Queensland Outback Tour - Bilbies

Sue

This morning was the ‘Bilby Experience’ at Charleville’s Bilby Centre. Yes, I got to stroke two Bilbies awwww. Sooo soft. We were able to also watch them hop around in their nocturnal house.

The presenter shared lots of info about their features and behaviors as well as the breeding program to prevent extinction. These are impossibly cute creatures.

Peter

Freakin' cats. Whilst foxes are the apex predator, feral cats are just behind them in removing bilbies from the planet. At Currawinya NP, four hours south of Charleville, special fences had been erected and twenty bilbies were released into the park. In three years they had built their population to 300 (they have a gestation period of 14 days). When floods came in 2010, holes in the fences let feral cats in. Seventy feral cats were removed. While that was done, the remaining ten bilbies were taken out for their own survival.

A really informative display and presentation. Unfortunately, it is felt that having people touch bilbies will encourage more support for their plight. For mine, telling people and letting them observe them under red light in an enclosure should be enough.

Click to look at today's photos

On our way back to our digs we dropped in on the Charleville Showgrounds and Racecourse, which is a really big complex. In the carpark today was the "Heart Of Australia", a mobile heart testing unit in a huge semi trailer, set up by cardiologist Rolf Gomes, spending more than $1m of his own money to do so.

That was about it for the day.