Layers of the land

Join Bush Heritage Australia's Graeme Finlayson and PhD candidate at the University of Adelaide, Saskia Gerhardy, as they chat about the conservation measures that protect this unique landscape and the Plains Wanderer.

For people living in cities and towns, rubbish removal is one of the many conveniences of life that we take for granted. We pop waste in our various bins and then wheel the bins out onto the road for the council trucks to pick up. But what about those who live remotely?

Despite their surprising choice of habitat, acoustic records of the critically endangered Plains Wanderer are on the rise at Boolcoomatta Reserve.

Several Yellow-footed Rock-wallabies have been caught on camera at the Saddle on Boolcoomatta Reserve. They appear to be new residents as numbers increase in the Olary Ranges.

Could this endangered species be on the rise in South Australia? National conservation not-for-profit Bush Heritage Australia has recorded eleven critically endangered Plains-wanderers on its Boolcoomatta Reserve, Adnyamathanha and Wilyakali Country in South Australia during the most recent survey.

Sitting with my sun-warmed back against the base of Dome Rock and gazing out over the vast plains of Boolcoomatta into the rays of the setting sun, is my happy place.

Hydrological rehabilitation is a focus of our work at Boolcoomatta Reserve. We recently completed works at Wiperaminga Hills to stop water and soil moving off the property quickly, and hold it longer so it's available for fauna and flora.

October 2021 has delivered a significant rain event at Boolcoomatta Station Reserve. My family and I moved up to Boolcoomatta Station Reserve on Adnyamathanha and Wilyakali Country in mid-October 2021, to take up the role of managing this amazing property. 

It’s small, brown and has a habit of flattening itself to the ground to avoid detection. Finding a Plains-wanderer is no easy feat.

The Conversation recently published an article about the devastating impact that rabbits have had and continue to exert on Australia plants, wildlife and landscapes.

This year’s fauna monitoring at Boolcoomatta, also termed Critter Camp, was another success with a great bunch of volunteers gathering to peer inside traps for a week.

I'm completing my PhD with the Spatial Sciences Group in the School of Biological Sciences at The University of Adelaide in collaboration with Bush Heritage Australia. My research will be conducted at Bush Heritage’s Bon Bon and Boolcoomatta reserves in South Australian.

In Spring last year, drenching rains across South Australia ended a two-year drought for our Boolcoomatta Reserve, Adnyamathanha and Wilyakali country. The moisture transformed the arid landscape from brown to Irish green almost overnight.

One of the questions we asked in the study was ‘are the wallabies, Euros and goats competing for the same food source? And we found a significant overlap in their diets.

After settling in for a three week stay as caretakers, we couldn’t wait to get out in the field at Boolcoomatta Reserve to see what had changed since the welcome spring rains had arrived. 

Earlier this month, Boolcoomatta Reserve staff had the pleasure of hosting five members of Birds South Australia to undertake bird surveys across the reserve. The dedicated volunteers came from all corners of the state to help. Several significant rainfall events in the lead up to the surveys broke a three-year dry spell, which meant that the team was greeted by a landscape in boom! The reserve had been transformed into a carpet of lush shrubs, wetlands and flowering eremophila. Needless to say, excitement levels were high as we divided up into teams, picked up datasheets and binoculars and set forth to the monitoring sites.

I am a PhD student at the University of New South Wales investigating the indirect top-down effects of the absence of dingoes on ecosystems. One of my study sites includes Boolcoomatta Reserve west of Broken Hill in South Australia. One aspect I am particularly interested in is the impact of a release in predation pressure from dingoes on kangaroos.

The words of CJ Dennis finally came to fruition after two-and-a-half years of relentless dry weather and dust out at Boolcoomatta, with nearly 100mm of rain falling in the last few weeks. It’s easy to appreciate the saying “just add water” after an event like this! What were dry, dusty plains are now a vibrant green, covered in fast-growing annual vegetation and what we really want to see, the occasional grass seed head.

In early August, research staff from South Australia’s Department for Environment and Water visited Boolcoomatta to conduct some Yellow-throated Miner trapping, as part of a project to investigate the genetics of its closely related cousin the Black-eared Miner, which is one of Australia’s rarest birds.

With Covid restrictions in South Australia relaxed a little, my husband Tony and I were lucky enough to spend three weeks in July volunteering at Boolcoomatta Reserve. We knew that there had been very little rain there over the past year and the magnificent River Red Gums were looking thirsty, as you would expect. What we didn’t expect was to see the profusion of wildflowers blooming in the gilgais out on the plains and in crevices on the rocky slopes. These bright little flowers bobbing in the breeze really brightened our time on the reserve. 

Gilgais act as a source for the capture of water after rainfall events. Even during these dry times, the response in vegetation after a small amount of rain is most prominent around these gilgais. They provide micro-relief patches that catch seeds, leaf material, and are also the depressions that make shelter possible for the numerous little critters that inhabit the area.

G’day! My name is Andrea, at the moment I am one of the few lucky volunteers who still gets to go to work on a Bush Heritage reserve, so I thought I’d take you along with me for a week.

Bats have been getting a bad rap lately, but we think the critters are pretty amazing. The little (mostly) nocturnal mammals play a big role in biodiversity and can help us to understand more about the country.  

Purplewood trees provide habitat for species such as fairy-wrens and chirruping wedgebills and are a host for other important plants such as mistletoe. The ‘Purplewood Project’ was established to map and document the populations of Purplewood throughout Boolcoomatta Reserve.

This Red Gum is massive and many centuries old. It’s easy to imagine kids over hundreds of years past playing on and around it (as my daughters do now).

There mightn't be much pitter patter here at Boolcoomatta but there are certainly many positives happening.

In the second week of September 2019 I took the long road across the Barrier Highway and out to South Australia for 12 days of African Boxthorn control on Boolcoomatta Station Reserve.

Maureen and Richard Oborn had donated to us for many years, connected financially and via stories in our newsletters. But their engagement went to another level after visiting our Boolcoomatta Reserve in South Australia, and seeing how donor funds are put to use.

On Friday 26th April, much to the delight of dedicated long-term volunteers, Tony and Meredith Geyer, a female Yellow-footed Rock Wallaby with a large joey was photographed on Eagle Rock just prior to sunset.

From native apricots to wattle species to saltbush galore - plants at our Boolcoomatta Station Reserve are flowering and seeding, despite a dry season.

By hemlines I'm referring to the foliage crowns of bushes and trees that feral herbivores like to munch on. A quick assessment of the height of a browse line and its severity provides real-time information about the impact of feral herbivores and the need for appropriate management.

In September we had an amazing group of 11 volunteers make the long trek to our Boolcoomatta Station Reserve to help with vital weed management. The group were focused on our long-term management strategy to control the African Boxthorn and Pepper Trees in the beautiful Oonatra Creek system.

Spend enough time amongst Boolcoomatta Station Reserve’s sweeping native grasslands, and you could be lucky enough to encounter a Plains-wanderer.

Keith Gooley and Peter Caulder are Bush Heritage volunteers with expertise in electronics and a passion for conservation. Keith and Peter are using these skills to help us address one of the biggest threats to Australian wildlife on Boolcoomatta Reserve - feral cats.

Hi! I'm Emily and I'm a science intern here at Boolcoomatta Reserve in the arid rangelands of South Australia. My primary focus over the next two months is to collect data on the distribution of feral cats here.

On Boolcoomatta Reserve there's an area called the 'flood-out'. As the name suggests it's a low-lying area where water run-off gathers, which makes it fertile ground for weeds. Most years we slash management access tracks. These enable us to access what was once wall-to-wall box thorn and pepper trees.

Soil conservation is one of the ongoing challenges we have on all our reserves, some more than others. There's been much modification of the land over the past 200 years, with new animals roaming across the land, eating things and changing the soil structure and composition. This is the case at Boolcoomatta Reserve.

Ten years ago on the 27th March 2006, Bush Heritage Australia became the custodians of Boolcoomatta Station, now Boolcoomatta Station Reserve. On Sunday (ten years to the day) we hosted a gathering to mark the occasion.

Many thousands of generations walked over this land before we arrived to now share the responsibility of caretaking it for future generations. We work collaboratively now to find the necessary balance of production, preservation and use for recreation and inspiration.

It was an emotional moment for Meredith Geyer and her family as they arrived at South Australia's Boolcoomatta Reserve and entered the renovated shearers' quarters. Fixed to the wall beside the fireplace is a stained timber board acknowledging the generous donors and benefactors who have helped to fund Bush Heritage's work at Boolcoomatta. Meredith's father, John Weightman, who passed away two years ago, is the latest name to be included on the plaque.

On a recent bequest supporter trip to Boolcoomatta, Reserve Manager and tour guide extraordinaire, Glen Norris was leading a convoy of four cars when he stopped and radioed this eerie observation back to those following: "We are being watched".

The Adnyamathanha people are the Traditional Owners of the lands extending from the far north Flinders Ranges in South Australia to Boolcoomatta Station Reserve near Broken Hill. In 1998 the Nantawarrina Indigenous Protected Area (IPA), which covers 58,000 hectares of their land, was the first indigenous protected area to be declared in the country.

A new long-term monitoring program using remote infra-red cameras on both Boolcoomatta and our Bon Bon Reserve will help protect vulnerable natives such as the plains wanderer from feral foxes and cats.

Drive one hour west of Broken Hill. Drive past the backdrop of Mad Max II, past feral goats and frantic emus. Drive down a dirt track, cross three cattle grids and you'll reach Bush Heritage's Boolcoomatta Station Reserve.

They're small, well-camouflaged and there's estimated to be less than 1000 remaining in the wild. So imagine our surprise when last week our Arid Rangelands ecologist Graeme Finlayson spotted not one, not two, but THREE critically endangered Plains-wanderer birds while driving around our Boolcoomatta Reserve!