Dryandra, Western Australia, AustraliaDryandra woodland and Barna mia
30km north of Narrogin and not quite 2
hours south east of Perth.
Its made up of woodland totalling
28000ha with the main block 12000ha. Its the largest area of remnant
vegetation in the WA wheatbelt and is an international biodiversity
'Hotspot' for more than 850 species of plants. Trees of Wandoo,
mallee and She-oak and plantation Brown Mallet.
Wandoo is a very hard wood and was cut
for railway sleepers ,fence posts and in homes for timber decking and
steps.
The Brown Mallet was the first trees to
be planted in plantations and their back was used to tan leather. Not
used any more.
It is a protected place as a woodland
under the West Australia government parks and wildlife department and
is undergoing a change to become a National Park.
Protected here are a number of
endangered animals and in the enclosures some extinct in the wild
animals.
Numbats released here with radio
collars have had families and there are some here without collars.
All are hard to find. They eat termites
like the Echidnas that are also here.
It is also home to the red tailed
phascogale , tammar wallaby both on the vulnerable list. Some
Woylies have also been released here and do some times come into the
campgrounds pleasing the visitors.
There are 25 mammals, 100 bird and 50
reptile species in the woodland.
With 6 marsupials in the predator proof
sanctuary,
We are guinea pigs for the campground
host program they are trying to set up here, so are input is helping.
The program is to be setup for school
holidays, long weekend public holidays, and 2-3 months during the WA
wild flower season to start with.
We have proved the park gets more
visitors and campers than they thought and rangers and staff are
upgrading one campsite and renewing signs and putting new ones in
place. The dirt roads and compacted and well kept and most good for
caravans and 2 wheel drive cars.
The system here of campers paying by
filling out a form and either paying fees at Narrogin office or
posting it has been abused by most. That is why they did not know
how many where using the campgrounds. Most the campers are from Wa
and return visitors who came in used the facilities, free gas BBQs
and free firewood for fire pits in winter and did not pay. So campers
are quite surprised to find us the Campground hosts collecting their
fees.
The rangers come in once a week and
clean about mid day and most campers have left by then. The
rangers new some people were coming in because o the amount of toilet
paper used and dirty BBQs but did not know how many.
As for the fire pits we tried to cook
our dinner 1 night and ended up with burnt on the outside uncooked in
the middle food. So I cooked Larry a roast and roast veggies for
both of us in our caravan oven . Its winter and made the caravan
quite toasty warm. We have had to put the diesel heater on most
nights for a couple of hours.
We do our cleaning in the morning and
money collecting, data taking after 3.30pm ,so mid day we go looking
for Numbats and stuff.
Then on nights where the night tours
are full to the maximum we go and help the guides. We mainly hold the
red torches and find the animals for the visitors. The guides put
out a little bit of food to make sure some animals come to be seen
and they do the speeches. Only red light can be used so not to
disturb the animals too much and only the guides and us when we are
there can have the torches. Most people enjoy the night even the kids
who have to stay quiet and sit still in the cold night air. So most
photos are in red but some have been taken in black and white and
after everyone has gone we are allowed to go and take photos in white
light , but do not get many.
So the marsupials in the enclosures are
The Bilby or Dalgyte-/macrotis
lagotis-endangered in the wild.- blue grey fur ,big ears very timid
The Boodie or burrowing bettong
/bettongia lasueur- extinct in wild apart from a couple of islands in
WA
Woylie / Bettongia penicillata -eats
underground fungi , tubers, seed and insects, some have been released
in Dryandra woodland.
Quenda or southern brown Bandicoot /
isoodon obesulus- eats seeds tubers insects spiders fungi and can be
found in some places in southwest WA
Mala- or rufous hare wallaby/
lagorchestes hirsutus ,only found here and some off sure predator
proof islands
Marl or western barred bandicoot /
perameles bougainville - only here and another enclosure like this in
SA
The Woylie that have been released
into the park do come into the campgrounds at night sometimes.
A bating program is carried out to keep
foxes away but the feral cats are trapped as they do not take the
baits. The poison is 1080 which is a similar compound to the poison
found in some of the plants here. This makes it safe to release
native animals here as they are used to the poison but the foxes and
any other dog or cat is not.
The rangers regularly check on the
released radio collared Numbats but this is not while we are here,
only one was tracked to check on its babies,. We missed out.
We had to do the slow driving around to
spot them , the young from last year and year before are breeding and
are occasionally spotted. I did not get to see one Larry did one day
when I was not with him a few days before we left. He came across one
and stopped and slowly got out of the car and got two photos before
some idiot in a car towing a camper came down the track and tooted
his car horn to get Larry to move the car. So of course the timid
Numbat ran away and hid and was not seen again that day. It was seen
by some other campers out looking the next day so we spent a lot of
time just quietly in the area but did not see it again. It rained
and we had no sun the last 2 days so the numbats would not be out.
They come out by day on sunny days
looking for termites. They are not strong enough to dig down into the
main chambers of the termite nests like the Echidnas do, they have to
wait for the ground to warm enough for the termites to come into
their tunnels just below ground. Dig a little bit and lap up
termites with a very long red tongue.
We also found little Mardo the yellow footed antichinus. We found a male scenting a log and as most males die after mating it means he has not been doing much to exhaust himself. first photo
We did walk all but one of the walks in the park even the night walk. One walk takes you up to the tree where the first fire tower was set up. You had to put up a ladder and climb this.
The ranger that is trying to set up the
campground host program has only seen 2 in nearly 3 years but in last
couple of weeks saw one in the same area twice no photo. So the
caretaker from the Dryandra Lions village who is also the Numbat
expert for the area went and spent hours there and as he knows what
he is doing found it and took photos. It has 4 babies hanging on to
tits teats, these will soon be too big to be carried about and will
be left in a hollow log during the day and leave home around October.
2025-05-22