Wombat kingdom

NATURE STORIES FROM ISOLATION

by Matthew Higgins
April, 2020

Wombats are familiar animals. Their round, heavy bodies, short legs and thick heads are like nothing else. For many people their most common Wombat sighting is a nighttime near miss in the car headlights. Or worse, a dead animal lying alongside a busy road the day after. But if you regularly wander through their home territories you come to know these chunky marsupials in quite a different light.

Here is Matthew’s tale of close encounters from Black Range, just south of Bega.

I’ve seen Wombats (Common Wombat, Vombatus ursinus) since I was a child. I usually thought of them as nocturnal creatures. But when living in Canberra I found that at Googong Foreshores reserve it was not uncommon to see them in daylight in winter along Burra Creek. Presumably the harsher winter conditions meant they had to stay out feeding for longer.

Then a year ago when we bought the bush block at Black Range I was delighted to see a Wombat in daylight on one of my first walks down what we call the ‘Southern Slope’ of the property.

My first daylight Wombat sighting on the Southern Slope, April 2019.

It is a place of thick forest (ferns of various species and creepers like Marsdenia on the ground, a mostly Pittosporum mid storey, and the upper storey including tall Eucalypts like Forest red gum, Yellow stringybark and possibly Blackbutt, with some majestic Mountan grey gum down in the gully). In short it is a place of shade, south-facing, and is little visited by humans. So Wombats evidently feel comfortable being out and about in daylight there, regardless of season.

Though there are Wombat burrows scattered broadly across the property, including close to the small cabin, it is the ones on the Southern Slope where you see the animals in daylight. I have since got to know four sets of burrows there quite well through numerous walks. There’s the Lower Burrow, Mid Burrow, Log Burrow (excavated under fallen trees which offer good protection to the entrance), and the Fig Burrow (named for the Rusty Fig or Port Jackson Fig, Ficus rubiginosa near the entrance).

A pair of Wombats at the Mid Burrow, 2019

I have observed Wombats at all these spots and while most of them are anonymous, some have characteristics which have enabled me to recognise them individually. The main one is Scarnose (named for obvious reasons) which I have seen at a number of the burrows even though those burrows are used by others as well. So the Wombats do share burrows, as is known from the literature.

The best sightng of Scarnose was in September 2019 when to my delight I saw that ‘it’ was a ‘she’ with a very full pouch. I patiently followed her for a little while and soon had the joy of seeing her joey’s face poke out of the pouch. Wombat pouches face backwards to prevent them getting filled with soil during digging, so it is a bit weird to see a little face pop out from between a Wombat’s rear legs!

During the bad drought that preceded the terrible coastal bushfires (fires which fortunately spared Black Range), Wombats, Wallabies (Red-necked and Swamp) and Eastern grey kangaroos nightly sought out the lawn and garden near the cabin in a desperate bid for food. Our automatic wildlife camera recorded videos of numbers of animals chewing up the roses and the grass; new Wombat diggings for roots under the lawn were visible every morning. But since the rains of February and resultant recovery in plant life, the animals have been able to graze back in the bush and their depredations on the garden have disappeared.

All the Wombats seen on the block appear to be healthy. Though they do scratch from time to time, there are no visible signs of mange, the terrible affliction which has caused havoc among so many animals of this species elsewhere.

On almost every walk down to the burrows on the Southern Slope (the Lower, Mid and Log burrows especially), I see Wombats and am able to get incredibly close to them - by which I mean within one to two metres. By moving slowly and quietly I can have this intimate experience with them, and watch their various behaviours. Although some remain flighty, numbers of others remain calm and, dare I use the word, ‘tame’. They appear to have accepted me in their world, this strange silent biped with the funny box-shaped thing hanging from his neck that he points at them and, after it ‘clicks’ a few times he moves off once again, till next time…