photographer PETER GRANT
I think of it as “the Mackellar dial” – that shift from droughts to flooding rains made famous in Dorothea Mackellar’s poem Core of My Heart – My Country. More prosaically, and scientifically, we might talk about El Niño and La Niña, and the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), that irregular periodic change in winds and sea surface temperatures over the eastern Pacific Ocean, which can so dramatically affect our weather.
To oversimplify, El Niño brings Dorothea’s droughts, while La Niña brings the flooding rains. In southern Tasmania, the plentiful spring and summer rains we’ve experienced are typical of a La Niña pattern. What does that abundant rainfall mean for the 150 hectares of Hobart bushland we call The Patch? It brings us abundance, full stop.
We see it in the sheer number of marsupials and birds; in the rush, blush and bloom of trees, shrubs and wildflowers; in the masses of ants and moths and butterflies; in a sky as full of birdsong as it is of cloud. There are more subtle signs too, such as the fat tails of the Bennetts wallabies (Notamacropus rufogriseus). Wallabies store fat in their tails rather than their bellies. Time after time this year we’ve noticed the markedly thick tail bases of these wallabies. It’s their insurance against the less favourable times.
Pademelons (Thylogale billardierii) have a similar tactic, although it’s harder for us to confirm the stoutness of their tails. These skittish little wallabies boing into the bush at the merest hint of our presence. Their abundance of caution, despite their abundance in numbers, could be the evolutionary result of once being key prey of the Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine. I wonder if anyone has told them they can stop worrying now?
Normally around Christmas we send a mock card to our wallaby friends, Mr Bennett and his mate Paddy, to thank them for their faithful lawn maintenance services around our house. But last Christmas they simply weren’t up to the job. The rain promoted so much grass growth that they couldn’t keep up. For the first time in several years I had to dust off my brush cutter and do the job myself.
If determining the fitness or fatness of a pademelon seems hard, echidnas are a spikier proposition altogether. On one walk we rouse an echidna, which tries to hide in a hollow at the base of a tree. We stand dead still, and eventually the spooked echidna pokes its head out and has a slow and measured look around. Then, to our surprise, it leans its snout against the tree and closes its eyes. I could swear it’s having a little nap, as you would if you’d just been bingeing on fat, juicy ants. I wouldn’t say it to its face, but underneath those showy spines, the echidna looks quite portly.
On the same walk, just 100m further on, we disturb another echidna mid-meal. It escapes surprisingly quickly up a bank, leaving us to inspect its excavation of a bull ants’ nest. These ants, Myrmecia esuriens, are only found in Tasmania, where they’re usually referred to as inchman. They rarely actually reach 1 inch (25mm), although their aggression is enough to dissuade you from careful measuring. Combine that with a nasty sting and formidable grasping mandibles, and they would appear to be a dangerous food source for most animals. But echidnas, with their long spikes and thick fur, seem untroubled by them. The one we disturb had used its powerful claws and tough snout to break open the nest and hoover up the ants. While the bulgy echidna swaggers off into the bush, the surviving worker ants scurry about, moving dozens of large cylindrical eggs from the damaged nest.
Loud squawking in the trees above signals another feast being had. A mob of yellow-tailed black cockatoos has found some ripe native cherries. The botanical names of these small trees, Exocarpos cupressiformis, helps describe them. It translates as, “Outside fruit, cypress-like.” They photosynthesise in the same way as most plants, but they also gain nutrients from the roots of nearby trees, making them hemiparasitic. The “cherries” are not actually fruit, but specialised stems. Regardless they are full of sugar, and reasonably tasty.
The cockatoos certainly approve. They dangle from branches at impossible angles, chattering scratchily to each other as they gobble the cherries. They’re messy eaters, often breaking off branches with their powerful beaks as they work their way through a tree. We find more evidence of this habit beneath both banksias and pine trees. Branches and stems are often collateral damage in the cockies’ search for seeds inside the cones.
I suppose it’s their way of making hay while the sun shines. Not every season will provide this kind of abundance.
Peter Grant lives in the foothills of kunanyi/Mt Wellington with his wife. He worked with the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service for 24 years as manager of interpretation and education. His passion for the natural world led him to write Habitat Garden (ABC Books) and found the Wildcare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize. More of his writing can be seen at naturescribe.com.