Please accompany the Garngi Rangers on a day's work to Cape Croker?
Charlie Wadaga and Bryan are going to travel via our new buggy. Our job for the day was some ongoing mimosa weed spraying. The other rangers had to erect a sign on Darch island before doing a patrol around Croker Island. We planned to meet them for lunch at the mouth of a little creek at Cape Croker. We will catch up with them later.
The first 12 kms of our drive was over some old tracks that are not maintained (more about them later). At Miming the track ends, so we have to drive along the beach. There was a very low tide around 2pm so we had plenty of wet, firm sand to drive on making for easy driving. We are currently in the 'build up' season - building up to the monsoons or wet season. Typically this means light winds, around 35 degree temperatures with high humidity.
Drive with Charlie and I along a beach to Cape Croker. The buggy has no windshield so the wind blowing in our faces was greatly appreciated. The smooth beach and a gentle wave lapping onto the beach made for a very pleasant drive.
Last year when I arrived here these beaches were littered with heaps of marine litter. There is still work to do, however they are looking much better now.
The mimosa was over the back of these sand dunes. Again no tracks, so we had to find a way up through the sand blows, over the dunes and down to the swamp area behind the dunes.
As you will see at the end of the video below, we picked the wrong way the first time and came to an impassable part at the steep western side of the dunes.
After some back tracking we found the way down to the swamp. As you can see in the next video the grass in the swamp is still green. This area is under water until this time of the year - very late in the dry season. Mimosa thrives in swamps and floodplains.
We just came down through those sand dunes in the background of the photo below. The dead vegetation to the right is mimosa that we treated last year however there is still more mimosa to treat further into the paperbark forest to the right. As mimosa is a prolific seeder there are always young plants to treat where we had sprayed last year. If left untreated, mimosa will end up as a thick mono-culture, choking out everything else. Mimosa was originally brought into Australia by gardeners for it's lovely flower. That has proved to be a really bad move.
Over the back of the sand dunes and down in this little swamp there was no breeze at all. This made for very hot a humid conditions when conducting our spraying and required regular trips to the cold water esky. It is on days like this that we really appreciate the ice making machine back at the ranger base.
We had agreed to meet the other rangers for lunch so ....... back in the buggy and over the sand dunes again. The next video shows the run down the dunes back to the beach then turning north towards the creek - ah, the very welcome breeze again!
As the tide was low, fresh oysters were on the menu for lunch - cooked on the fire and greatly enjoyed. That beats store tucker any day! Below the rangers are heading back out of the little creek.
After lunch the other Garngi rangers continued on their patrol around the island looking for any illegal fishing activity or biosecurity issues. For Charlie and I, it was back to the mimosa and some more sweating.
The next video shows the track on our way home, around a headland that prevented us from continuing along the beach. The 4WDs really struggle over this dry, loose sand, even with lower tyre pressures. The buggy handled it comfortably.
On the way home we checked another swamp area for mimosa. Thankfully none, however we did spot some feral pigs.
Earlier in the blog, I spoke about the unmaintained tracks. The last video for this post shows a typical track that the rangers spent much time on. Watch out for those feral horses running across the track in front of you!
Until next time, take care and stay safe.
Blessings
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