In 2010 I was fortunate to accompany herpetologist Dr. Renee Catullo on a trip through Australia’s Top End collecting little brown frogs. Here are some of my field notes along with photography. While my photography has vastly improved, I’m not sure I’ve felt so inspired to write since that trip. I hope this series of vignettes communicate some of the flavour and excitement of the wet season in Australia’s monsoon tropics.
31 January 2010
I was relieving myself a stone’s throw from the inundated Carpentaria Highway when I saw my first Brolga. Its lanky form drifted indolently against a pastel sky as the tropical sun poured out late afternoon’s final slanting blaze. I finished my business, picked up my binoculars and shovel, tucked the bog roll under my arm, snatched a nearby burrowing frog with my free hand and wandered back to where Steve had left our hired Landcruiser: bogged up to the axles in the soft roadside sludge.
We had been following a map to the “Lost City”, scrawled on a take-away order pad by a gnarly-toothed cook at Cape Crawford’s “Heartbreak Hotel”. (This sentence is entirely true and gives me great pleasure to write). I had hoped to see the exceedingly elusive Carpentarian Grass-wren there, but like Grass-wrens, Lost Cities are difficult to find. Renee planned to make a 200 km push down and back the Tablelands Highway that night so our search for the Lost City was truncated in favour of beginning the evening’s driving. Our U-turn was truncated on the shoulder of the highway, which had been under floodwater for the last 3 or 4 days and needed little persuasion to engulf the hired Landcruiser.
We had been stalking 300 kms of the Carpentaria Hwy for the last two nights and had seen one car in that time. It was 5.30pm on Sunday and we had enough food and water in the car to last us a few nights should it come to that, but in a great fluke of variance the next 30 minutes sent us three different cars. Our eventual saviour rocked up in a big old Landcruiser. As a spry indigenous woman jumped out of the passenger seat to retrieve a rope from the tray, a man as weathered, wide and red as our fair country hopped out of the driver’s seat. Our saviour was in a hurry, the rope quickly linked our cars back to back and he barked some instructions to an unsure Steve behind the wheel of our stricken vehicle. Soon wheels were spinning as his truck revved and squealed, switching about like a hooked barramundi. Steve eventually found 4WD, low range, reverse and our steed was yanked backwards from the muck.
Impeded on the Carpentaria Hwy
That was the beginning of one of the most eventful evenings of the trip. We were now running a bit late, but counted ourselves lucky to have gotten away with an hour delay. The drive ahead saw us traveling south down the Tablelands Highway, a road that splits rocky cliffs of rust red upon which the ivory white bark of eucalypts is thrown into dramatic contrast by the light from the setting sun. We stopped on a vast flat grass plain after dark and watched the moon rise, a giant languid yellow disc that was to light the rest of our evening.
It is worth mentioning that I only refer to the roads by name because there are so damn few of them here in the Top End. Each road takes on a character through its interaction with the elements, the lansdscape, and the idiosyncrasies of the disparate roadhouses, towns and remote communities it links across vast distance. These bitumen ribbons of country and the hours spent on them forms a large part of the Top End experience for residents and visitors alike.
Soon after dark the animals started throwing themselves in front of the car. A remote wet season highway at night is chaos. I’ve never seen so much wildlife ever, and you’ll be pleased to know most of it survived. Bustards, nightjars, owls and curlews appear in the headlights, I brake and they make a flapping flash in my periphery as they fly within centimetres of the windscreen. Agile wallabies bound in groups across the road ahead, or sometimes they just stand on the road shoulder, waiting for us to drive closer before darting out into our path. The road is littered with frogs, only discernable as the car drives on over them. But one can’t look out for them as it is much more important to spot the groups of Brahman cattle from a distance safe enough to slow down. At several points we’re slowed to sub 10 km/h as dozens of cows slowly bumble down the road in front of you for hundreds of meters. There is nothing to do but travel along behind until they find a spot to vacate the bitumen. In addition to the fauna there’s water to watch for, the road is flooded in some points up close to a meter, and the floods have dragged onto the road a flotsam of logs, branches and general crap to drive around.
Tablelands Hwy denizen with biologist for scale – Black-headed python
When we swapped drivers I had run over what I was horrified to hear Renee later estimate as a total of 30 burrowing frogs. At the wheel, Steve the frog lover perhaps avoided a few more than I did, but unfortunately he was unable to avoid a nail tail wallaby. The nail tails are beautiful creatures up close, covered in soft, fine light caramel fur with faint white markings. A dark dorsal line runs from the back of their neck down their spine to the nail protruding from a spray of thick black bristles at the end of the tail.
That was one day in gulf country, out near Boroloola.
Michael Whitehead 