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Months later after two separate bushfires burned through our Simplicite Heritage Flora Farm in October and November we're still supporting wildlife who' would otherwise have starved to death.
The fires were low grade but still dangerous and left our whole district in Queensand's Lockyer Valley blackened and dry - and still there's no rain.
Most of our 40 hectare property burned.
Thankfully our house block survived intact due to the wonderful help of four Rural Fire Brigade crews and David's excellent fire preparation.
Tere is still next to nothing for cattle or wildlife to eat.
After the fires, wallabies with burnt paws and no water or food for kilometres recovered on our irrigated grass area.
Because this can support only about 15 wallabies and we have 40 plus who have taken up refuge there, as well as ten large Eastern Greys, we also give them some lucerne or barley stalks, and occasionally a small amount of wholemeal stale bread that Woolworths Gasworks kindly gives us.
While our cattle seem to love carrots and sweet potatoes, so far the macropods have refused these.
We’ve read advice about bread causing gum disease and worse but made a choice not to watch animals die slowly from starvation.
We strive to keep their diet as close as possible to plant-based but without what we're doing, dozens would suffer a slow death from starvation and dehydration.
Previously we would never think of feeding wildlife but some published works conclude that following a bushfire, a little artificial feeding gives them the best chance of survival.
The most important action we take is to use our bore water to irrigate the grass around our farm house.
We also provide shade; the favourite place for wallabies until the kangaroos found out about it, was under the trampoline in the front yard.
When the irrigation sprinklers run in the orchard, several wallabies have decided that this is the best water park they’ve seen in years and will perch right next to a sprinkler head to get totally wet!
Will rehydrates a magpie singed in the bushfire.
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An Eastern Long-Necked Turtle turned up on the patio one night for a quick hose down - go figure!
Just this week we found a Coastal Carpet Python staying cool in one of the the ground level drinking troughs we leave by the fence for wildlife. Our temporary friends will surely disappear once the rain comes and grass returns through the trees. For the moment though, we continue to do what we've done for months - drive from Brisbane to the farm every day we're not staying out there, to do our own recovery work with fences and native flora, and help our wildlife survive. |
