Some Favourite Pilbara Patients

A green sea turtle was found looking a bit off colour by a local and brought into the clinic by fisheries officers. We spoke to the turtle experts and arranged for him to be shipped up to Broome, but he had to stay with us for a few days first. So we put him in our bathroom, apparently the best way to get fluid therapy into a salt water turtle is to put him in a fresh water bath and let osmosis do the work for you! It was a bit random taking a shower and brushing your teeth with a sea turtle watching you from the bathtub.

Turtles can't regulate their body temperature so they rely on the outer environment to maintain the right body temp. So, we had to refill the bath every 2 hours-ish to keep it warm enough for him.

I assumed turtles would breathe normally when they were above water... but he actually held his breath all the time, very rarely you'd hear him gasp as he changed breaths.

 

 The fluid therapy worked wonders.When he arrived on Monday, he was super flat and could barely lift his head. By Wednesday when he left, he put up a huge fight as the boys lifted him into the makeshift crate for his trip to Broome.

This female Eclectus parrot randomly landed on a guy's shoulder. He brought her into the clinic, we kept her until she was claimed. She was very tame. 

A goanna with a taste for Jack Daniels - I had to cut him out of his can as he was well and truly stuck! He is shedding too, you can see the colour change halfway down his body.

Arthur, the Olive Python: Some workers had noticed this snake sitting under a tree, not moving for a week. They notified the Department of Environment and Conservation, and the snake was brought into the vet clinic.
Olive pythons are harmless snakes (they could bite you if you really annoyed them) and are often discovered in chicken coops stealing eggs!

Arthur was severely dehydrated. We administered subcutaneous fluids in multiple places along his underside to rehydrate him over two days.

Last I heard, he was doing much better, and living in a terrarium at the Pilbara DEC office

Petra the Euro

About a month into work, a wildlife carer brought in a little Joey for euthanasia. Her Mum had been hit by a car the day before and she had been handed in. The Pilbara Wildlife Carers euthanize anything under 500g, because survival rates are low for this age. This wee one was only 326g when she arrived. 

I couldn't do it! So, I became a full time Mum - 5 feeds a day (thankfully not during the night!) and toileting, and changing pouch bedding etc. I named her Petra after my beautiful and crazy best friend - because taking on a baby Kangaroo is just the sort of thing she would do, not me! She's a Euro Kangaroo, they're pretty small and the females only get to about 25kg. She was about 4 months old.

Starting to get a bit more fur:

Soon afterwards another little Joey came in - Bec adopted him and called him Clarke. He was Red, which are much bigger - in fact he's only about 2 weeks older than Petra but the size difference is huge! Red males can get to 90kg. 

The plan with these babies was to raise them until they're about 10-16 months old, then release them into the wild. 

Note the swollen testicles - roos are comforted by suckling, and it seems Clarke has discovered something to use as a dummy - we are going to have to get him a real dummy before he does some serious damage! 

Most of their time is still spent in the pouch (we have pouch bags) at this stage, but for healthy muscle and bone development they need sunshine and exercise so we took them out once a day.

Petra wasn't so keen on the sunshine and tried to find a pouch to crawl into wherever she could!

14/4/11 - looking a wee bit more furry. Still not so thrilled about being outside though!

She started making a real fuss when I left her pouch on the floor at night. I figured it was too hard for her, so put it at the foot of my bed, cause she usually just sits in her pouch until I take her out for feeding.

Not so much this morning... I woke to find she had made her way out of the pouch, up the bed, under the covers and was snuggled up in my arms... I was spooning a kangaroo. 

Got home that afternoon and could hear some very distressed kangaroo clicking sounds coming from my room - she had again gotten out and this time had got into the wardrobe where I found her trying to climb up one of my dresses... sooo cute! 

Petra grew bigger and stronger, destroyed the washing and the vegetable patch repetitively and was a major part of my life for 2011.

Sarah, Petra, Barnaby

Not exactly camera shy

We obtained a mate for Petra - this is Barnaby (right) who was handed in by some Aborigines who found him on the side of the road.  

Having a bath under Otto's supervision

Petra, Barnaby

My last day with Petra

In December, we gave Petra and Barnaby to the wildlife carer who brought her in to complete their dehumanisation process. At this stage Petra was still too attached to me and hence too trusting of humans.We needed to separate ourselves from the kangaroos - they lived in the carer's yard with minimal human contact for a month, before being released into the wild in January. They were released into an isolated area where the local Ranger likes kangaroos and they are not shot. I hope she is doing well in the wild. She was a huge amount of work but she was wonderful.

Hearsons Cove

Hearsons Cove, less than 10 minutes drive from home, is a great swimming beach. Apparently we're too far south for crocodiles... although apparently we get the odd "visitor" - ugh I tried not to think about it! But its a great beach and the water is HEAVEN - it's like a warm bath. It's really shallow too. There are barbecues available and every man and his dog are here on the weekends - given our fairly low population it's still not crowded.

It's even nicer at night. We forgot to check the tides before we came this night, and it was well out - we walked for miles and still ended up only ankle deep:

Python Pool and Red Dog Gorge

Python Pool, part of the Millstream Chichester National Park, is a gorgeous pool filled by a waterfall. You have to time it right because immediately after rain, it's cloudy and muddy, but in the dry period it stops flowing and goes stagnant. One week after rain is ideal - lucky for us, that's when we went. Super lucky, because they hadn't had rain in the area for 2 years before this year!

The waterfall was pounding down this day so it was a mission to swim right up to it! But we had to, so we could jump off the rocks :-)

Red Dog Gorge is completed unsignposted, not visible from the road, in the middle of nowhere and half the locals I've spoken to haven't even heard of it. We had some directions to go on and by some lucky fluke we managed to find it!

Had to jump a train to get to the track...

Its a beautiful spot - fast flowing shallow pools up above the waterfall which drops down into a super deep, super clear pool with huge fish!

 

Pools at the top:

And the main swimming hole at the bottom:

We didn't want to leave! But with a couple of hours driving before we made it home, we had to get on the road as the sun started to fade. No one drives long distances at night in the Pilbara - too many kangaroos and stray cattle running out on the road make it way too dangerous.