Hunting for Wombats

I don’t know exactly when or where I first heard the word "wombat" but in the last two years, or, since I have been spending the better part of my summers in Australia, this word, and this creature, have weighed on my mind. The largest, and gruffest, of the lot resides right here, just outside the fence of Yookamurra. The Southern Hairy Nosed Wombat is out there right now! Lurking.

Ah, who cares, you might ask?

Wombats aren’t just awkwardly robust nocturnal mammals. No. They are built like the thickest part of an oak. Nearly 60 pounds. They have pig faces. They bolster their way about, shrugging their shoulders and grunting. They brake through fences. They are considered a “pest” in Oz because of their boisterous behaviour, can subsequently be shot, by anyone, and they are now endangered because of this. To see one, in the wild, is quite rare.

Phil, the caretaker and sanctuary manager, told me he used to climb down into wombat holes, "for fun". These are huge underground lairs and from the surface they are simply holes--about one square foot and the perfect size for a little boy to crawl into. Ah, but can you guess what the wombats primary defense mechanism is? When he senses someone, or something (dog or fox, or child) enter his hole, he backtracks, pushes past the intruder until he's back on the OUTSIDE OF THE LAIR, and then uses his body to push the intruder INTO his burrow, all the way to the end, until the intruder gets mashed up a good number of times, and then dies. Nice job escaping childhood death, Phil.

I am writing because, of all the beasties I have seen in Oz so far (koalas, platypus, roos, wallabies, bilbys, potaroos, burrowing betongs, huntsman, golden globes, brown snake, red bellied black spider....) I have yet to see a wombat. And tonight, in just a few short hours, in fact, we will go out hunting for them.

Later.

Dammit! Of course the wombat was so fast I only saw his fat and furry ass as it bound over the stick and dry bush infested earth, back into the dark pit of his burrow! We were out, past bedtime, in the vast and empty fields of S. Australia, exploring the rest of the 11,000 hectares that Yookamurra owns (we reside on 1100 of them). There was a barbed wire fence, a small collection of cars decorating the one small swatch of land that ‘couldn’t be sold’ from some stubborn old coot who had since disappeared, and the Southern Cross. All ten of us were snug on the back of the ute (utility vehicle, like a small flatbed truck) directing huge spot lights out into the darkness, while Phil sat up front, navigating his way around trees, huge wombat dugouts, fences, and the occasional dead fox (these we had to get out and take pictures of, most are poisoned with a compound called 1080. It’s derived from an Australian plant so native animals are immune to it, sorry little foxes…). The moon was FULL and fat and the night crisp. I thought—as we trundled along, gazing out across the flat plains, the never changing horizon—how horrifying it would be to break down, or worse yet, get dropped off, out there, alone or with others, it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t know in which direction to begin stumbling.

This continent is so vast, so monstrous the closer one gets to the outback (jesus, I can't even fathom the magnitude of the infamous outback), with little by way of landmarks, with everything so eerily similar, as if the track you are on is simply turning back on itself, over and over again. I had already nearly gotten lost in the sanctuary several times. On one recent occasion, I simply wandered off to take a piss. Simple as that. But when I stood up I began unwittingly walking off, in the wrong direction. Ten minutes later I realized my mistake, which put me twenty walking minutes back to the fence. Ah, but which way? I miraculously made it back a little less than an hour later, thirsty, a bit spooked, only to find my students lazing in the truck and in the shade, oblivious to the fact that they nearly lost their fearless leader (uh, that’s me). It is a wonder how bush folk get around in these parts.

Back to the hunting!

Only that one wombat ass was seen, but the night was still well worth it. Near midnight Phil took us to a wombat burrow big enough for a man to crawl into, and eight of my students as well. Inside the burrow (I’m not shitting you) we all fit, able to stand if we were so inclined and gazed about at fossils embedded in the kalkouri, sp?, (the chalky rock making up most of the land and deposited nearly 20 million years ago when the whole lot of it was under sea, an old abandoned farmhouse, complete with a dilapidated door, bat inside, and old well that you couldn’t see to the bottom of (and didn’t know if you wanted to anyway). The ground all around the farm and stretching away on all sides was rough, rock strewn, and thick with dry brush. I wondered what the hell the first settlers thought when they landed in Aus and tried to work the land.

“Who would buy this land?” I asked Mimi, Phil’s wife. You couldn’t grow crops, or graze animals.

“Oh, this is good land for drugs. They grow real well. And some people come out for a respite from the city, for some peace and quiet.” It was so quiet out there I could hear the wind, it seemed, from miles away.

My head spins every day I wake up here, there is so much to absorb. And I spent all last year taking notes and sucking in information like hard candies, and still, more and more and more.

In other news, I got into it with the students tonight for spending the majority of their nightly free time staring at a large screen. We don’t have a TV but we do have a DVD player that projects onto a 4x4 ft screen! During the dinner, it’s on, after dinner, on. Tonight I asked if we could cool it with the idiot box after I repeatedly asked everyone how they liked dinner and no one heard, but instead stared blankly at the screen (though, to their credit, Family Guy was playing and hey, its funny). I asked why it always has to be on and more than a few responded, “there is nothing else to do.”

I haven’t had a television for three years and I’m keeping it that way. Try it for a week, it really is amazing how much time one can spend there, especially if its “fang week” on the National Geographic Channel. Or Family Guy reruns…

Ah, this just in, a few of the students finagled me into checking out the ‘bilby’ enclosure. The bilby is a very significant marsupial. Small, white, with big ears (like a rabbit) and there has been a push to rid Oz of the Easter ‘bunny’ and replace it with the Easter ‘bilby’ – since rabbits are a pest of the country and in fact out compete the bilby for food.

Anyway…on our way back to the cabins I was chatting away to one of my favorite students when we hear this scrape, an eerie sound that made me think of a large body being pulled along the ground…my legs went numb, heart hit the ribs, hard, and I turned to see, crawling on all fours towards us in the harsh and bitter full moonlight..

Josephine!

Which was quite opportune because I had yet to have a pic taken with her. In the pic attached my heart is still sitting nicely in my throat.

I’m wrapping up at my first project in a day. I really cant believe one is down, three to go! Next I'm off to Perth but not before I binge and purge on what I learned from Yookamuura, what I’m taking with me, what I'm leaving. Stay tuned. Hope all is well in your parts of the world.

laura