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These grassy plains are said by some scientists to be the direct result of Aboriginal firesticks burning the area, destroying the trees, like these dead trees here, and then when the kangaroos and other things graze, they wipe it out.
You can see here there's a fire been through and the new shoots are coming up.
Because fire definitely favours these grassy plants and works against the bigger vegetation.
It's the home of many special animals and that's why I've come here because this is one of them.
(THEME MUSIC) That's a smaller one up there.
This fellow's very quiet and still.
Isn't he a beautiful animal? Come on, come on.
There you are.
Oh, yes.
This is a female bearded dragon, not very beardy, not very frightened and it's very easy to see why - because this is the end of the cold season up here and she's just going to lay her eggs.
In other words, she's a very pregnant mum.
She's about to lay one, two, three, four, five, six At least six eggs there.
There's the beard on the side.
Like all dragon lizards, they can change the colour of their skin to some degree.
Incidentally, if she wasn't pregnant you'd pick her for a mum by the fact that her whiskers aren't as big as Dad's.
(GRUFFLY) Dad's got very black whiskers.
Mum's just got a little sort of ladylike, uh, appearance.
Just let's Sit up there.
That's right.
Let's see what this fellow is.
Oh, now, that's a young man.
That's a young man about town.
He's got that clean-shaven upper lip, you see.
He's very, very much with it.
If you can see that black, that's a male and this one - Mum - that's a female and they're quite distinctive.
Lovely animals.
We'll let them go.
Actually, I think we'll put this fellow on the ground because watching them run is something else.
They feed on the ground.
Their basic feeding is on the ground.
And they're racing! And immediately he stops, he disappears into the landscape.
In north-west Queensland near Duchess and Cloncurry there are other large barren areas that were definitely caused after the coming of the white man and his flocks.
This bare hillside once housed It was big thriving town.
Just over here was a huge smelter for copper because this town was built around copper.
The other factor about the early days was steam was king - and to have steam you had to have fuel.
All of the trees from around here were taken down and used either for pit props, building, steam engines or even firewood and at the time this cut out all of the trees were completely decimated.
Then it changed, the people went away.
And what's left today? Let's have a look.
Over there's the mine itself.
There it is.
Because of its very shape and size - a long, thin, deep thing - the evaporation is so low that it's now permanently filled with water.
A very useful thing for the townspeople - they swim and boat in it.
But it's more than that.
It's become an artificial permanent waterhole.
Wildlife in this area has a new dimension added and there's now a big permanent waterhole.
There's the tracks over there, coming down - kangaroos coming in to drink.
So this is still a further change in the environment, but for most animals in this area it's a good one.
Over beyond is something quite different.
This is the ash heap.
This is so sterile and dead because it's been baked and cooked and yet even this is being colonised by creeping plants.
This part is stabilised and this is the colonising bit.
These creep out over the ground, catch loose bits of material and stabilise, hold it down.
Then the kangaroos and other things come in and graze That's the evidence.
and then new plants come in.
In fact, once the key to the ash heap is unlocked by these colonising plants, there's a riot of growth.
And you can see the lush yellow line which marks the haves from the have-not.
This pottery and glass takes a long time to break down even thought it's fragmented like these pieces.
Wood goes first.
That was a wooden timber beam there holding down for an engine.
White ants and dry rot have totally destroyed it.
Even things as enduring as concrete eventually disappear under this relentless impact of heat, rain, wind - all of the elements.
This little one here has vanished completely and the plants have moved in.
The boilers themselves - magnificent pieces of craftsmanship built to last.
Inch plate, triple layered, riveted together, but even though it's built to last, look how nature works.
This is the line of decay.
Completely inexorably, no matter how long it takes, this steel is being changed back to oxide and every year there's a slow flaking off.
Just like the bricks are shattered, just like the glass is fragmented, just like the wood is eaten away, even these things disappear in time.
And in another century or two - a long time by our timescale, but by the scale of these hills, it's nothing - all this goes back to nature and nature reclaims it all.
That's assuming man doesn't interfere.
But of course he does interfere because we can't stand to see unused land.
When the mining finished, the cattle industry expanded and its impact on this very fragile desert environment caused these once flowing rivers to change into dry sandy wastes.
I'm digging a hole here because I've seen these tracks there's a burrow over there and I haven't got my normal traps with me so I have to make do.
This is the bucket that I use to boil water in and camp, a breadboard, a roll of paper as a trap marker and a shovel.
Excuse me while I dig a little.
Oh, there's some rock down there.
This form of trap is very effective, very simple to operate, it doesn't harm animals.
Its one drawback is you have to dig holes in the sun.
It gets a bit hot at times.
Once you've got over that, it's easy.
It's called a pit trap.
This business of filling up is just one of those things where you need to bring the sand up level.
And in this case, I'm very lucky - I've got a good supply of sand around me.
The stuff you dug out of the hole goes in too.
Get plenty around there.
You might think because I've changed the structuring of the area that the mice won't come.
Well what really happens is the smell of the fresh-turned dirt itself acts as a bait.
Little animals come to investigate it.
That's the attraction.
And then you're able to give them a walkway in.
There, that brings it up to level.
Last touch, a little bit around the top.
Now the last bit is to clean up the edge of the trap.
This is modelled on the antlions which trap ants and these cones have to be completely clean around the edge so that anything coming along, going down that slope will slide.
And the board has a very specific purpose.
Three stones and the board sits across on those stones in the right place.
And what that does - it provides a medium of cover for the animal.
Animals coming around, sniffing around this freshly turned dirt, they go there, they feel, "Ah, there's a safe place," they go underneath it, they're in.
Also, if for some chance I'm not back here first thing in the morning, it stops things like hawks and owls and other predators getting the animals out and eating them.
The last thing - mark the trap.
(BIRDS TWITTER) Brr! These mornings are cold, but it's worth it.
Lots of birds about.
And here's the trap.
Look at the tracks! Got to be something in there.
Ah, yes.
Two of them! Ha! Come on.
Hey, hey, hey, hey.
Gee, they jump like billyo, these fellas.
Hey, one of you.
There you are.
No.
I don't want to hurt the animal.
They're so delicate and tiny.
Goodness gracious me! There we are.
Look at you.
Now, at first glance, you'd say that was an ordinary house mouse and you'd be very, very close.
This is one of the last invaders of Australia before the white man came.
It's one of the native mice and there's two ways of telling - the front teeth and the number of nipples.
The native mice only have four nipples.
And the teeth are always a giveaway.
It's very difficult to see, but what it is the big chisel tooth comes down like that in the front and the other tooth at the bottom joins up into it and this tooth grinds against and works and keeps it sharp.
Now, in the native mouse, that flat surface goes straight up like that, the bottom tooth comes in and joins it.
In the introduced house mouse, there's a notch in the tooth like that and that's the fundamental difference between the two sorts of mice.
This is very difficult to see and it does hurt the mouse a little bit to pull his teeth back, but you can have a look and see.
There.
Can you see that? Aha.
Otherwise, it's very like an ordinary mouse, a white or a brown mouse.
Yeah, this is a little girl mouse and you can see there her four nipples just showing quite clearly.
So that's the clincher in this case.
Even in these places, creekbeds - hardest hit of all - the rivergums are still survivors.
Ah, this is in fact an illustration of what I'm talking about.
This is a survivor.
That's the white-plumed honeyeater or bush canary.
It's a very bad name because it's not really a bush canary.
It's a rivergum canary.
He follows the rivergum.
Wherever there's rivergums, he can live.
In this case, he's moved out of the gum line, just off the edge into this messmate.
This little fellow is behaving in a very strange manner.
Ahh, there's the reason.
Can you see it? That's why she's so excited.
Usually, these birds are fairly furtive.
They slip away through the branches and you hear them calling quite clearly but you don't see much of them.
If you sit down and decoy, they're very inquisitive and they come up.
This one was acting abnormally.
Oh, well, we'll let you be.
Another survivor even though man's done his worst.
These little birds are usually too small to shoot, too small to trap, too small to make any use of.
The rivergums themselves aren't used because they're so hollow and empty.
They're not good wood for anything, not even for burning.
And so the two lots of survivors go together.
When the habitat is left, the wildlife survives.
No.
One of the very predominant things of this regenerated area are these young gums.
They're bloodwoods.
Brilliant trees when they flower - there's a great mass of white bloom, brings in lots of birds, insects, and afterwards, of course, the fruit.
Well, they're called bloodwood apples, but they're not really fruit.
This is one of the fascinating stories of this plain country.
That little hole is opposite the stalk and it makes you think, in fact, that it's just like an apple.
That's where it gets its name from.
But it's really a parasite.
If we cut it open A bit harder than I thought.
There we go.
inside there's some very interesting things.
You can see a lot of powdery material, which are the young males.
They're actually winged and they're just even flying off my hand now.
See the long tails on them? They're called a bird of paradise fly or a gnat, all sorts of things.
They're just about to take off and chase ladies all over the country, because these are galls.
There's the lady there, that long thing that looks like the core of an apple and like apples, they're edible.
Scoop that out, careful not to puncture it.
Mmm, beautiful, really sweet.
The Aboriginals living in this country travelled across here and there was no sugar and ants and these insects and a few other little scale insects were the only sugar they could get and so these were very important.
These were the lolly shop of the Aboriginals in the olden days, if you like.
These males are edible too.
Mmm.
And you can also eat this little bit inside there.
It's a bit like coconut.
Now, what these are, now that I've turned you off sufficiently, is a gall.
That is, it's an insect that is a parasite on this tree.
The eggs are laid, the young insect bores into the wood, causes a swelling, the swelling comes out, the insect lives inside the swelling, gets bigger and bigger and bigger - and that was the first thing I ate.
These things on my hand are the males that come in later.
The female never leaves there.
She goes through her whole life cycle inside that lump.
The male emerges from the hole in the end and flies away, may breed with another female and so they spread across the country.
The juveniles are mobile too.
So bloodwood apples are one of the food sources for the early people here, the Aboriginal people, and for a few bushmen still today.
Mmm, good stuff.
Not all the mines closed down.
This profile marks the mining town of Mount Isa.
And the people who work and live here are very proud of their mine and their town.
They take a great deal of care to make sure that pollution from the mine doesn't affect their way of life.
And here's all the smelting works over here.
Why only sulfur dioxide? It's the only significant pollutant emitted by the smelters.
The ore that we mine here is a sulfide ore.
The sulfur ends up as sulfur dioxide in the smelting process.
All that gas coming out of the stack is largely air apart from the sulfur dioxide.
All around Mount Isa, there are very sophisticated sentry devices designed to detect sulfur dioxide and so to make sure the town is not affected by pollution.
Chris, just what effect does the wind and the direction of that smoke plume have on your operation here? Well, Harry, the whole operation is dependent entirely on the wind direction.
If it's going as it is now over towards the west, out to the uninhabited areas, then we all sort of calm down and relax.
And if it starts to turn around and come back over to the town area where we're likely to get sulfur dioxide readings and affect the people, then this whole centre comes alive and we start running continuously and we're in contact with the smelters, deciding what emission rates are required and we run here nonstop till the wind goes back the other way.
HARRY BUTLER: And the wind going the other way carries this poisonous gas out into the "uninhabited" landscapes.
Well, uninhabited except for wildlife and plants.
And if they're destroyed, who cares? Because nobody lives out there.
The mine itself occupies about 4 kilometres by 2 kilometres - a very small space.
But there's a hidden face to the mine.
This enormous area, this wasteland.
It stretches on and on and on.
It's the slurries - that is, the powdered rock, the crushed rock mixed with water - that's carried in those pipelines, pumped out into these valleys and then the water evaporates away and what's left is crushed rock.
It's a vast wasteland, Mount Isa Mines began like the old mine at Duchess - no care for the environment.
But today the company is very concerned and they've set up an experimental program on regeneration of waste dumps.
Can you imagine trying to grow stuff in this - crushed rock mixed with the dry ashes from the local power station? All the industrial waste goes in.
The first attempt at growing a professional crop was no good.
Mount Isa's idea is to turn it back to original condition, and their technique has slightly changed.
These furrows These little plants are native plants seeded in there, plus some of the original grass, but the furrows are most important because they act as wind traps.
The flat surface allows the wind to skate across.
Here you can see things like whitewood, a couple of different sorts of wild melon, native grasses, all these sorts of things have come in and developed.
The problem with plants growing in this area is glare, heat and water.
The first trials were watered.
And when you consider that this whole waste dump area occupies about 400 hectares, that's an enormous area and to water it is virtually impossible.
And so instead, use plants that don't use water and what better than the plants that live here, the native plants? When they come in, then you get the insects coming in - moths and grasshoppers and butterflies and things like that - and then the birds that eat them come in and very soon you have the whole environmental pattern back together again.
But this takes time and money.
It's still only a small experimental plot on the fringe of an enormous unrestored wasteland.
So the company IS trying and the government IS trying and the people of Mount Isa care about their town, but that's not enough.
You've got to care about the outside environment too.
G'day.
How you going? Where's this magnificent animal of yours? Oh, we've got him here.
See if you can identify him for us.
Ooh, yeah, I reckon.
Oh, he's quiet.
Yeah, oh, I've had him since he was very small.
Oh-ho-ho, what a beautiful thing.
That's a hare-wallaby, a spectacled hare Whoa, boy.
Yeah.
See the big rings around his eyes? Yeah, quite distinct.
That's the spectacle.
And this marking on his legs is quite distinct too.
Oh, very marked.
This is part of the pattern of this whole group - this grizzly fur, this ring around the eye and this flank stripe.
They used to be right across Australia once and when the miners and the pastoralists came in and they started burning the spinifex See, this little spinifex, it won't shelter them.
It's gotta be big tussocky stuff to keep them from the heat.
They burn every year now to get the fresh feed and all the cover's gone - plenty of food for them, but no place for them to live.
Where did you get him? On some, uh The chap that picked him up, his mother was run over on the road and he checked her out and the little fella was in the pouch.
Oh, he was only about that big.
He looked like a little rat.
I know them on Barrow Island.
The ones up here haven't got such a lovely bright ring, but they're the same animal.
They're beautifully desert-adapted.
Here, you better take him.
He don't like me.
Come on, Patty.
Now, you see, these animals get used to one owner, one handler.
See how quickly he settles down now.
What are you going to do with him now, Kev? I'd like to think I could keep him, but that's up to the National Parks and Wildlife, I suppose.
Well, that's one of the things - an animal as beautiful as that everybody would like to keep, to have as their own, but in national parks, at least they're there for all Australians because they're part of our real heritage.
What we need is more conservation for things like this so that all people can see them.
A beautiful place, this, stinking of death.
It should be full of life and living and that's what you've got instead wasted carcasses gone.
So close to the main road, this beautiful little dam attracts the wildlife in and every halfwit with a gun comes out here and blasts everything that moves.
For no reason.
What can you do with it? When you shoot a ***, what can you do? You can't eat it.
You can't even brag about it to your mates.
There's nothing.
It's just a pointless exercise.
A roo - yes, I've known people to eat kangaroo.
I've eaten it myself.
But they're not even touched.
They're just shot and left.
A pointless exercise.
And it's not just one gun.
There's shotguns and high-powered and.
44s and.
22s - the whole lot, they're all there.
Oh, what do you do with people like this? And when I say, "people like this", who am I talking about? Companies? Governments? Councils? Or ordinary people like you and me? Because governments and companies and councils ARE ordinary people like you and me and we're the sort of people who do this.
(FLIES BUZZ)
