One of the things I love about living out in the bush is the wildlife we frequently see. We have 100 acres of mostly regrowth eucalypt forest, and we’re in the midst of much, much larger grazing properties, with the gorge country not far away. Kangaroos, wallabies and wallaroos are around almost all the time; we frequently see echidnas and possums, and the regular birdlife includes choughs, magpies, fairy wrens, tiny firetails, rosellas, kookaburras, wedge-tailed eagles, and tawny frogmouths.

Most of the native wildlife is nocturnal, though, so we often wonder about what we don’t see, or see only rarely – like koalas, dingoes and feather gliders…

Our dogs spend each night in the dog ‘run’ – a large fenced area, about 25 metres by 25 metres (yes, bigger than the average house block!) There are plenty of trees in the run, and it’s surrounded by trees. The dogs often bark at night creatures, and every now and then a possum spends the night up one of ‘their’ trees, having wandered into the run during the evening when the dogs aren’t there. (A few weeks back, we rescued a baby possum, huddled on top of a fence post; we took it to a tree outside the run, which it scampered up quickly!)

On Tuesday morning, when Gordon went to take the dogs for their morning walk, they were interested in the occupant of a tree on the edge of the run. This is one of Gordon’s photos:

No, it’s not a possum (Australian possums are cuter than North American ones). We’ve never seen one of these before, and had to check on the internet… it’s a spotted quoll, a carnivorous marsupial, native to Australia and a threatened species. It scampered off to somewhere safer while Gordon and the dogs were out for their morning run – we don’t know if it lives locally, or if its territory is further away – apparently they can roam about 6 kilometres in a night.

Maybe we should go out spotlighting at night some time, and see what else is living in the bush with us!

This is me, hiding from my manuscript, so it can’t find me….

Yesterday wasn’t the best writing day. I ended up scrapping most of what I’d written the previous day, and agonising over how to bring various threads and plot points together into the final act. I still haven’t got all the answers, but I think I finally made some progress – in my head, anyway. I’ve still got to get it down on paper screen.

This morning, I’m going to take a bit of a break and go into town – I haven’t left our place, so haven’t seen anyone but Gordon, since Monday. The grocery shopping needs doing, so I volunteered – yes, the exciting life of a writer, when the grocery shopping becomes a break from routine! Although I’ll probably have morning tea in my regular cafe, as well.

Oh, and the photo is of an echidna. We have a few on our place – Gordon has seen three at the same time – so we see them reasonably often. This one is hiding from me and the dogs. I did leave the dogs some distance away, so I could wait quietly nearby to get a better photo – but just as it decided it might be safe to move, my camera battery died.

And to finish this on a positive note, I have walked in the treadmill EVERY morning for 16 days in a row now. (So, I’d better go now and get on it and make it 17 days in a row…)