Deb and Weg's BIG Adventure: January 2014

January 2014

Oak Valley, SA

The heat wave through Christmas and New Year continued in January and the heat started to take its toll on the native wild life and our unit soon became an animal recovery shelter!

The community at Oak Valley was still deserted by the mob as they were still in Ceduna, Fowlers Bay or we even heard some were in Adelaide.

We found a native bat (not sure of the species) struck down from the heat and Deb came to the rescue and wearing protective gloves because they do carry diseases and have very sharp teeth as you can see.

The pic below has him hanging upside down as he recovered ...

Deb managed to re-hydrated him (or her) over a couple of days until he regained his strength and one evening, and then one night he he flew off to join up with his colony!

Another 'guest' was a falcon who too was badly effected by the heat and as we could not have him (or her) inside, the front verandah became an avery. The front verandah has wire mesh and shade cloth all around it so we put some branches in there and water for him so he too could recover.

Here is Thomas holding him whilst Deb tried to get some sugared water into him as he was not drinking.

I risked life and limb by taking responsibilities for the photos!

Unfortunately, this little fella didn't make it and died a few days later.

Another sad factor when living in a remote community is just how cruel animals can get when in survival mode. We knew a couple of the camp dogs were pregnant and close to giving birth so we were doing our best to protect them and harbour them from the other camp dogs where possible. One of them which we called "Lady" disappeared for a couple of days and we were concerned for her welfare. One evening, she was spotted coming out from under a shipping container over in our Aged Care area where she had dug a hole to be away from the pack and give birth to her pups. We were able to fence off the immediate area and provided her with sufficient food and water. One evening when we were topping up her food and water, we noticed she had pushed a couple of pups out of the 'nest' and abandoned them which we promptly rescued. In all, we were able to rescue four pups and we were never sure how many others she had and or had killed ... which is often the case apparently.

Here are the 4 pups we rescued ...

Unfortunately, a couple of them were in very poor health and died a few days later.

The good news is that a black one (girl) and a brown one (boy) are both fit and healthy and one of the new nurses at Oak Valley adopted the girl and we have adopted the boy. We have named him "Grizwold" as he looks like a grizzly bear and growls just like a real one!

Here is one of the many native finches which was also saved, but this time from drowning! As water is so scarce, the flocks of hundreds of finches and galahs all fight for what water they can find which is usually the buckets of water we leave out for the camp dogs. We were always finding drowned finches in their water and sometimes we were able to rescue them, let them dry out in the verandah and then when they were ready, they flew off ... but many died.

Oak Valley has an air strip (I think I have mentioned this before in our Blog) and in early January, we had a Government work crew over there replacing and upgrading the landing lights. The Government spend approximately $120,000 in the project which would enable night landings which would only be in an emergency with the RFDS (Royal Flying Doctor Service).

The air strip is a dirt run way and it is fenced off to keep the wild animals, mainly camels, out of the grounds at all times. Apart form the water tanks, there isn't anything else out there so when the work crew had finished, packed up and left, Thomas and I drove out there at dusk to see what it looked like! (as you do!)

This pic was taken from the end of the runway. The green lights mark the start of the runway (off into the distance) and when you are on the runway and look back, the other side of these lights are red. The white lights (off to the left) mark the actual landing strip and the blue lights mark the taxi area and where the planes park. The white light in the middle is the wind sock (which apparently blew off it's mountings in strong winds a few days later and was found in the scrub outside the air strip grounds!).

Early one morning, SA Water flew out to Oak Valley to do their regular inspections of the remote water bores and the water tanks in the community and their chartered flight landed at the air strip.

The plane circled the community a few times (which is protocol) to confirm their arrival as the air strip is 18kms away and as no one (Thomas!!) told anyone that a plane was expected, Deb jumped into the Clinic troopy and took off to the air strip. Only to find when she got there that Thomas was already there greeting them! The rest of us in the community were left wondering what the hell was going on ... was it an emergency landing? was it an air raid? (well, that's what I thought anyway!).

When they left, Thomas and I went back out to the air strip with them and it was a rare treat to be able to be so close to an aircraft on take off ...

One of the more unusual things out at Oak Valley is the "Oak Valley Fire Department" and here is the sole emergency response unit ...

Never did find out if the pump actually worked or not!

It was an amazing sight to witness a severe thunderstorm roll across the outback and in one day, they had almost half the annual rain fall. The rain was so intense that it started to flood the main street and surrounding area.

This pic is from out the front of the community office in the main street of Oak Valley looking back down the road towards the only main dirt road used to get through this country ...

Thomas was brave (??) enough to climb up to the top of the community water tower to take these pics over looking the community. He wanted me to go too and I declined as we could still see lightening off in the distance ... and of course my fear of heights had nothing to do with my decision!

Well my time in Oak Valley was now at an end as I had been offered a position in the Maralinga Tjarutja office in Ceduna as the Business Manager reporting directly to the General Manager, Richard Preece. So before I left Oak Valley, I took some more pics of the camp dogs that had adopted us ...

This is "Betty" ... she has been a great companion for Blade and for Deb.

This is "Missy" or "Miss Scruffy" ... one of my favourites.

Here is "Missy" and "Simba" play fighting together out the front.

Above is "Dobbie" (from Harry Potter fame)

This is "Tigger" (Winnie the Pooh fame), he is a roo dog and the new 'Alpha-Male' in the community who was intimidating at first as he can be very aggressive but he turned out to be a great dog and very loyal towards us.

Here is "Tigger" and "Simba" out the front with Blade looking on through the fence.

Here is our Land Cruiser all ready to leave out the front of our unit.

A look down our street!

One of my fondest memories of Oak Valley will be the sunsets. They were simply breath taking and every night, I would stand out the back and watch the setting sun disappear and it is visions like these that I will never forget!

The drive back to civilisation is a long one as I have mentioned before and it is very difficult to describe how dramatic the scenery is and how much it changes. Here is another pic taken as I'm on the endless dirt road heading towards Maralinga ...

When I arrived back in Ceduna, I stayed for a week in another caravan park in a unit whilst I got used to going to work! After the first week, I trekked back to Penong and retrieved the caravan and hauled it back to the same caravan park and set up base camp. This park was a different park to the one we had originally stayed in, this one had a pool and was on the highway into Ceduna, next to the airport and freight train line, but it was very close to work.

Deb had the opportunity to relieve at the Yalata Health Clinic over the Australia Day long week end and was staying in a nice house there, so I drove the 200+kms over there for the weekend too.

Yalata is another aboriginal community and just off the Eyre Highway which has a Police station and bitumen roads! It has a larger community than Oak Valley and they have a better health clinic set up there too.

On the drive back to Ceduna, I took the opportunity to finally get these pics.

This old harvester is off the Eyre Highway near a place called Nundroo ...