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Our second edition of ‘The Carer Diaries’ comes from rural carer Casey and her little orphan ‘Zuma’, an Agile Wallaby. We hope you enjoy this read: As we know Nina’s Ark has various aspects, 1 of which is a transit centre for many orphans coming & going. I received a msg from Nina with photo attached & knew there’d be some sleep deprived nights ahead, but with a face like this little guy the words “No sorry” just don’t come to mind, so on the 11/10/2022 I picked up my little orphan with eyes closed, ears attached weighing in at 120gr. Most carers would know all orphans are special, but every now & then along comes a joey that just indelibly grabs your heart & soul. Zuma, was 1 of those joeys for me. We had a few hiccups to start with, but after 2 weeks back with Nina his overheating & eating issues were sorted. I chose the name Zuma as it means peace & he was a peaceful, sweet little pinky especially during the 1st few months of 3 hourly feeding. By the 23/11/2022 he was soon velveting, a good little drinker just over 500gr with eyes open & very long legs to grow into. By the 18/12/2022 Zuma had grown into his lovely long legs, he’d also outgrown his basket so he was upgraded into the cot with pouches clipped both inside & outside the cot. He was well furred, very mischievous, inquisitive & into everything, including hay, a new Roo kibble Nina suggested & the odd bits of apple, sweet potato. His favourite (not a usual treat) were my snap peas, he’d be standing at the sink with me as I prepared our meals & scratching my legs for them. By Christmas Day we couldn’t leave a cupboard door open without Zuma popping his head in them & pulling things out, he was quite entertaining at 1.2kg. On 11/01/2023 I realised I probably shouldn’t have placed Zuma’s cot at the end of our bed as Zuma soon learned to jump out of the cot straight up onto it! He was constantly entertaining himself & us having me play ‘tag’ with him jumping right out of the cot, onto our bed to the other side of our bedroom & out the door. At 2kg Zuma had become very strong & his energy infinite. We ended up covering the top of the cot & closing a few rooms in the house to contain his zoomies, he was ready for the yard but hadn’t had his last tetanus yet. He was still very much a Mumma’s boy though & wouldn’t take his bottle from my partner, after toileting it was straight into his pouch & enjoying cuddles with me, ’til his eyes slowly closed, often clutching my finger & off into sleepy time. On the 18/02/2023 Zuma, at just over 3kg had to go to Nina early as I had a knee issue & was off to hospital. I was shattered as we were still very bonded, but he did well with Nina & learned pretty quickly he had to accept the bottle from her, needless to say there was no more jumping out of his cot either. It wasn’t long before Nina had him out in the kindy, she did such a beautiful job with him. While recuperating I was blessed with live WhatsApp calls to see him bloom. 17/07/23 I got to see Zuma again once before his release on a day trip to see Nina, it was lovely & of course he remembered me. On the 09/09/2023 Zuma was set free with his new buddies. Thank you Nina.

This year we had a new school come for educational tours as part of their camp program. The Katherine school called the Casuarina Street Primary School visited us in mid July for a week with eighty students and eight teachers from years five and six. This is the first time we’ve hosted students this young, but they were very attentive, very taken by the animals we have here, they were all really well behaved and listened to all the interesting facts they were given about our specimens in the clinic and life here at The Sanctuary. We had four days of group visits that went smoothly and even the teachers asked questions about The Sanctuary. Unfortunately due to the closure of Lake Bennett we were unable to host our annual academic visitors, the O’Loughlin Catholic College. We hope that they’re able to find appropriate lodgings next year and we’ll see them back again. We hope to see both schools come back in 2025 as having access to children, being able to show them our native animals, most living free in their natural environment and the other animals recovering from injuries or older animals living safely in their aviaries we think has more of an impact on children than learning about them in the classroom from a text book. Our intention is to instil a deep rooted commitment in at least a few of the children to be active stakeholders in future generations of conservation careers and employment, anything to do with the environment and sustainability to save what’s left of our native flora and fauna. As most of our members would know sadly Australia has undeniably the worst extinction rate in the world since the arrival of white people to Australia. We’ve lost almost all but a handful of bilbies, also quolls, mallee fowl, hopping mice, plains rats, koalas, cassowaries, dingoes and of course the iconic Tasmanian Tiger, but to name a few animals either extinct or on the endangered list. Flora loss is even higher than our fauna loss, the Norfolk Island kurrajong, at least 50 species of orchids from many states all over the country, Christmas Island fern, Mount Coolum sheoak, several species of wattles and the list continues. We need to keep sharing our knowledge of conservation with as many children as we can to get them interested and excited about working in the conservation fields of tomorrow. Bottom middle photos is of children being shown the one thing that they had heard most about on the bus before they could re-enter the park and get on to camp! We’ll sign off now, leaving you with our second edition of ‘The Carer Diaries’ which we hope you enjoy. We’ll have one more newsletter for you before the end of the year.

During the fire season we used our old faithful fourteen fire fighting buggy, however it became unreliable so a new one was needed. Below, a photo of the old and the new fire buggies, we’re pretty happy with the new one and hope it lasts us as long if not longer than the original. Malcolm picked up the new buggy a few months ago and we’re really happy with it, even Tim was impressed! Also, these are the photos mentioned on Page 1 of the beautiful work both our volleys Maureen and Annika created for us. The new signs for The Park, parking signs for both the entrance parking and also in the campground, the mural of the animals in the tree that’s been painted in the cabin and the beautiful painting of my beloved ‘Two Feathers’ Mother’s Day present. We extend a big ‘Thank You’ to our friends at Coles who have been consistently providing us with great fruit and vegetables over the years. After changing stores a few years ago we can say that the quality and quantity has gone up immeasurably. The photo below is just one fridge’s worth of the lovely food some of our menagerie of animals get to feast on thanks to Coles at the Target Complex. Our tireless fundraiser Olivia is putting together a final end of the year fundraiser so keep an eye out on our Instagram page. Also, because Olivia’s calendars have proven so popular she’s working on a 2025 issue, so if you’re interested in any calendars for Christmas presents send us an email and we’ll put you on the list.

The girls also made some lovely jewellery for the gift shop when it got too hot to work outside. Tim meanwhile agreed to stay on with the promise of paid work. We went exploring Litchfield National Park in their spare time then Tim headed off down the road to explore Alice Springs and its unique gorges and parks. To the right is a photo of Gabriel, he was the volley that got a big surprise when a little joey jumped into the neck of his singlet. If you’ve forgotten the delightful video you should be able to find it on my Instagram account. Gabriel still loves the joeys and it was lovely to have him come back to us. Under the photo of Gabe we’ve got my cute boy ‘Little Joe’ who was having some ‘mum time’ watching me spring clean the kitchen/lounge area ‘til bottle time. As all our members know we always have multiple projects going on simultaneously and this year’s been no different. One of these projects are new advertising campaigns, one with ‘booking.com’. You can easily find us now on google search and google maps too. Also, the ‘Local Search’ which spreads Ads over ten platforms. Their CEO came to visit us for half a day before the dry season really started to see first-hand what his company would be advertising over the dry season. His visit was a success, he really loved it here. Other exciting development has been from small, independent tour & camping safari companies, one of which has already visited us. They share our ideologies and were very taken with our set up. More news on this to come in the following newsletter.

We are finally back! We’ve had a lovely season so far, with a welcome cool start to the dry season that has continued past Show Day, which is usually the start of the long build up. We had guests from Melbourne asking for extra blankets after their first night’s stay in a fully zipped up Glamper tent if you can imagine it that cold down here! This year we were blessed with some really hard working and artistic volleys, Annika and Maureen. Maureen’s handiwork are the black and white parking signs. Annika’s responsible for various paintings in this issue, her life-like animal paintings and the cabin mural are beautiful, we’re hoping that visitors really take notice of the signs, enjoy them and we don’t lose any more feeding troughs or new plantings etc. Annika presented me with a beautiful Mother’s Day painting of my cherished ‘Two Feathers’ on Page 3. They were a talented and hardworking pair to add to volley season. Gabriel returned this year, if you don’t remember Gabe he was a volley last year. He’s always hard-working, keeping up with me and even taking clothes off the line. Another volley Tim was with us for two months poisoning Mimosa. We really had to work around the weather this season, we still had very wet ground through April and the start of burning season which we had to put off for a few weeks as we couldn’t get very good burns going. We didn’t even have issues with the neighbours burns this year for the first time in many years. We did get it all done eventually but it wasn’t without a little bit of resistance. Overall we were very lucky with all the wet season flooding, we were flooded five times instead of the usual once yearly and our driveway remained intact. Malcolm upgraded the bridge by widening it for our new guests and visitors, making it structurally sound for more traffic. While it has been a little irregular this year on the guests and visitors front we’ve put the time to good use, with the campground close to completion. We’ve completed all the lighting, added more solar lights around the area so campers can see the drive way and where to walk, the fire pit is done, the gazebo is up and we also put in a sink with an ironwood bench area for campers. While we’ll always be adding improvements and new ideas to the area, we’ve already had our very first campers stay over and their feedback was great! They absolutely loved the seclusion the campground offers and loved the little visitors they received at night whilst relaxing at the firepit. The girls painted and put up these new signs all the while working with me through the day and juggling three pint sized pinkies on three hourly feeds even though I’d sworn off taking anymore little ones in.

Feeding the mob on Outback Wildlife Rescue. A great episode featuring the prison programme which Nina facilitated.