TRIGONOMETRY

My telemetry station in the early morning.

After a quick sleep it is decided that the lightning has cleared. I follow Bonny out into the scrub. We stop beside a small tent and a trailer. After being shown how to use the equipment this becomes my home for the next 5 or 6 hours. We are taking readings on about 20 Mala. A reading should take less than two minutes to complete, though they allow me to do every second reading since I am only learning how to use the instruments. We each take a reading for a particular animal at the exact same time. By triangulating these three readings we can pinpoint the exact location of the animal. On a normal night readings are taken throughout the night, about an hour apart. This provides information on the animals' movements, range and feeding patterns.

Home, sweet home.

After doing the first round of readings there is a little over two hours before the next set of readings are taken. Stuck out in the scrub by myself I make coffee and settle down to read a book. It is peaceful. This is a little more involved then the telemetry readings we were doing in South Africa. There we were just locating the dogs by using a direction rather than pinpointing their exact position.

This meant I missed checking the buckets in the morning. When my team arrived back they had found a Coral Snake, a Two-toned Blind Snake, Smooth Knob-tailed Gecko, Eastern Stone Gecko, Beaked Gecko and Eastern Spiny-tailed Gecko and a Tree Dtella. One of the big problems here is the ants. They are numerous and when animals are confined in the buckets the ant will swarm all over them. We do take steps to minimise this happening. For me one of the biggest nuisances is the dust. This red dust pervades everything. Clothing, cameras and the inside of the car are all covered in red dust.