WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE - REHABILITATING DARWIN’S WILDLIFE
When someone asks to visit her during the wet season, Nina just laughs: “Come back in a few months’ time!” Life out at Litchfield Park, in the middle of the wet, is hard. Once, Nina had to be evacuated via helicopter — luckily her son is a pilot! — when the water level was approaching her doorstep. In the last heavy monsoon, she lost two of her wallaby joeys — one drowned, another one was fatally hit by a dropped branch knocked loose by the heavy winds.
Nina’s driveway is 8 km long. There is a small creek to cross, with a makeshift bridge, and sometimes a 4-metre crocodile lurking underneath. The heavy rains of the wet can make the creek swell and flood the bridge in record time, and the remaining driveway can soak up so much rain any unassuming visitor gets bogged in no time. Should a visitor make it out to Nina’s at that time of the year, she might take them out in her ‘buggy’ — a small open vehicle not unlike a golf cart, but designed to be used on the floodplain around Nina’s sanctuary. You might see mobs of wild wallabies and wallaroos hopping across the landscape in exaggerated jumps, covering vast distances in no time, despite seemingly in slow-motion.
It is the chance to see wildlife like this — free and happy, in their natural environment! — that prompted Nina to found her wildlife sanctuary 23 years ago. Born in the United States, she moved to the Northern Territory at 11 years old and was immersed in the animal kingdom from then on, her family owning various cattle stations over the years. “I always had some creature I was caring for – I guess you could say it is what I was put on earth to do.” Growing more and more uneasy about the cattle industry, which she diplomatically calls “inhumane at times,” Nina and her husband Malcolm purchased 160 ha of bushland at the boundary of Litchfield Park to build an animal sanctuary, as much for the peace and safety of the rehabilitated animals as for themselves. A dream come true!
Today, she cares for a number of different species at Nina’s Ark. As the only wildlife sanctuary around Darwin, she takes in a majority of the rehabilitated wildlife, from a variety of bird species to Northern Brushtail Possums, Sugar Gliders, Wallabies, Wallaroos, and the vulnerable Black-footed Tree Rats. The animals go through different rehabilitation stages before getting soft-released. Macropods for example start in the Joey Kindergarten before moving through bigger enclosures until the final release. They are then free to roam the sanctuary or enter Litchfield National Park, but always have the option of returning for one feed per day. In a scene that is as dramatic as the bush will let you be, Nina calls the macropods with a resounding, “Come on, roos!” On a good day, more than 250 macropods will heed her call and hop towards their dinner table — a several metre long trough — for a feed.
With her diurnal visitors fed and watered, the afternoon rings in Nina’s busiest time, with a lot of food to cut up for her nocturnal residents, such as the possums and sugar gliders. Many kilos of fruit and vegetables get chopped up before being distributed in release cages as well as numerous feeding ledges across the sanctuary. For any animal lucky enough to pass through Nina’s sanctuary can either disappear into the wilderness of the park or hang around for additional nightly feeds. Like humans, animals are ready for independence at different, individual stages. Nina’s fight for wildlife is relentless, and she was once able to stop a mining company from exploring on her land. “Wildlife has it tough in our country. Survival of the human population will always come first.” Ignorance is the root of the problem, she believes. Education in the form of road signage or even ad campaigns on wildlife issues by governing bodies could make all the difference. “Governments have little regard for wildlife. This needs to change so that all of Australia is cared for — not just the land, the indigenous people, the commercial trade, and feeding the masses. It is my belief we can change all our practices in many ways that will benefit all in this great country, not just a few.”
To find out more about her sanctuary, including her yearly open day and ways in which you can get involved, visit http://www.ninasarksanctuary.com.
Hanna is from Germany but one day she was given a book project about Working Holidays in Australia, and, after reading a lot of personal stories from people who had done it, decided to quit her job and try her luck down under! That was seven years ago and she's been here (mostly in Darwin) ever since. She finished her Master of Environmental Management at CDU last July and is currently working as a veterinary nurse.
