Readers’ wildlife photos

Reader Chris Taylor continue his voyage to Queensland with Part 3 of his narrative (see links to other parts here).  Chris’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them:

In this part I will show some more of the Yourka landscape and then give some insight into the work involved in restoring the landscape.

Downstream from the accommodation, Sunday Creek is crossed by the Glen Ruth Road. Just by the crossing there is a series of small pools where the water runs beneath a shady canopy of Paperbarks, Melaleuca quinquinervia:

and gum trees, probably Eucalyptus tereticornis:

It was a nice and cool place to sit, next to the creek in these areas.

There were more dragonflies here. This is a Scarlet Percher, Diplacodes haematodes. These are common throughout Australia. Fairly small in size (wingspan about 60mm), they make up for it with their brilliant red coloration:

This one even let me take a portrait too!

Driving back to the accommodation at Sunday Camp, we came across this Agile Wallaby Notamacropus agilis, a species that is found across the northernmost parts of Australia, and into southern New Guinea. This is a robust male, probably 80cm tall, with a tail about the same length.  The females of this species are rather smaller. These are quite common across the reserve:

Next to the road was this tall Lemon Scented Gum, Corymbia citriodora, shining in the late afternoon light as the moon rises behind it. This is an area where the Heathy Woodlands are coming back nicely with plenty of recruitment of young plants:

Returning the reserve to something like its former state is not as easy as just letting nature take its own course. There is a lot of time and effort invested in the process. Bush Heritage Australia have a program where volunteers can apply to do some of this work. There are fences to be removed to allow for free passage of the native animals, there are introduced weeds to be eradicated, and exotic animals to be controlled, and on these some reserves fire management to be considered.

Yourka used to be a cattle station. Bush Heritage no longer have cattle on the property, but Yourka being surrounded by other cattle farms, incursions are common. We came across a small mob of these as we drove out to work near the Herbert River. These are probably the Droughtmaster breed:

The Herbert River forms part of the western boundary of Yourka:

Here it runs between steep banks as much as 8m high:

We were there in the dry season. In the wet season, the river will often run bank high – or even spread out onto the flood plain. In December 2023, this region was affected by Tropical Cyclone Jasper. The storm stalled as it came onto the coast, inundating the area from Cooktown in the north to Innisfail in the south as well as parts of the interior. The city of Cairns received 2200mm of rain in 4 days. Yourka would have had much less, but even so the Herbert breached its banks. We found flood damage and debris at least 12m above the creek beds.

Flooding causes a lot of damage, as the volume of water and the vegetation it carries will lay flat -or carry away – any fence. To mitigate this problem some of the creeks are fitted with Flood Fencing.

These are made from sheets of corrugated iron suspended from a wire rope. In the dry season these will stop most cattle from wandering on to the reserve, while allowing other native animals to pass beneath. In the wet season, the pressure of the water flow will just push the panels up and allow the debris to pass without sustaining too much damage.

But in exceptional flows even these fences are just ripped out and tangled and the metal sheets torn and destroyed.

We came to the reserve to work, and one of our jobs turned out to be repairing some of the flood fencing! We are putting the final touches to a fence that crosses Sunday Creek for about 70m and up the banks that are 11m high.

While collecting the materials for the fencing from the stockpile, there is a technique to lifting the metal sheets; I always lift from the far side, so that the metal remains between me and anything that has been hiding underneath.

Sure enough, one of the times that I lifted a metal sheet, beneath it was a snake. In this case it was nonvenomous, but it did reinforce the need to do the right thing – especially when on such a remote reserve!

Spotted Python, Antaresia maculosa. This is quite a small snake, less than 1m long, but this species does not grow much bigger.