Melanie and I are just wrapping up a 2 week stint volunteering at Safe Haven, a wildlife rescue and rehabilitation center, located on a 150 acre farm in rural Queensland. The accommodations here have been spartan but adequate, and the work - while not glamorous - has (mostly) been fascinating, as the animals are just a tad more interesting (and exotic) than the racoons, skunks and wild turkeys we see at home! Thought I'd share what a typical day volunteering here is like:
Kangaroos/Wallaroos/Wallabies: There are about a dozen or so that live at or around the facility. They were either brought here as rescue animals, or were born here to mothers that had been rescued (when you hit a marsupial with your car in Australia - a far too common occurrence - you are supposed to check and see if there is a joey in their pouch that can be saved, even if the mom can't). With the exception of the youngest joeys (all marsupial babies are called "joeys"), these animals are free to wander on and off the property. The joeys get bottle fed, and a bit of grains are put out for the older ones twice a day to help supplement their regular diets (mostly grass), especially since its been very dry in these parts so fresh grass can be hard for them to find. They can be pretty mischievous, and being around these guys is a real hoot:
Play Fighting (or "having a punch up")
Koalas: There are currently two koalas at the center - a mother and joey who were rescued last year after being nearly killed by a herd of cattle! In most of eastern Australia koalas are considered endangered species due to the impacts of drought, bush fires and habitat loss. They are very picky eaters, so every few days we spend a couple of hours driving around to find the right kind of eucalyptus trees to cut for them (they only eat the tender new leaves, which are few and far between due to the dry conditions). To ensure that they are eating enough, when we clean out their enclosures each morning we have to count and record the number of poops we recover (averaging between 150-200). Like I said, the work here is (mostly) fascinating.... Lucky for them, they're incredibly cute. Sadly, the mother went blind from the injuries she suffered and will not be able to be returned to the wild. The joey, which was tiny when it was rescued last year, has grown well (almost 3 kg now) and they are looking for a spot to release her in the coming days up in the mountains, and away from any cattle.
Wombats: The facility has done quite a bit of research on breeding hairy-nosed wombats, also an endangered species. They have more than a dozen in residence now which can't be released for fear that they'll be shot by farmers who don't like them because they dig up their crops. Cleaning their enclosures is one of our least favorite tasks, though they are pretty cool animals.
New Rescues: Just in our time here the center has gotten calls from area vets with new animals to be rescued including a possum with injured feet (he was successfully rehabbed and released back into the wild), an owl with an eye injury (sadly he didn't make it), a young kangaroo joey, and best of all a litter of 6 tiny orphaned dingo pups. Melanie has taken a leading role in bottle feeding and caring for the dingos - which mature much faster than dogs. Luckily, the center has found a "forever home" for the pups when they get a bit older - an aboriginal community that is trying to re-introduce dingos to an area where they had been wiped out by farmers, and training them to hunt.
Other Residents and Visitors: There's a variety of other residents that also require feeding and enclosure cleaning daily, including sugar gliders, an emu, and a frogmouth bird (which eats chicken hearts), as well as nighttime visitors like the bettongs (a rabbit-sized marsupial). The resident pythons don't get fed during the winter, which makes them pretty docile.
Tomorrow we move on to our next adventure - diving on the Great Barrier Reef at a spot that apparently Jacques Cousteau labelled one of his top ten favorite dive spots on the planet. Hopefully, we'll be able to tolerate the winter water temperatures..... Then its off to Western Australia for a 24-day camping odyssey that will take us from Perth to Darwin, a journey of 2400 miles!
We can't believe its been almost 3 months since we left home. Miss you all!
Love, Melanie and Elan
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