What wildlife cameras revealed on a property near Cradle Mountain

WildTracker member John Corbett reflects on wildlife, change and long-term observation on his property near Cradle Mountain.

Our property is around 130 hectares – roughly a one-kilometre square – of mostly pristine wilderness on the Middlesex Plains, just north of Cradle Mountain and close to TLC’s Vale of Belvoir Reserve. It’s a patchwork of habitats formed around two river catchments, with the upper Fall River running along the northern edge and the headwaters of an unnamed tributary of the Iris River draining to the south. Around these valleys are leads of native grasslands connecting bands of rainforest, wet sclerophyll, fernery and tea tree.

Despite lacking the iconic native pines and deciduous beech of the Cradle Mountain area, it supports a wonderful variety of habitats, flora and fauna.

Fields of bright yellow paper daisies blanket slopes beneath cider gums, giving way to rich wet ferny rainforests, dense native pepper ‘Mirkwood’ forest, fields of mountain rocket, a deep sphagnum grove and acres of bright green gunnera sponge mats. From the hundreds of wallabies and wombats to devils, echidnas, snakes, flocks of currawongs, white and black cockatoos, galaxids and myriad smaller mammals, birds, rodents and insects – not to mention the (not-so) occasional leech – it’s one of those places where every square centimetre is packed with life.

There’s also plenty of human history bound up in the place. The block originally formed part of the highland cattle stock route from Deloraine to Emu Bay (Burnie), and a long water race was dug from the Fall River to supply water to small mine workings nearby.

Watching changes in the landscape

One of the things that has struck me in managing this land over the past 20 years has been the amount of change from year to year, with every season throwing up a new surprise or two. There have been bumper flowerings of particular species seemingly out of the blue, large die-offs for no apparent reason, mass tree collapses, the slow spread of Richea gunii overtaking the grasslands, and wombat numbers crashing and then slowly rebuilding over a decade.

Without systematic observation, these things remain mysterious unexplained novelties. But when you dig a little deeper and observe more closely, there are signs and patterns that link it all together. Installing wildlife cameras has been a fascinating way to see what is going on in a much more up-close-and-personal way. You only have to watch how the animals disappear when a vehicle arrives to know that we are missing out on so much by relying on our own eyes.

Wildlife up close

When I first installed cameras, it was more for security reasons than to observe wildlife, but I made sure there was plenty of view of the comings and goings of the animals as well. What first stood out from the imagery was just how much munching goes on. All day, every day, most animals on the camera spend most of their time eating.

The other thing you notice is that it is often the same animals returning over and over again. You get to recognise them pretty fast, and although you might not see them in person, you get to know them a little bit and watch them growing up.

Every now and then, though, something unusual happens. You catch a glimpse of the white streak of a devil flashing past, the long tail of a native mouse, or a feral cat giving you a death stare before slinking back into the bush. After Glenn Bain helped install a WildTracker camera dedicated to observing wildlife, I captured some great images of echidnas, dancing possums, quolls, grisly old devils and close-ups of a wombat’s bum.

Some of the more surprising finds included two different feral cats, a long-tailed mouse and, most exciting of all, a blurry white-footed dunnart, which we were very happy about.

An unexpected encounter

One particularly memorable moment on camera came recently when an adolescent wedge-tailed eagle decided to strike fear into the hearts of the local wombat population. As is usual for wombats, it took a few long seconds for the animal to decide whether panic was appropriate. It eventually bolted, only to discover the eagle had got there first. The wombat turned and charged back towards the bushes while the eagle advanced with much menace and bravado – and perhaps also some growing realisation that a wombat is an extremely heavy thing to lift into the air.

Part of a bigger landscape

I think the more you know about a place, the more you care about it. I now have four wildlife cameras installed, take regular drone surveys of the block, and work with a team carrying out long-term water quality monitoring of the Fall River. I only wish I had started earlier. I would love to be able to go back to some of the major events that have happened here and correlate them with changes in sightings or weather observations to better understand what was happening at the time.

I also love the way WildTracker has grown into a really capable and well-supported citizen science program and become such a pleasure to use.

We’re lucky enough to care for a magical piece of land surrounded on three sides by conservation areas and at the edge of the immense Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. The old cattle fences on the property – which never paid much attention to property boundaries in the first place – have long since dropped their wires and lost the battle to mosses and lichens. None of the animals, and few of the humans, pay much attention to the arbitrary square lines on the map anymore. I’m pretty sure my kids wouldn’t be able to tell you where the boundary is anyway.

We see ourselves as caretakers and guardians, and try to let the land be itself as much as possible.

By WildTracker member John Corbett.

Photos supplied by John.

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