Angus and I just got back from another field trip, and I had to put up this picture in relation to the previous pictures of mammals. It was shearing season and I think this is a rebel gang of sheep that avoided the round-up. The are certainly going to regret that come summer!
Some heavily-burdened sheep. Lake Hurlestone Conservation Reserve, Western Australia. October 2013. Photo by Angus Kennedy.
I thought I'd put up some more pictures of non-native mammals instead of finally getting to the dragons themselves. I think about dragons all day. Why not spend a little time with something much bigger, smellier, dirtier, and more generally offputting? Not to mention more dangerous.
My first day in the field last year, we arrived at Henbury Station and, as part of our orientation, we got a lecture on safety. As we always do. I was expecting the usual: heat, water, snakes, getting lost, heat. Instead, the first thing I was told: "watch out for camels." What? Camels? They're big, ugly and have a reputation for spitting on you (that guy totally deserved it), but aren't they also supposed to be man's friend, carrying our water through the desert?
A herd of feral Australian camels. Mulga Park Station, Northern Territory, 2012. Photo by Angus Kennedy.
Apparently not. Camels can be pretty dangerous (here's one trying, with adorable results) and have quite the reputation in central Australia. In the spring, the time of year when we were in the field, male camels gather together a group of female camels. They guard their harem not only from other camels, but also from other large, intrusive creatures like humans. A male camel is a huge, powerful animal and getting stomped on by one would not be a pleasant experience.
The male camel is the really big one to the left. Mulga Park Station, Northern Territory, 2012. Photo by Angus Kennedy.
I only encountered a herd of camels once while I was on foot. They were quite impressive. Perspective can be misleading. Looking at those animals while standing on the ground I realized they were a lot bigger, and I a lot smaller, than I thought when watching them from the safety (and elevation) of the Landcruiser. Also, they must only use smaller females for camels rides, because that male was HUGE. Or maybe feral camels in Australia are like feral cats. Fortunately these camels weren't too interested in me. Not that I gave them much of a chance. I headed away from the flat ground and vegetation into the rocky hills. I don't think camels like hills.
IT'S LOOKING RIGHT AT YOU. Tempe Downs Aboriginal Land, Northern Territory, 2012.
Camels are also a massive nuisance to cattle ranchers. They compete with the cattle for scarce resources and harass the cattle during the breeding season. Though they're worth money, they're apparently very difficult to muster. One eight-year-old daughter of a station owner matter-of-factly explained "it's the dumbest thing my dad ever decided to do." So most ranchers choose to have camels on their lands end up like this:
One of my field sites turned out to be a creepy camel graveyard. We counted seven skeletons. Note the bullet hole at the back of the skull. Mulga Park Station, Northern Territory, 2012. Photo by Angus Kennedy.
Both brumbies and feral camels are pretty rare on our field trips. We didn't encounter any in 2011 and only a handful in 2012. Ironically, I have only one single lonesome picture of the most commonly seen mammal on our trips. Probably because we don't think to take pictures of commonplace things, even when they are photogenic. Here is that poor, lonely picture:
Cattle, the most abundant outback mammal. Mulga Park Station, Northern Territory, 2012. Photo by Angus Kennedy.
I do have a few pretty good pictures from Angus of our second most commonly sighted mammal, courtesy of a sunrise drive through a large herd:
Sheep! Yardea Station, South Australia, 2012. Photo by Angus Kennedy
Sunrise through the sheep. Yardea Station, South Australia, 2012. Photo by Angus Kennedy.
I don't have much of a soft spot in my heart for introduced species. Particularly in Australia, they're destructive and have been a factor in more than a few extinctions. Nonetheless, I have to admit that sometimes they are damn pretty. We've only come across Brumbies, as Australians call their introduced horses, twice during fieldwork. That's not nearly as often as we come across other introduced species such as foxes, cats and dingoes. When we do see some, I just have to stop and stare. Boy are they beautiful!
After I finished undergrad, I went backpacking with a friend in South America. Before I left I had spoken with Prof Scott Keogh at the ANU about doing a PhD, and the difficulty in getting international scholarships. I was planning on starting the application process after our trip.
While we were backpacking, I got news from Prof. Keogh that the ANU was offering a special, unexpected round of international scholarships. The application deadline was one week after the announcement, so I had to get a PhD application together and submitted quickly. When we arrived in Santa Fe, Venezuela, my time was running out. International scholarships are hard to get, and having such a short window to submit an application meant that the competition would be greatly reduced, so obviously I had to try my best to get mine in.
Mochima National Park, Venezuela.
My friend and I were supposed to go dolphin-watching and island-beach-bumming in Santa Fe. She ended up going by herself, and took my camera. These pictures are all hers, taken while watching the dolphins frolic and relaxing on the beach. Meanwhile, I was trying desperately to get some kind of respectable application together.
I was frantic. Santa Fe is a small place, with only one Internet cafe. The computers I was on were running Windows 98. They didn't have any version of Microsoft Office on them, instead they had some open source, Spanish word processing program I'd never heard of. I don't even think there was the option to save anything as .doc. I just saved everything as whatever and hoped for the best.
Mochima National Park, Venezuela
I was e-mailing my parents, getting them to send me transcripts and CVs. Meanwhile, I was trolling through my Sent Mail box to see what bits and pieces I could scrape together from attachments I had previously sent. I was running (and paying for) three computers at once: one for downloading documents from my e-mail to a USB key, one for typing, and one for uploading. The kids who usually used those computers for gaming were not impressed.
Mochima National Park, Venezuela.
Life on the Caribbean is not set-up for the frantic. The Internet cafe closed for a three hour siesta from 11-2, and the tired old lady who ran the place wasn't about to give that up.
I did end up getting an application together on time, with a lot of assistance, support and sympathy from Prof. Keogh and my parents. But I also learned that sometimes you just can't live in the moment, no matter what TV and that hippy from Iowa who makes figurines out of wire to sell to tourists on the beach in Colombia try to teach you.
Mochima National Park, Venezuela.
Uluru is one of Australia's most famous landmarks, and as a consequence it is also one of Australia's most photographed landmarks. I see pictures of Uluru all the time on postcards, calendars, and chatchkas-for-tourists no matter where in Australia I happen to be. I didn't think it was possible to take a new, unique or interesting picture of Uluru. Then I saw Angus's pictures of the place. I thought I'd put a small selection of them up, because they're just so good, and so different.
*Click to enlarge the photos in a lightbox.*
Angus also took some pretty amazing photos of Kata-Tjuta, Uluru's under-appreciated step-sister. Although I didn't get to participate in most of these adventures, I did get to do the short Walpa Gorge Walk when I went to pick up Mitch and Gus after getting our tyre fixed.
I may have to print some of these out and frame them.
