Greetings from isolation! While our time in Australia may have been cut short, it’s been amazing to reflect on all the wonderful times we had together. On March 18th, we drove to our final activity, all sleepy and emotionally exhausted from the week before. When we arrived at the Koala Conservation Centre on Phillip Island, we all expected to be greeted by a lecture, and at most, a walk around the Centre. What we got was completely the opposite. We were greeted by Ashley, a ranger at the park who we had met earlier at our vegetation lesson. He took us down to the eucalyptus plantations, which they kept to ensure the koalas had enough to eat. We met another ranger, who Ashley introduced to us as Bob, though his nametag said “Stefan.” They explained to us that wallabies had found their way into the plantations and we had to flush them out to protect the vegetation. What did that involve? Us, spaced out across the field, walking through the bush to push the wallabies towards the gate. This was a huge surprise to us. We had no idea that we’d be walking through the bush in this final activity, and most of us were wearing shorts and sandals. Nevertheless, we all got into position.
After lining up in the first field, we started walking. We’d only made it a few steps when we heard “There’s a snake!!” Everyone stopped and waited for the ranger. Sure enough, one of our comrades had almost stepped on a copperhead. We continued on, giving the snake a wide berth, and all reasonably freaked out.
After flushing one wallaby out of the first field, the rangers decided we might as well go to another field. We spent the next hour or so walking across the field, stopping when we saw a wallaby and yelling nonsense at the top of our lungs. We walked back and forth across the field about eight times before we retired, flushing out about six wallabies.
Making our way out of the plantation and onto the bus, we laughed about what just happened and how much fun we had being totally ridiculous for the past two hours.
-Emily