young.  A fertilized egg is held in a female’s reproductive tract until it is the size of a grape.  It is then delivered to the mother’s pouch where it stays for about ten days before the puggle (baby echidna) hatches.  After about 50 days in the pouch, the puggle’s spines become so long and prickly that it must move to an underground burrow which the mother has dug.  Leaving the growing puggle for a few days at time, the mother goes out foraging, returning to feed her baby.  When the puggle is 200 days old, mum nurses it one last time and then abandons the burrow, and the young adult is on its own.  This complex reproduction and puggle-rearing process is quite remarkable, I think.

Sacred kingfisher birds are found throughout Australia

Crested pigeons look like punk birds and are also found throughout Australia

Dwarf bearded dragons are native to Western Australia

Lace Monitor

 Lace monitors, also called goannas, can grow to be two metres (6 ft) long.  They spend much of their time up in trees, coming down to forage for food on the ground.  Interestingly, females lay eggs in a hole they excavate in termite mounds, especially those found up in trees.

Termite mound in a dead tree

After laying 6 - 12 eggs, the female leaves the mound, letting the termites re-cover the eggs inside their nest which keeps them at a constant temperature.  It is believed but apparently not yet documented that the female returns to the termite mound to dig out the young when they hatch.

Cane toad

Cane toads were brought to Australia in 1935 in hopes that they would eat a beetle that was destroying sugar cane crops.  Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the toads had any impact whatsoever on the beetles but instead they have become a serious pest.  With no natural predators, the cane toad population has exploded. Aggressive feeders, they have a significant negative impact on native insect, bee, and frog populations.  Cane toads are also toxic, releasing deadly venom from their skin when attacked.  Native animals killed by toads include goannas, snakes, freshwater crocodiles, and dingos.  In humans the toxin can cause intense pain and temporary blindness.  Outside of Australia, humans have even died from eating the toads or their eggs.  Cane toads live up to 15 years and are highly adaptable to different climate conditions which means they are spreading rapidly across the country.  Scientists are working to find a way to control toads in Australia but have had limited success so far against this scourge.

We learned an awful lot about Australian animals, reptiles, and amphibians at the park and we also had a lot of fun there.

Australian Reptile Park – Part 1

The Australian Reptile Park is a unique and special place.  It has fascinating visitor experiences as well as a strong commitment to native wildlife, especially endangered Australian species. It also has an awesome entryway straight out of Jurassic Park. 

Koalas are perishing at such a high rate that they are projected to be extinct by 2050 and Tasmanian Devil populations are also in steep decline.  Both species are dying as a result of serious diseases, loss of habitat, and vehicle-caused deaths.  In response, the Reptile Park has developed specialized breeding programs for both koalas and devils in the hopes of saving them from extinction.  So though it’s called the Reptile Park, there are a wonderful variety of species to see there.  

The park is not terribly large but makes up for it by offering many animal encounters, both casual and more formal.  Tame kangaroos, wallabies, emus stroll the grounds and it’s not uncommon to come across a giant Galapagos tortoise out for a walk or an olive python enjoying a slither on the grass.  You can also pet a koala and have your picture taken, with all proceeds going to support the work of the park.

A curious kangaroo 

That's Rosie the koala.  She's about a year old.

The park is extraordinary in other ways.  For instance, they have been providing snake venom for the production of anti-venom for 60 years and today are the only provider in the whole country.  Venom production is time consuming and dangerous. Every week the park staff “milk” 100 snakes by having each one bite the latex cover on a vial.  Venom drips into the vial and is then freeze dried.  

Milking a highly venomous tiger snake.  If you click on this photo you 

will be able to better see the angry glint in the snake's eye as it is milked.

When enough venom is accumulated it is sent to a special lab which injects increasingly strong doses into horses over a six-month period.  This does not hurt the horses but does cause them to produce antibodies to the venom.  At this point, blood is drawn and processed to separate out the antibodies which are then used for anti-venom. This dangerous, labor-intensive process has saved approximately 10,000 lives since anti-venoms were developed.

The Reptile Park also helps produce anti-venom for the notoriously toxic funnel web spider, considered the most dangerous spider in the world with a bite that can kill within an hour.  

Funnel web spider

Collecting this venom is perhaps even more dangerous than with snakes because of the spider’s massive fangs and the fact that the venom must be suctioned off them with a small pipette while keeping fingers away from the aggressive spider.

Funnel web spider fangs are longer than many snake 

fangs and strong enough to puncture plastic

The process for making the anti-venom is similar to snakes except that in this case the venom is injected into Flemish rabbits which have a natural immunity to it.  Since the anti-venom was developed in 1980 there have been no recorded deaths from funnel web spiders.  

In New South Wales it’s not all that uncommon to come across a funnel web spider in your home or yard and the Reptile Park has a program to encourage the safe capture of these arachnids which are then transported to the park for milking.  Believe it or not, the park receives about 1500 spiders a year from the community which is a significant contribution to the anti-venom program.  Dave and I encountered a funnel web spider ourselves when we were here in 2015 but it was probably a female, which are much less aggressive than males, and did not leave its funnel web so we were not in any danger. 

Click on this photo so you can more easily see the spider inside the funnel 

Burning Mountain

Burning Mountain is a strange and marvelous place, like no other we’ve ever seen. The Martian landscape and sulfurous air make it an otherworldly experience.  It is such an intriguing place that we went back again after first visiting here in 2015.  The countryside around Burning Mountain is hilly pastureland.

So it’s quite a surprise to see that just a short distance beyond this bucolic paddock is the barren, orange top of a small mountain.

Burning Mountain, as the name implies, is on fire.  Not on the surface, however, but deep below.  About 20 - 30 metres (70 - 100 ft) underground is a blast furnace – a coal seam that has been burning for at least 6,000 years at a temperature of around 1700 degrees C (3090 F).  Moving at about a metre (3 ft) a year, the hellish temperatures of the fire scald the ground above it. 

 Only dead trunks and tree limbs are left on the scalded land

At the peak, where the fire is hottest, the ground is a barren Mars-scape and the ground is hot to the touch.  The intense temperature causes minerals in the soil to react and change colour, creating patches of red and orange (iron), yellow (sulphur), and white, (alum). 

The stink of sulphur wafts out of narrow channels, called chimneys, that run down through the earth into the inferno.  These vents suck in air and exhaust out burned gasses.  As the fumes reach the surface, they cool and form sinter, a hard mineralized rock which can grow into otherworldly colours and shapes.

Sinter – the black spot on the middle right is a chimney

As the coal seams burns onward, the land behind slowly recovers from nearly being cooked to death.  With enough time, the scars left by the subterranean fires nearly disappear leaving only small spots of brightly colored ground and the occasional collapsed chimney, overgrown by vines, shrubs and trees.

 

Aboriginal Culture and History – Part 2

Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park in North Sydney on the Hawkesbury River is home to many Aboriginal sites.  Two of them, Red Hand Cave and the Guringai rock engravings, are particularly significant and accessible.  Within the park, West Head at the mouth of the Hawkesbury River is a stunning place, offering a beautiful view of Barrenjoey Headland.  Barrenjoey is an English approximation of the Aboriginal word for small wallaby given to this bit of land by Governor Phillip in 1788.  Phillip was the Commander of the First Fleet which brought the first Europeans to Australia most of whom were convicts being transported from Great Britain for petty crimes.

The lighthouse on the head was built in 1891

Aboriginal tribal groups inhabited the entire Sydney basin when the First Fleet arrived.  Though relations between the two groups were initially peaceful, the arrival of smallpox carried by the British had a dreadful impact on the local people.  The Aboriginal people of the West Head were virtually wiped out by this disease within a year of the First Fleet’s arrival in 1788 and by 1791 there were just three members of the tribe left.  It is shocking and tragic that almost half of all the tribal people in the Sydney Harbour area were dead from smallpox by 1789.

Because of the smallpox devastation, there is little known about the traditional owners of the land at West Head.  Their art in Red Hand Cave was made at a time when Aboriginal people were thriving and is thought to be about 2,000 years old.  Handprint stencils like this one were created by spraying an ochre mixture through ones lips across a hand held against the rock.  Fragile and vulnerable to weather damage, this handprint has only survived because it was made under a rock overhang which has provided weather protection through the millennia.  It is quite rare and marvelous to see such an ancient artifact.

The Guringai rock engravings, also found in the park, are magnificent.  They are estimated to be between 3,000 – 5,000 years old.   

A wallaby and an engraving of a fish to the upper left

Though the sandstone at this site is relatively soft, creating these carvings still required a great deal of effort.  An outline was made by drilling small holes in the rock, perhaps with a sharp shell or bone.  These pits were then connected to create a solid line, probably using a sharpened stone. Some think that the human figure engravings were created by outlining the shadow of a person standing on the rock in the sun.

This engraving is a bit obscured by sand but if you look closely you 
can see a man and a woman with arms and legs entwined  

We recently saw ancient Aboriginal axe heads at a museum.  These are the type of stone axe heads that were sharpened on sandstone as shown in photos in the blog posted on 9 March.  This kind of tool may have been used by the people who created Red Hand Cave and the Guringai engravings.

The flora of the West Head region of the park is beautiful.  

A magnificent gum tree

Peach Blossom Tea Tree

Aboriginal History and Culture - Part 1

We have been privileged to see some important Aboriginal heritage sites in the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury River region.  The first people of Australia lived a sophisticated life adapted to each particular region of the country they inhabited.  They were experts at living on the land using tools of their own making.  Their lifestyle was deeply connected to Country* and they were careful not to damage the land or exhaust food sources.  For millennia (at least 65,000 years**), these people tread so lightly that there are few obvious signs of their existence though they did leave some traces, including these carvings of fish under a rock overhang on the Hawkesbury River.

(This blog's pictures are best viewed full-size.  Click on each one to enlarge it.)

Our guide told us that the local aboriginal people 

say these carvings marked a good fishing spot

Acknowledgement of Country is a way for the wider community to demonstrate respect for the traditional Aboriginal owners’ culture and heritage and the ongoing relationship they have with the land.  I would like to acknowledge the Gundungurra and the Guringai people who are the traditional owners of the land featured in this blog and the next one.  I would also like to pay respect to elders both past and present.

Shelter cave

Looking down into the cave.  Notice the high curved rock 

ceiling that provided shelter from the elements        

This shelter cave on the Kings Tableland, in the ancient country of the Gundungurra people, has been in use for at least 22,000 years and is the oldest Aboriginal site in the Blue Mountains.  As well as a shelter, it is thought that it was used as a story telling place and what the modern world would call an art gallery.

Wallaby footprint carvings in the shelter cave

The rocks above the cave also show significant evidence of ancient Aboriginal use with more than 150 grinding grooves in the sandstone next to modified rock pools.  Toolmakers used water from the pools as a lubricant to sharpen axe heads.

Those are axe head grinding groves to the left of the top pool

More axe head grinding grooves

The heath covered tableland is very dry and sandy and there doesn’t seem to be any topsoil. Nevertheless, many drought tolerant plants successfully live here.  The rocks on the Tableland are also quite interesting and the sky is amazing.

The reptile skin-like texture of this rock is thought to have 

been caused by glacial action some 18,000 – 30,000 years ago

*Country, to Aboriginal people, is an expression of the connection between land, nature, culture, and traditions.  When doing research for this blog I came across a Welcome to Country video from the Gundungurra people of the Blue Mountains which expresses some of these ideas. The elder in the video, Greg Sims, who is standing on the Kings Tableland, says, “We don’t own the land, the land owns us.  We come from Mother Earth.”  (http://www.gundungurra.org.au/welcome-video.html)

**New York Times article from 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/science/humans-reached-australia-aboriginal-65000-years.html

Blue Mountains – Part 2

Trails in the Blue Mountains can be rugged.  On top of roots and rocks crisscrossing the track, most paths are rough, slippery, and often really steep.  In our four days in the mountains we averaged 82 metres up and 82 metres down each day. That’s 270 feet each way or the equivalent of going up and down the stairs in an 27-story building.  Most days we hiked a distance of around five miles, which doesn’t sound like a lot but combined with the elevation change, believe me, it was.

Mermaid Cave stairs – one of the many stone staircases we traversed

Tracks hug the edge of deep canyons, dip under stone outcrops, or plunge down rocky abutments and ridges.

That slanted thing on the left is actually the fenced stairs leading down 

to Pulpit Rock, a narrow outcrop that sits way, way above the valley floor 

(it's easier to see it if you click on the photo to enlarge it)

There is a very steep drop-off just to the right of the fence

There has been quite a bit of rain recently in the mountains and we saw many waterfalls, big and small. 

Wentworth Falls –  if you look closely you can see a rainbow near the bottom of the falls

Queens Cascade

Govetts Leap (leap means waterfall in old Scottish dialect)

Bridal Veil Falls

While the valleys and canyons of the Blue Mountains are often damp or even wet and rain-forested, the tops of the ridges and the tablelands are often very dry and desert-like. 

Dave at the edge of Kings Tableland

In these environments rain can have an immediate effect.   Many shrubs and trees we saw had bright green new growth or had begun to bloom.

Mountains Devil

Montbretia - though very pretty this is actually an introduced weed

I don't know the name of this plant which we found on the dry and dusty 

tablelands but the flowers are tiny, about 1 mm (.04 inches)

We even found tadpoles swimming in a pool of rainwater on top of a huge flat rock in the tablelands. Other wet depressions were empty which suggests that the frogs somehow knew which puddle would be deep enough to last until their babies became frogs themselves.

One of the most iconic rock formations in the Blue Mountains, the Three Sisters.