Bushfires in Victoria

I haven't posted for a few days. I meant to, on several things, but like the rest of Australia I have been in thrall to the news of the Victorian bushfires. I am nowhere near Victoria, but it's truly a national disaster. For many Australians this could so easily be on our own doorsteps. At present over 180 people are confirmed dead and well over 1,000 homes lost. This is the worst natural disaster in the history of the Australian nation. I am not sure what more I can write and other topics have seemed a little trivial until now.

In January 2003, bushfires destroyed over 500 homes and killed four people in Canberra, the Australian capital city. We were living in Canberra then, in a suburb not directly affected, but close enough to the action to be on evacuation standby. We were in town on that fateful day and watched the firefighting helicopters flying back and forth, from lake to fire front, over and over. We escaped unscathed, but friends lost their houses and everything in them.

To give an idea of the scale of the Canberra fires, and how bad it must have been for the people in the heart of both these and the current Victorian fires, here are a couple of photos I took in 2003. The first is taken near the city centre about 1pm on a summer afternoon. We went to a movie and walked outside to drive home through this.



The second photo is taken from our suburb. The fire was stopped from crossing a major road just the other side of the hill in the picture - otherwise we'd have had a different story.



Nothing else to write on this right now. My thoughts are with those who have lost loved ones and their homes in Victoria this week.

A snake and a quoll

I've just been away for a few days, visiting people in Tasmania. It was a nice trip and I hardly went near the internet. Hence no blog posts. It was also a bit of a reminder of the somewhat cloistered world I must live in, sheltered amongst scientists and other like-minded people as I am in my usual daily life. I am clearly a bit of a science geek. My reason for making this statement about this trip? It was great to see people I haven't seen for a while and spend time doing fun things, but the absolute highlights of this trip for me were two fleeting wildlife encounters. 

The first was a tiger snake encounter in a garden. Most other folk there at the time were not happy to see the snake and there was some talk of the only good snake being a dead snake. Perhaps the snake heard because it promptly moved on. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a crazy herpetologist and I am mostly definitely VERY scared of venomous snakes. I acknowledge that the snake was rather close to peoples' houses and it's probably better for them that it wasn't so close and they'd be a lot happier if it was moved elsewhere. I was certainly very careful where I put my feet for the next few days. But still, above all else it was just a wonderful thing to see. Here, judge for yourselves:

The second wildlife encounter was, if you can believe it, even more fantastic than the snake. Actually I'm sure a lot of people would find this the more favourable option. This because it involves a cute furry mammal. I saw a quoll! I have never before seen a quoll in the wild, although I've been in the right sorts of places many times. So this was very exciting. We were driving to the airport early in the morning. It was still dark and we were paying close attention to the roadside vegetation for fear of colliding with suicidal wallabies, when what should saunter across the road in front of us but an unmistakably spotty quoll. It was an Eastern quoll, I know this because it was black with white spots. We had to pretty much stop the car to avoid hitting it. It was only a quick look, but it made being up and about at 4am most definitely worthwhile!

Australia Day

Today is Australia Day and so a public holiday long weekend during which I have done NO SCIENCE. I have at least spent a fair chunk of time catching up with some sciencey blogs I have neglected. I am still getting used to public holidays unaccompanied by thesis-guilt, although I am sure that unfinished-manuscript-guilt is lurking somewhere in the background waiting to surprise me as I turn a corner or open a closet.

Australia Day is always an interesting exercise in cultural observation to me as a person who grew up elsewhere. For many folk I know, the national day is devoted to stereotypically Aussie activities such as barbecues, cricket, spending time with mates, going to the beach and drinking beer. It's usually a pleasant day for me, although I'm not decided where I stand in the debate on the appropriateness of January 26th as Australia Day. Today is the anniversary of the arrival in Australia of the First Fleet of colonising Europeans and as such is considered by some as more of an Invasion Day. I have to say I can see their point...

So how did we choose to mark the occasion? Well, nothing too extravagant: a lazy breakfast, as befits a public holiday Monday, then out for lunch at the fab Ironbark Cafe which is not too far out of our way for a visit. They specialise in Australian food, including native Australian ingredients and had live music and specials for the national day. But we were a bit boring as on this occasion we both wanted a favourite: beer-battered flathead (fish) fillets with a native Aussie salad and chips. The chips come tossed in tasty Aussie bush spices...mmmm. I also have a very soft spot for the native lime soft drink, conveniently just out of frame in my photo below.

If you're ever in the area, try it, I doubt you'll have had comparable food elsewhere (but if you have please tell me where). So, it was a nice quiet day out then home for a cup of tea, a book and watching the Aussies lose to South Africa at cricket. Perhaps not the Australia Day they were hoping for...

Dodos

Given my interest in wildlife conservation, I thought it only right to make my first sciencey post a comment on extinction, or what happens when wildlife conservation fails. One of the best-known extinct species in the popular mind is, of course, the dodo. I won't rehash the story of the dodo here, it has been covered in detail elsewhere. But as a quick summary: the first accounts of dodos came from Portuguese visitors to the then-uninhabited island of Mauritius in 1507. The Dutch colonised the island in 1638. By the end of that century the dodos were gone.

The 2008 IUCN Red List will tell you that the dodo is one of 717 known animal species to have become extinct since their records begin. Some of these extinctions are shamefully recent events, for example the extinction of the baiji dolphin only a few years ago.

Reading about human-mediated extinctions reminds me why I do the work I do. Perhaps it is a futile hope in the society we live in, but I hope that something I do might one day make a difference to some species on the edge. I study Australian wildlife, haunted by the ghosts of the thylacine and the 26 other Australian mammals driven to extinction since 1788 (not to mention the birds, frogs, insects, plants...). As I travel the country I can only feel the gaps left by creatures such as the toolache wallaby, the desert rat-kangaroo or the remarkable gastric-brooding frog. I've seen Tasmanian devils in the wild and I confess the first time it brought a tear to my eye. On my next trip to Tassie I fear I won't see them as easily and if I do it will be bittersweet: since I arrived in Aus nearly ten years ago they have been ravaged by devil facial tumour disease.

Teaching these topics to first year undergrads saddens me. I think some wonder why we even bother. In the face of the weight of history is it futile to hope that there is a place for conservation in this world? I hope so.