Charleville - Part 2

Our next day in Charleville was rather leisurely.  

The only touristy thing we did was go to the railway station, which is the location of the information centre and most importantly the home of the Bilby Centre.

You can still travel to Charleville by train, with two services each week. The railway reached Charleville in 1888, with the current station being built in the late 1950s.  It has beautiful terrazzo floors, having different colours in different sections.

Now, the reason we were there was the bilbies.

You initially enter a theatrette, where we learnt a bit about bilbies and more importantly how their numbers have declined to near extinction.  Originally, they covered most of Australia, but not where we live, as it is too cold.  Feral animals, namely foxes, cats and rabbits are responsible for most of the decline.  There are only two areas left in the country with a wild population.  One is in western Queensland and the other in the Pilbara in Western Australia.  Both only have tiny populations.

Enter the Bilby Brothers.

Peter McRae, a zoologist, was always passionate about bilbies.

Frank Manthey was a roo shooter, turned National Parks ranger who had recently lost his wife.  Peter approached him to join him in trying to save the bilbies.

Together they formed the Save the Bilby Fund.  Their aim was to establish a breeding program and release some bilbies into a controlled, pest free environment.

They did so much fund raising, including encouraging Darrell Lea to make Easter Bilbies instead of Easter bunnies, with proceeds going to the fund.  A special fence would be needed, so people could buy a fence post.

Eventually, they were able to fence off an area of 100 ha in the Currawinya National Park.  The fence has different sized netting, which is buried into the ground and has a floppy top to prevent animals climbing over.  It then has several strands of electric fencing.  

In 2005, six pairs were released into the park.  Sadly, some time later a flood went through, damaging the fence and all bilbies were lost.

The fence was rebuilt, this time all in stainless steel and a further group of bilbies were released, which are doing well.  They breed, not like rabbits, but like bilbies. However, they do breed quickly.  

The next plan is to do a controlled release of some bilbies into the area outside the current enclosure, still with a very concerted effort to keep feral animals away.  I do hope it succeeds.

They played a video of a 60 Minutes segment from when they originally released the first batch of bilbies.  That was back in 2005, and the presenter mentioned that they estimated, at that time, that there were about 20 million feral cats in Australia.  How many more would there be now?  We saw many on the side of the road, in broad daylight, as we travelled along on this trip, something we had never seen before.  We mentioned it to the lady there and she said that many travellers had made a similar comment.  Quite worrying.

Back to our tour…

The next part of the tour was to enter the night room.  They have a few bilbies in this area, where the room is lit during our night and dark during the day, so that we can see these nocturnal creatures.  

They really are rather cute.

We do hope that this wonderful little creature can be saved.  I doubt very much if they will ever be able to have a wide release back into the wild, but if they can have some living in a natural environment and preserve those small wild pockets that will be better than nothing.

Now for the rest of our day……

We just had a wander around town looking at the lovely old buildings.  Being Sunday, there was very little open.  Come for a walk with us.

You can see the town thrived in the 1920s, by the architecture.

After our walk, Mick was able to go and have a roll at the local bowling club, who made him feel very welcome.

The day was finished off by joining other travellers at the fire pit in the caravan park.  A nice, social way to end an enjoyable day.  Oh, and you really need to be with the right person, as there is always someone who knows someone you know.  We had a nice chat with a lady that used to ride motorcycles with many of the old motorcyclists from Bathurst.  Small world.

We then looked forward to seeing some more on the following day.