KatieTheKat

Hello hello,

Just a quick note to let y'all know that I am heading back to camp for another week! Since I last posted anything, I have survived yet another cyclone (they really didn't have much effect here except to give us a little wind, a little rain, and some higher-than-usual tides) and I have become a certified "Turtle Tracker". This morning out on my stretch of beach I identified 9 turtle nests, probably all from Green turtles (due to the storminess, I couldn't say for sure for a couple of them). Otherwise, things have been pretty quiet lately. The weather hasn't been amenable to getting any further snorkelling in, but I am hopeful that that will change soon. I am looking forward to going out to camp again where exciting things seem to happen with greater frequency.

Ta ta,

Kat

Well well. Here, I am, back from camp. And what a fantastic camp it was! I mean super-amazingly-extraordinarily-scumptiously-turtlelischiously-incredible!

Things started off with a bang on night one. We arrived at camp and spent about 2 hours setting up the big shade cloths which had been torn down in cyclone preparation the day before. (The bang hasn't come yet). But once the work was done and sunset was upon us (the we, by the way, is me and Michael, who had been at the camp all summer), we went down to the beach for a little turtle tracking. We had not gone far when Michael pointed out a turtle emerging from the water down the beach and we crouched down in the sand to watch. I couldn't believe that we were watching a SEA TURTLE crawling out of the water in front of us. Oh.. wait.. it seemed to be sinking back down into the waves again.. and back it went into the ocean. We got up an carried on a bit. But then suddenly there was another one. A big one. Once she had made it far enough up the beach and started digging out a nest, we crept up behind her to get a closer look.

As she dug and dug and dug some more, I (slowly and inconspicuously as possible) turned around to watch the setting sun. But I got more than I bargained for, because not only was the sunset stunning against the turquoise sea, but as I looked, a dolphin leaped in an arch out of the water right in line with the setting sun. We watched a whole pod(?) of dolphins jumping and playing in the sunset as the turtle behind us kept digging away.

This turtle, by the way, was a big one. Michael informed me that she was a Green, and not a Loggerhead which are more commonly seen on that stretch of beach. She dug a very large hole, but in the end (and apparently Greens have a habit of this), she decided there was something wrong with it and headed off into the dunes in search of better sand.

Just as we were about to creep after Mrs. Green, however, I looked back towards the ocean and saw that another turtle was crawling out of the water right behind us (and a little off to the side). So we were stuck for the moment, as turtles have very good eyesight and so any movement on our part might have frightened them and disrupted the nesting process (on the other hand they are rather deaf, so we could speak freely). Mrs. Loggerhead (as this is what the new turtle was) marched purposefully past us up the beach and towards the dunes which, when I dared to glance up, I saw that Mrs. Green was just emerging from. A turtle-to-turtle encounter was imminent. What would happen?

Well, it wasn't really all that exciting. They met face to face and paused for a moment to take a look at each other. We wondered if one might crawl right over top of the other, but no, they just passed side by side. I believe that they passed on the right like true Aussie citizens. No wait, other way around. Oh I'm not sure. But anyhow, that was it for the turtle-to-turtle encounter.

But that is not the end of the story by any means. You see, while Mrs. Green simply wandered back down and started doing some more digging behind a little dune mostly out of sight, Mrs. Loggerhead had by this time turned around herself and happened to be headed straight for us! Michael and I were crouched behind a little clump of grass, lying in the sand with our toes pointing to the ocean. For a moment it looked as though Mrs. Loggerhead would veer off to the side, but no, she was definitely making a beeline for my side of the grass clump. I could hear her breathing as she labouriously dragged herself along, less than a metre away from me. And then she came to my leg, which happened to be sticking out to the side a little bit. I felt a hard nudge as her turtle-nose pressed up against my calf. She paused and seemed to sniff me, and then seemed to try to nudge me out of the way. Then I guess she decided I was just a sort of deformed rock and I felt her flipper as she began to crawl over my foot. It was so amazing and I so enthralled that I didn't mind that her tough belly felt like sandpaper rubbing over my foot.

As if that weren't enough, perhaps she took me as a good sign - only a few metres further off, Mrs. Loggerhead started digging out a nest. We were able to get a great view under the nearly-full moon of the entire process from digging out the nest and egg chamber to laying the eggs (unfortunately we couldn't see the actual eggs coming out due to her particular anatomy and position in the dune) to meticulously and carefully covering it all up again and finally returning to the sea.

Well you might think it would be impossible to beat that first night, but many more exciting events were to follow in the remaining days and nights. I learned how to monitor the beach in the morning for turtle nests - how to follow the tracks and locate a nest, and how to distinguish these from "false crawls" which might have some body pits of dug out sand but no eggs.

We went on a little hike in the hills across the road where we saw termite mounds and caves filled with stalactites, stalagmites, roo droppings, and one full of bats. Not to mention the enormous spider.

I had my first snorkelling adventures. How incredible to kick your way through warm, clear waters through coral beds swarming with colourful fish and sea cucumbers! It was a bit odd at first to duck my head under the water and breathe through a tube, always having to trust that the breath I drew in would be one of air and not of salt water, but I mostly got used to it.

One night we went fishing on the beach. It seemed to be turning out a lot like all of my previous fishing expeditions - I caught a number of remarkable pieces of seaweed and lost a lot of bait, but no sign of a fish. Eventually, we decided that we had had enough and declared that this would be the last re-baiting of my line. So I cast it out into the wind.. we didn't see where the hook had landed, but suspected it might be down the beach somewhere (it was awfully hard to cast into the sea with the wind a-blowing). The next one made it into the water (not very far, but far enough).. and I caught.. a bit of seaweed! But the bait was still on the hook. Time and time again, I cast into almost exactly the same spot and time and time again, the line came back with a little seaweed but still the bait clung on. On about the fifth cast, I started to reel my line in and felt a very large clump of seaweed - wait a minute! That doesn't quite feel like seaweed. The end of the rod was actually bending down just like they tell you it should. Sure enough, I managed to catch my first fish - a Spangled Emperor. Too small to keep, so we threw it back, but I'm told they are mighty tasty.

One of the most exciting adventures came on the second-to-last day in camp (i.e. yesterday). When Michael was out monitoring the first couple of stretches of beach (our job at camp was to monitor nesting activity daily starting at sunrise), I got a call from him over the radio. Attempting to mimic the radio protocol that I had observed over the last days, I answered:
Michael (correct protocol): "Bungelup Camp, Bungelup Camp, this is Bungelup Mobile. Over."
Katie (mostly OK protocol): "Bungelup mobile, this is Bungleup Camp... Over"
Michael: "... there is a loggerhead still on the beach just South of camp. We may need to help her back to the sea. Over"
Katie : "Shall I come down now then?" (oops might have forgotten to say "over")
Michael: (describes directions, etc)
Katie: "Over and..er.. Out"
Michael: "(perhaps a little surpressed laughter here?) Bungelup mobile out".
Sure enough, I found Michael and with him was an old Loggerhead resting in the sand dunes, an awfully long way from the ocean. Her tracks showed that she had come over a steep dune and then started wandering around rather aimlessly, unable to find her way back. She seemed to be alright, apart from being a little exhausted, and when we got some buckets of sea water to pour over her and cool her off, she seemed to gain some energy. She was an old woman, this turtle - the back of her shell was worn and topped with an algae toupee. On the side of her head, a large barnacle protruded behind one of her dark and globular eyes. It took us a good hour and a half to direct, coax, prod, push, and force her back past the dunes so that she could get back to the ocean. But it was a wonderful opportunity to admire turtle anatomy close up and in the daylight.

Now I am back on Exmouth, which seems relatively tame, but I'm sure many more interesting turtle and snorkelling adventures will be mine in the weeks to come.

Ta ta for now!

Kat.

Just a quick note to let y'all know that I am now accessible by snail mail, as long as it gets here before I leave Exmouth (which will be no later than February 5th). If you wish to send me something, here is my temporary address:

Katie Stafford
c/o Exmouth L.P.O.
Maidstone Cr., Exmouth
6707
AUSTRALIA

The big news in town today is that we have been upgraded from "Cyclone Watch" to "Cyclone Warning", which means the current prediction is that we will be on the outer edges of the area affected by Cyclone Clare, they expect around 2am or so tonight. Don't worry, it is not expected to be anything too serious - the town of Karratha, to the north of us where the centre of the action is meant to be has been at least partially evacuated however. Though I am excited about the cyclone, I also hope it is nothing too severe since that is the factor that could stop me from going on a "remote camp" starting tomorrow, where I will be working with endangered loggerhead turtles. If all goes well with that, I will be off camping for the next 4 nights (after tonight), and probably trying my hand at driving a motorized quad bike down the beach.

Ciao!

kat

p.s thank goodness for ctrl-z.. I nearly lost all of that!

7:43AM. Training starts at 10. Then I will finally learn more about the volunteering that I have signed myself up for. I have yet to see a turtle, though I did see some tracks in the sand yesterday. But I'm sure that will come soon.

Meanwhile, there is wildlife enough to be seen just around town here. You see, there is a small posse of wild emus who seem to have chosen the streets of Exmouth as their home. You see them sitting in the shade of trees, loping down the streets (on which there are only occasional cars), and wandering around the courtyard in the hostel. My first day here, I saw what I assumed was a mother and her three young all wandering around together. But yesterday I learned how wrong that assumption was. Apparently female emus are smarter than that - they let the males take care of their young from the point the eggs are laid onwards. And furthermore, males seem to see having a large number of chicks as some sort of status symbol, so they will even steal or adopt chicks from other males. One of my fellow turtle volunteers says she saw a male herding around 13 young here last year!

In other wildlife news, when I went down to the town beach recently, the first thing I saw as I went wading into the shallows was a little mini shark (about 50cm long)! A little further along, I spotted a smallish manta ray and then another shark (this one about 40cm long). Oh yes, and back on dry land there are a lot of lizards that run around on their hind legs (basilisks, I think?). Usually after a run, they will stop and rhythmically lift one or the other of their front legs, slowly patting the ground or waving. I'm not sure why they do it.

Well, perhaps I will go see if any of my dormmates and fellow turtle volunteers have risen yet (I think everyone is taking advantage of this opportunity to sleep past 5am which is around the time we will be getting up the rest of the week for turtle monitoring). I am in a room with 9 other volunteers, 8 of whom, like me, just arrived yesterday. Last night there was a social event for all of the volunteers - a pool competition at one of the local pubs. I was paired up with Craig and we lost the first game quite miserably. But then I took on some foosball challengers and fared much better.

A bientot!

Kat

First, so this is not completely confusing, allow me to comment that there has been a change in plans - as it turned out, my telephone rendezvous led to more than I ever could have hoped for - a chance to work as a volunteer with sea turtle monitoring and interpretation programs for a month! I will be living in a hostel in the town of Exmouth and getting up around the crack of dawn to go look at turtle nesting sites and well I'm not really sure what else but I should find out in training on Monday morning. The trip to Exmouth was around 19 hours long, and I decided to set off right away yesterday morning, arriving here in Exmouth at 3:30AM.

Now for the sad and gory story of the kangaroo that some might prefer not to read..

I suppose it was really bound to happen, judging simply by the sheer number of kangaroos that emerged after the sun had set. With my own eyes I surely saw around 100 of them, which leads me to believe that there were quite literally hundreds of them in the narrow strip surrounding the highway. I suppose really Greyhound has no choice but to drive at night when journeys like the one I undertook yesterday are really quite small on a Western Australian scale. Our driver seemed to be quite expert at his manoeuverings - though the first few brakings and swervings may have
knocked a few people off their seats, things were pretty smooth after that. And really the kangaroos did not make it easy. They would sometimes hop across the road right in front of us, occasionally zigzagging madly down the centre line until they finally veered off to one side. And when you thought they had all cleared the way suddenly a little one would go hopping off after another that had already crossed. At first I thought it a little odd that the driver would often dim his headlights
as he passed them, but through further observation I came to see that this did seem to result in less erratic, panicked behaviour on the part of the roos. So, as I say, between having to travel at that time of night, having to consider the safety of his passengers on board (many of whom were sprawled out horizontally across two seats and very few of whom chose to wear the supplied seatbelts), and furthermore having to keep up sufficient speed to stay more-or-less on schedule, our bus driver
certainly had a difficult job of it. But oh what a terrible, heart wrenching sight it was. After a couple of narrow misses, we had just resumed speed when very suddenly a mid-sized roo darted out from the shadows into the full glare of the headlights. It was only a few metres ahead and, though our driver braked, there was suddenly a sickening thud as the frightened creature was rammed side-on by our heavily-fortified transportation machine. As there was little that could be done at this point, we slowly rolled over the body, which surely was still trembling with the vitality that would slowly ooze away there on the hard road while we continued along snugly to our destination. At least it was hit in the center of the bus so we did not feel the wheels rise up on one side of the bus and hear the cruching of bones as described by a passenger who had come from the North and whose bus had collided with 3 or 4 roos and nearly a cow. Though on the other hand, perhaps the wheel rolling would have meant a quicker though certainly not less painful death. As our bus rolled on, I thought of that poor kangaroo lying on the road, no hand or
paw to comfort it or ease its pain, the sound of the flies buzzing around its wounds. As for our bus, there was no trace of the incident on the gleaming metal cage protecting the windshield from such encounters. Thankfully, the vigilance of our driver prevented any further such catastrophes, and many other kangaroos lived to hop freely for another day.

First, a blast from the past
============================
I just have to quickly mention one thing right away that I was thinking about earlier today and was somehow skipped over in my previous entries (I can't imagine how that happened!), as it was one of the most exciting parts of our hike in Lake St. Clair National Park (to me) (I know, that was weeks ago). What happened is this. People up at the Pine Valley hut who had hiked the Overland Track were telling us stories about getting attacked by leeches as they crossed through mudpits on the track. Despite the number of people who mentioned this and the lacerations they showed us, I still found it rather hard to believe that a leech could really find and latch onto a person in the short time during which your foot was in a particular patch of mud. I mean, surely squishy mud isn't that easy to move around in, don't you think? I figured you would have to be standing around in a puddle in order for a leech to clamp onto you. Well, I'm sure you can tell where this is going, but let me relate the story anyhow.

Firstly, mom and I saw no signs of any leeches on the way into the hut or at anytime on our hike out to the hut by the lakeside (I forget what it was called). On the last day (and for part of the previous day as well), I was hiking out in only sandals due to my old hiking boots having caused some horrible pain in my ankle (maybe a pinched nerve?). Though I might have been tempted to spend my time squishing my toes in the mud had it been smooth and gooey, it was full of uncomfortable little bits of this and that so I tried to mostly take the dry route and never lingered in any puddles for long. I took a look at my feet in my sandals when we reached the lodge and proclaimed them to be leech free, and this of course
increased my skepticism concerning the tales of leeches in the mud. Yet, after I had finished a hearty meal and we had been sitting in the lodge for about an hour (though my feet were still rather muddy as I had not bothered to rinse them off in the lake when we arrived), I suddenly felt something cool and wet on my right foot. I looked down to see a chubby little black leech rolling around on the floor, and a red stream of blood trickling down my foot from under my sandal strap. My first ever leech! I'm sorry now that I did not get a picture of it, but everyone else seemed to be quite disgusted with the little black being as I carried it out the
door and tossed it off the edge of the balcony. The experience was nothing like the tales I have heard previously about horrid little leeches that latch and and won't let go - while it was on me, I wasn't even aware of it.. it dropped off of its own accord (probably because it was too full and would have burst otherwise).. and despite all the warnings about itchiness and such, at no point from the time I was bitten until the present day did I experience any discomfort in the area of the bite. So I remain unconvinced about the horrors of leeches, though I now must accept
that it is possible for them to seek out a victim even given a very small opportunity.

Now where am I?
===============
Ok, that was fun but it was all in the past. What's going on nowadays, you ask? Well, as of about 5:45AM this morning, I am now a solo traveller. Despite chaos at the Qantas check-in counters, mom managed to make it on to her morning flight to Perth without any problems (I have heard from her and she is now set up at a sydney hostel). I proceeded to drive around the city for half an hour in search of a gas station so I could return our rental car with the full tank of gas that was agreed
upon. This car had taken us, during the last 3 days, to the town of Bunbury where we waded with bottlenose dolphins, through a magnificent Karri forest where we climed up a 65m high tree to an old forest fire lookout tower (I also climbed the 75m high Bicentennial Tree and a man-made lookout tower at a forestry museum), and to some cute little country towns where we viewed what may well be the world's largest collection of framed jigsaw puzzles. Prior to the car-based adventures,
we spent a couple of nights camping near the Mundaring Weir (a weir is a dam for those who, like me, had no idea). There was an absolutely wonderful outdoor theatre at the campground where we saw "A Good Woman" one night and "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" on New Years' Eve. It was fantiddlyastic.

But that is all about where I have been. Where I am is in the library at the University of Western Australia where I managed to sniff out some free internet access. I am currently killing some tiem till 3pm when I have a telephone rendezvous with someone who may be able to hook me up with a volunteer project involving sea turtles (oh I do hope it is true!). If that does not work out, then tomorrow I will most likely be heading off for a month-long hiking trip down a 964km track (The Bibbulmum) which leads from near Perth to Southern West Australia. The only thing is that some I have talked to have tried to dissuade me from doing so, saying that it is too hot at this time of year. I will have a chat with the "Friends of the Bibbulmum Track" later this afternoon and see what they say about it, but unless the sea turtle thing works out I will probably at least get started on the track and see how things go. This does not mean I will be in email blackout for the next month though, as there are towns along the way where I will be making soem stops.

For tonight, I am stationed at what is apparently the 3rd-best youth hostel in Oceania. It is next to the beach to the west of Perth (a short bus/train ride to town). If, after getting up shortly after 4 this morning, I am still awake enough, I might take in yet another outdoor movie here in Perth. I wish we had these things in Vancouver, but I suppose sunshine in liquid form could wreak havoc on the equipment.

Bye bye!

the lone Kat