2003-05-26 - 4:44 p.m.

Notes from the field:

May 10, 2003—9 AM:

Maureen and I were finally ready to leave Padaminka. Each of us ran back into the house several times to gather items that we have forgotten. The clock was ticking—we were supposed to meet Patricia (another active member of the Mackay Conservation Group) out at East Point. Not a ½ km out of the driveway, I cried,

“Awww, look!”

Before I had the second word out of my mouth, Maureen slammed on the brakes and bolted out the door. Someone had hit a wallaby with his vehicle and she was lying on her side in a pool of blood. A pink-skinned joey lay skirming about 2 meters away. Maureen scooped him up and carried him back to the car.

“He’s still warm,” she said, wrapping him in a towel and passing him to me. “I think he’ll make it. I’ll go back and ring Dorothy—she’s a registered carer.”

I held the joey close to me to warm him with my body heat. He looked up at me with oversized eyes and slowly his heart rate calmed. Back at the house, Maureen double-wrapped our stunned creature, put him inside a large bag and left him in the care of her mother to give to Dorothy when she arrived. We were late and had to hit the road.

As we passed the mother wallaby again, she stretched out her arms. She wasn’t dead yet. But she wasn’t going to live.

“Let’s go find out if Clyde has a gun,” Maureen said.

Clyde was at the house working on construction of some showers and toilets for the seminar room that the council was forcing Maureen to install before they would grant her permits to operate the Nature Refuge. He said he would take care of the wallaby. Neither of us wanted to stick around to hear the gunshot.

10:30 AM

We finally arrived at East Point to find Patricia about to start off without us. She has been busily gathering data (footprints, sightings, feces) to give indication of the types of animals that inhabit the region. East Point is 70 ha of remnant Casuarina woodlands located near Harbour Beach in Mackay. Even though it is home to at least 140 bird species and provides habitat for nesting turtles, and despite the fact that part of the public lands lies on a major flood plain area, the Department of Natural Resources and Mines has earmarked all but 5 ha for hotel and residential development. Patricia, Maureen and other volunteers are desperately trying to document existing wildlife in the region to make a case against the development. They have already collected 2000 signatures on petitions—they need 3000 by the next few weeks.

We set off to look for snake trails, goanna tracks, echidna scat—anything that might show that important predators, which control populations in the adjacent Bassett Basin Fish Habitat Reserve are using the woodlands as corridors. Instead of keeping my nose to the ground, I wandered about gathering GPS coordinates for the day that I will have to sit in front of the computer again (which I have clearly been avoiding) to map the extent of mangrove habitat. It would figure that without trying, I stumbled across some scat filled with beetle carapaces—likely from the Northern quoll. A quoll is a small, carnivorous marsupial and evidence of their presence is exactly what the conservation volunteers were looking for.

May 17, 2003

Butterflies fluttered alongside the bow of Jim’s ReefHunter for the duration of the 26 miles out to Scawfell Island.

“Magic,” Jim said in his Aussie brogue, almost unintelligible over the humming motor. “Today is one in a hundred. What a beauty!”

This is why dive outfitters don’t last in Mackay—unpredictable weather. Jim doesn’t run a dive shop, but he does have boats and was nice enough to take me out to the reef just because he was so excited to finally have good conditions. I had been waiting already for nearly 2 weeks for the winds to blow off and today was perfect at last—flat seas, blue sky and thousands of black and white butterflies. At some point during the passage, Jim informed me that he hadn’t been diving in 3 years. He had the boats, he had the time, he has the GBR in his backyard—but he didn’t have a reason to go—and that I was more than willing to provide.

We were on our way to Scawfell so I could check out the reefs as a potential sampling site for Phase II of my research, focusing on detection of downstream impacts on corals and reefs from increased delivery of sediments (and associated nutrients and biocides) from the Pioneer River. Because of Scawfell Island’s distance offshore, away from the prevailing currents that carry river plumes and resuspended sediments north from the Pioneer mouth, I expected the area to be relatively pristine.

We had one other passenger on board, Ross, cousin to Maureen’s ex, retired army cook, scavenger of used things and land-lubber extraordinaire. He had a look at the corals through a glass-bottom viewing bucket and was stunned.

“Fifty-nice years of me life and I’ve never seen the reef,” Ross later declared. “When I get back to Clermont, I’m going to go to the community pool and take swimming lessons. Then, next time, I’ll be right.”

Ross certainly was impressed at the coral life on Scawfell—so much so that he had me sign his new miner’s pick handle. When anyone asks who is Stacy Jupiter, he says he’ll tell them “The Goddess of Sapphires”. I have an open invitation to the GemFest in August.

But Ross had a right to be impressed. Even though Scawfell isn’t yet on the outer reef, the coral cover was high—particularly in the areas designated as “Green” by the Marine Park Authority. This is not the case, however, for reefs around the islands closer to shore, as I found out a few days later.

May 20, 2003

Ian Finnel, a.k.a. Cap’n Hava-chat, has the mark of a true seaman in that he is able to roll and light a cigarette while piloting a “dory” into 10 knot winds. Bloody good trick.

It took three tries to get out on the boat with Ian. On the first day, 30 knot gusts dashed all hopes of leaving the harbour. Instead, I had a chat with Hava-chat and heard first-hand about declining reef health and blistered fish being caught from an offshore channel. He told me that an EcoWatch volunteer group had been monitoring reef sites around Mackay, but new government regulations were passed stating that the reef surveys qualified as “work” and could only be performed by commercial divers, a AU$10,000 license. The EcoWatch program dissolved. Hmm.

Take two at the marina: The seas were flat, but the dory was buggered—flooded engine.

“I’m really sorry about this,” said Ian. “I hope it doesn’t mess up your plans.”

Plans? If Africa taught me one thing above all it was to not hold much stake in plans.

“No worries,” I smiled. “All the more time for me to offer myself as human sacrifice to the sandflies in the mangroves. Catch ya tomorrow.”

Take three: With a working vessel and calm conditions we sped off to Round Top and Flat Top Islands. Although the reefs weren’t the coral graveyards that I pictured, the communities present suggested chronic turbidity. Whether or not this is a new response to increasing sedimentation still remains to be shown.

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