Sarah’s Big Holiday

Mornington Wilderness Camp 17/8/15 -20/8/15

For our standards we left fairly early but we were still the last of the 4 campers to leave the side. We had a long trip ahead of us: 20 km to the turn off and than 88 km to Mornington Campground. At the turn off is a radio station to call into the camp before you proceed. That way they can come looking for you if you don’t show up after all… the drive was once again nothing like I expected from the Kimberleys. Flat, endless, dry land, most of it belongs to Mt House Station, red dust, some gates, some mountains in the distance and sometimes those unbelievable green stretches between yellow and red.

We reached Mornington after a good 2.5 h drive and praised our luck that the road has been that smooth! It’s been one of my bigger fears: Doing 88km at a maximum speed of 20-30 km/h and shaking our bones (and my back) to pieces…

We set up camp in Mornington, a beautiful quiet and peaceful place. Hot Showers, single toilet huts, and a bar/restaurant, all lit up by solar powered lights and an amazing starry sky at night.

After some lunch we thought we still have enough time to see one of the gorges, Sir Johns Gorge, which is 'just' a 14 km drive. It took about an hour to get there (gravel and pictures) and we wished we had more time. Finally I had the feeling that I had arrived in the Kimberleys. Beautiful rock formations, stunning colours, a landscape undisturbed by mankind. This is what I thought the Kimberleys are. I guess I could spend days here marveling at natures beauty, enjoying the peace and quiet, away from the hectic live in the cities…

Sir John Gorge - Martin and Sarah standing right on the edge of the gorge, what animal track is this?, Bluebush waterhole

Dimond Gorge 18/8/15

We finished our breakfast just before 8am and headed over to the office to book a canoe at Dimond Gorge and loaded life vests and paddles into our car. It took us about 1.5 hours until we reach our destination 24km away. Again we had several photo stops along the way to marvel at the beauty of the landscape and Fitzroy bluff. After some rock scrambling with our gear we reached the canoe on the bank of the Fitzroy River. As with all gorges around here there are waterfalls and rocky areas preventing the saltwater crocodiles from entering –this means safe swimming with only freshwater crocodiles in the gorges.

We started our paddle down the gorge and soon made enemy with the wind as it was blowing us across the water and it was very difficult to steer the canoe.

We were greeted with a fantastic gorge and hardly any one else there. Perfect for a skinny dip as I’ve forgotten my bathers. The rock seen here is some of the oldest visible on our planet – about 1.8 Billion years old!

Paddling back wasn’t as hard as feared, despite paddling into the wind. At least we were able to hold course.

On the way back we stopped at Cadjeput – another part of the Fitzroy river with swimming possibility. This was more a stony/ sandy creek with lots of paper barks and lush vegetation.

The last stop for the day was at the Termite trail – a short, interpretative walk about termites. It was set in open Savannah country with some very impressive Spinnifix termite mounts. Sarah was pretty much running around the track and so we only had time to take a quick picture of each sign to read later.

Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) 

That evening I’ve been attending a short slideshow presentation about AWC and the Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary:

“AWC is a private, non-profit organization. We aim to deliver effective conservation for all Australian animal species and habitats by implementing on-ground, practical land management programs. The integration of science at every stage of management, and our rigorous biodiversity monitoring makes AWC unique among Australian conservation organisations. AWC is funded primarily by donations from the public, invested directly into conservation in the field.”

I’ve been supporting AWC for several years now and also meet up with Leah from AWC whenever she is in Brisbane. So I’m aware of some of the good work those people do, but it’s fantastic to see the differences directly in the field.

Mornington covers an area of 320,000 ha. Together with 3 other sanctuaries AWC manages directly more than 1,000,000 ha in the Kimberly. They also work together with some private cattle stations for fire management and implementation of their eco fire plan.

Until the 1970 a lot of Aboriginal tribes inhabited this area. All of them did some kind of fire management early in the dry season. So there were many, little fires around. When the indigenous people moved to towns and cities the grass and bushes were allowed to grow thick and became very dry late in the dry season. It resulted in huge, uncontrolled, hot and ferocious fires. Some of them burnt several hundred kilometers of land and nothing could withstand them. Each year about half of the Kimberly burnt down with the other half burning the next year. Those huge fire fronts also provide prime hunting grounds for predators like feral cats – prowling the fire fronts and killing any mammal and animal that wasn’t consumed by the fire. Since AWC bought Mornington in 2001 they implemented what they call ‘eco fire management’. They light lots of small little fires very early in the dry. So these fires only consume a very small area of grass and are of low intensity. This doesn’t destroy the plants – it just cleans up the dry litter. It also gives animals plenty of time and places to escape and hide during the fire. Early fires also give plants the ability to start the re-growth process and provide vital food for animals during the dry. Because of this re-growth graziers can run more cattle on the land and therefore several stations around Mornington have now joint AWC’s fire management plan. This way AWC fire-manages now more than 4,000,000 ha.

On AWC properties and also some jointly managed Aboriginal land they have destocked (removed cattle, donkey’s and other herbivores). This dramatically improves the biodiversity of the land. We’re camping on a small creek bank (Annie creek). At first glance it looks quit messy with lots of shrubs, green trees, brown grass and dead wood. However on closer look there is an abundance of different trees, shrubs and grasses. There is a constant concert of birds and lots of different species fly by all day long. This is in stark contrast to all the places we’ve visited before – even National Parks don’t have this diversity. It seems more like the government calls an area a National Park – then puts a ranger in place and fingers crossed the land will recover.  A scientific survey in Kakadu NP between 1995 and 2005 showed a plummeting biodiversity. In fact the outcome was so bad that they stopped the survey. No wonder we were disappointed there. Only beautiful rock doesn’t make an ecosystem.

AWC is science based. They survey the land, plants and animals every year and adopt the management, so that the diversity and numbers increase. While I don’t have absolute numbers – the increase in biodiversity on the graphs AWC provides shows an approx. doubling of species and numbers since they took over.

Congratulations AWC!