The Walkabout Trail

We have spent our last few days at Sheoak Ridge. This is a beautiful reserve owned by a couple named Marcus and Claire. Both are biologists and spend their time working various jobs, gardening, rehabilitating wallabies, and taking care of their large property in the Daintree Rainforest. This Property has many kinds of ecosystems. It is a lot of work to keep this land in shape. So they put us to work! We stayed there for 6 nights working two 2 hour shifts a day. We only would work in the mornings and late afternoon to stay out of the heat as long as we could. Everyday we worked on this foot path. It went right through the bush and it was some tough work. Finally, on our last full day we finished the path and the couple decided to name it the Walkabout trail. Every day at 5 o’clock we would get to go and watch Claire feed the wallabies. She takes in wallabies that are either injured or have been left without their mothers maybe due to an accident. Some of the wallabies like to come close to you while you are on the property and check you out but Claire's goal is to put these wallabies back out into the wild so human contact is limited. We got to work right near a rehabilitation spot and clear out dead branches in a sanctuary designed for the wallabies. One day we had to saw down infant Sheoak trees. We had to make the cuts flat so the wallabies would not pierce themselves on the stump. One day we removed branches was so there would not be a uncontrollable forest fire within the specific habitat. Fires are actually a common thing on this property. They use them to control the rainforest from consuming the less dense part of their land where the wallabies live. We learned so much at Sheoak Ridge and had such a great time. We will miss our friends there so much and maybe one day we will see them again!