Austrop Foundation and Bat House in Cape Tribulation | Non-profit organisation

Austrop Foundation and Bat House

Locality: Cape Tribulation

Phone: +61 7 4098 0063

Address: 3915 Cape Tribulation Road 4873 Cape Tribulation, QLD, Australia

Website: http://austrop.org.au/

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• Non-profit organisation
• Community organisation

25.01.2022 So we sighed (not optimistic after our last encounter), connected the gas pipe to the burner - and turned it on - Eureka! A hot blue flame! It was producing methane! So dinner (braised sausages and onions) was cooked with biogas- and it was plenty hot!

21.01.2022 Up here - we are "all dressed up, and nowhere to go" - our volunteer and student traffic has dried up completely - and it's not only Corona Virus -it's also due to a major shift in attitudes - student travel organizers seemed to become only interested in Kangaroo" tourism - 2 days here, hop in a bus/plane, 2 days there and so on. That's stopped - and so with Corona virus travel restrictions there's no O/S student tourism, and no interstate either. There is some local Qld tou...rism - but the poor old BAT HOUSE is still closed - no one to run it - but it gets used once a week as a community group meeting place. When this will change is anyone’s guess. For the 25 years or so while we had the committed US groups/volunteers - we got an enormous amount done - forest planting, buildings etc - our last group was over 2 years ago from Connecticut, and a trickle of volunteers since then. Actually we've rather run out of jobs for them anyway - unless we can get some large reveg. projects - but the property dynamics around here have changed - blocks are being bought up by absentee owners - no access allowed even if they have the worst weed issues. Plus we have gone from a weak (but greenish) local Council to a hawkish - RW pro-development Council that really has "set the cat amongst the pigeons" (life is not boring) So I'm sitting in the lab/office - incredibly well equipped - but not much "wet science"going on. (also as we are off-grid - we are a bit energy strangled as well). And there are so many interesting projects to be done! However - as a result of our (and volunteer) reforestation efforts over the years - the place is becoming Flying Fox Central the noise this morning was quite loud as probably 5-600 FF's are setting up camp amongst the buildings and elsewhere on the property. A lot are probably bats escaping the persecution being visited on them in Cairns by the Cairns Council. We seem to be providing sanctuary for not only bats but people - so the vacant cabins are being occupied by escapees from the "community" - and that brings in much needed rent. Interesting times...

18.01.2022 Where has our corn gone? Ty planted several rows of sweet corn when we went to get some for dinner - they had been massacred. So set out a live trap - and the culprit - a juvenile white tailed rat. It’s not only insects that eat things!

17.01.2022 Wow - we’ve been Search-and-Rescue helicopter free for 2 years now. It’s wonderful not to have to listen to a helicopter flying round and round Mt Sorrow (behind us) looking for someone who got lost. The Mt Sorrow trail is not exactly a manicured and maintained trail (and in the wet, it’s slippery and has lots of leeches). It’s also very popular with the backpackers. However in the past locals (playing Vietnam) have created a number of false trails and backpackers follow them to.? Panic. So we decided to do something about it 2 years ago - and Hugh and volunteer Katy Ficarra started by tagging the trail with permanent markers, and volunteers Davina and Luke (from Canada) finished the job - the silence since has been (wonderfully) deafening. Also - a days search by Old rescue - can cost over 100,000 dollars.

14.01.2022 The continuing saga of our HomeBiogas system. (Continued) This pre-packaged biogas digester system (from Israel) seemed like a real deal - as we have always wanted such a system - as we process a lot of ex-restaurant kitchen waste - and turning it into cooking gas seemed a great idea (and we wouldn’t be so dependent on LPG gas (non-renewable). Besides the other output from the digester would be liquid fertiliser for the garden. Great eh?... So it arrived, we set it up. And as the instructions said - we went can collected piles of cow dung (not as fresh as we’d have liked - but cow dung anyway). Fed it with lots of scraps - and lo and behold, the gas bag (on top) inflated, as it should. Connected up the cute little stove Home Biogas supplied. No flame! WTF???? Turns out that the bacterial/protozoal ferment from the dung was only producing CO2 (and a lot of bad smells). Sadly HomeBiogas didn’t supply a starter culture. So when the rains started - we emptied the system - not something for delicate stomachs, filled it and dumped 4 litres of bleach in it - to ensure we’d kill off the non-performing little buggers. Then we had to dismantle it to really rinse it out and fix its platform - as it has an unfortunate habit of rolling off. We needed to refill it with water

14.01.2022 Sunday morning - 5.45 AM a large group of speccies (Pteropus conspicillatus) arrived in the trees above our cabin. Their noise was loud and very interesting to listen to. We haven’t had any wild bats on the property for about a month - how they regulate their comings and goings is a complete mystery - they do carry on a lot of vocal communication - but we can’t interpret it. Plus - their wandering ways make it difficult - here today and gone tomorrow, so the recording gear set up today records bird tweets but nary a flying fox.

13.01.2022 Our captive spectacled flying fox colony has added another bat to the endangered population! One of our girls gave birth today! Here's bub - head out (and chatting to mum) just before the big heave when it pops out completely. Flying foxes have a rather odd birthing process.

11.01.2022 As part of the trip to Mungali - we went by Zillie falls which is nearby. 30 years ago Zillie falls was the epicentre of a massive paralysis-tick kill of spectacled flying foxes and the area smelt like a charnel house. Dead and dying bats littered the ground. Our job was to rescue the bubs and any adults that could possibly be saved. In those days we had ready access to tick anti-toxin and green dream (AKA Letha-barb) - so we found ourselves euthanising lots of bats that just wouldn’t have made it. (No way could you do that now!). Today- the area around the falls is all green and clean!

10.01.2022 And then fit the gas reservoir back on top - including putting back all the (now soggy) sand packs that are essential to generate gas pressure. There are lots of them! We then headed off to a biodynamic dairy 300km to the south - to get 40 litres of fresh steaming cow shit. (No dairies around here). We loaded it in, fed it with scraps, and waited.

06.01.2022 And waited, and waited.. (fed the digester occasionally) And nothing happened. And then, 2 months later, the gas chamber started to inflate. (Sometimes cultures can take that long to establish). (The boards on the sides, are to stop the whale rolling off the platform!)

05.01.2022 In order to hopefully speed the fermentation process, we homogenise the scraps to a sort of slush, using a rather powerful stick blender (ensuring there are no bones or seriously hard bits in the scrap bucket! - as they tend to bust the blender!) Hopefully the HomeBiogas system will start to behave - and once this Corona virus period is over - we’ll start to get lots of scraps again, and lots of gas.

04.01.2022 Our bio digester blues. We bought this Home Biogas system about 2 years ago .. the instruction said to start it with Cow Shit - so we did - using cow shit from a local cow pasture. Unfortunately it didn’t work - it produced lots of gas - that was almost pure CO2 (and lots of really bad smells as well). So after various attempts to reload the digester with fresh cow shit (we did get enough methane to cook a meal) - the original culture took over - back to CO2. So we em...ptied the whole mess, poured in bleach and washed it out - the only way to get rid of the initial culture. Remember the interior of such a digester is a war zone - and the CO2 culture won. So we decided to get some serious cow shit. Phoned our regional biodynamic dairy, Mungali Ck, and they set aside 40 litres of fresh cow shit from the days milking. Turns our that Mungali dairy are 300 Km from us - so it was a long day - So we dumped 40 litres of cow shit (which was trying to escape from the buckets!) into the digester - and some macerated banana for food. So we’ll see - it’s producing gas but no smell. Tomorrow we’ll fit the gas accumulator - See more

01.01.2022 After 25 years and the burial of numerous critters around its roots (Clea the cat and many bats) - our durian has actually decided to fruit properly this year. (Last years were few and inedible - and these smell good! - taste great! - but not creamy. Variety - unknown - I think - it was supposed to be Montong - which tend to be huge, these aren’t. So we’ll take the fruit apart and freeze the flesh for later enjoyment. But those spines sure are sharp! Just don't stand under a durian tree at fruit drop time!