Out of the pit

Well we are in our fourth week at Scotia and it has been quite a busy one!! We spent a lovely four days with Peta and Brett in Broken Hill relaxing and not doing any fencing whatsoever. It was a nice change. We visited Peta at School of the Air (just in time for morning tea as it turned out - nice one) and checked out the ultra modern studios and equipment. It was really fantastic and well worth the visit if you are in the area. They have tourist sessions but of course we got the private tour.

On return to Scotia it was all systems go with a news crew and fund donors arriving to watch the release of the rest of the Woylie (little hoppy mammal thingamys) population into stage two. It was all very exciting - hopefully some of you caught the story on Channel Ten National News . . . . We also had to finish off our wallaby pens in preparation for the release of most of the Bridled Nail Tail Wallabies into stage two. This was a huge program which required four all nighters in a row. A big team from Adelaide including the Head Vet from Adelaide Zoo arrived to do all of the vet checks and treatment of the sick animals. The rest of us were pretty much involved in the trapping, transporting and releasing of the wallabies. Adam and I also got a stint in the lab which was very interesting. It was an incredibly busy five days with many lessons learned. The first lesson learned was that our wallaby fences were not high enough. Two sick animals were placed in the first pen on night one and subsequently became the first escapees. This seemed quite amusing early on until we had to renovate and build a second storey. This took some imagination and a lot of scrounging but the end product looked pretty good and, shock horror, actually kept the wallabies in!!

Pulling wallabies out of traps proved to be a bit of a challenge. Surprisingly they don't like being in the traps and then getting dragged out by their tail and shoved into a bag head first isn't popular either. As a result everyone ended up with a few (and in some case - a lot of) scratches and for the boys the inability to produce children. All in a night's work I say!! Adam spent a lot of time trapping and I spent a lot of time releasing the little guys into various places at Scotia. The experiences we had are some of the best of our lives and once in a lifetime. We were hands on all the time and got to handle lots of the animals. The best part was releasing them. They emerge out of the bag like pouch babies and are happy to sit there while you pull their little front paws out to encourage them to venture out into their new world. Some needed more encouragement than others and some didn't make it which was a little heart breaking. Generally though we had a very high success rate. We also got to help with joeys that had been kicked out of the pouch as well as helping to put them back in. I also had the pleasure of sexing and measuring the pouch young in the lab which was amazing. On more than one occasion Adam and I had little joeys stuffed down our jumpers to keep them warm. It was an exhausting four nights and some tempers ran high at various times but apart from that it was fantastic. Plenty of personality clashes and some interesting stories to tell. . . . for another time perhaps. Anyway, we have attached some photos of our four nights - we hope they're not too boring.

Our time at Scotia is drawing to a close and we are looking at leaving on the 1st of November - and it will be with heavy hearts because we have really enjoyed our time here. We still have some fencing and so forth to do so we are going to be busy until the day we drive out of here. We are looking forward to a few days in Broken Hill with Peta, Brett and Annie which will be awesome.

Love to everyone