After 22 days without being replenished, we finally received a new shipment of food this week – $1,700 of groceries, to be exact. For me, after nearly running out completely, it was like Christmas all over!

The system here is simple. Every couple of weeks, everyone at Mornington fills out an Excel spreadsheet with what they’d like from the store. It all goes in one big order, which, on arrival, is carefully doled out according to who requested what. Overall, it runs pretty smooth.

Trouble is, though, you don’t know how much anything costs until after you’ve bought it. So, I was a bit surprised to find that Gatorade powder mixes were $12 each; with five of them, I spent $60 on Gatorade alone! Same goes for sports bars, which are apparently $5 each, so I threw down approximately $50 on Powerbars.

The day before our order was processed, the grocery store rang up Mornington Station with a few questions, most of them about items I’d requested. They were very confused about “peanut butter flavored snack bars,” of which I’d ordered 20, until the clerk learned that I was American, and burst out laughing over the phone. “That explains it!” she cackled. “Oh, and what are black beans?” Australians, it seems, haven’t caught on to black beans at all, and don’t even know what they are. Overall, though, I was very pleased to restock my supplies. Let the eating begin!

Yesterday evening, a tight truckload of us headed to Lake Gladstone (about an hour and a half from here), bird guides and gin and tonics in hand, to see what was up. Maybe, being a lake, it might have some waterbirds.

A spartan bird blind was built there last November, at the end of the dry season, but not a soul had visited the place in the intervening four months. Thick sorghum grass grew eight feet high over the track, hiding deep washouts, and we bumped over logs and anthills (one massive termite mound required circumnavigation, solid as a brick wall).

The remote lake’s water level, predictably, had risen through the wet season, necessitating a wade through two feet of water to reach the blind. Leeches the size of my pinky finger thronged the water and attached to our legs, turning our calm wade into a frantic dash for cover. Once installed with a clear view of the sunset, though, we happily watched jacanas, cormorants, and a few large crocs while sipping drinks and munching snacks under the broad Australian sky – a perfect end to the week.

If you’re from the U.S., you might not have heard of Xavier Rudd – one of Australia’s most famous musicians. I’ve been a fan of his music since last September, when I went to one of his concerts near San Francisco. In fact, two of his tracks are in a playlist that I just listened to yesterday morning.

So imagine my total astonishment when Xavier Rudd himself washed in here yesterday afternoon! At first, all we heard was a garbled radio message from Swanie that “two tourists” had driven past all the CLOSED signs and were asking questions about Diamond Gorge. Swanie was about to tell them to turn right around and go home, but something clicked. Ten minutes later, everyone at Mornington knew we were hosting a rock star. It wasn’t unlike having Johnny Cash unexpectedly knock on your front door, assuming you lived in the middle of the Sahara desert.

Turned out, Xavier was just traveling around this region with his girlfriend, and they decided to make the six-hour 4×4 drive to Mornington Station on a whim (closed signs notwithstanding; they even had to cut a cable-tied gate to get in here). After some initial confused communication, they stuck around to watch the sunset at Sir John Gorge and joined us around the pizza oven late into the evening, eating pizza, hanging out, and telling stories. Xavier was obviously ripped, and took in the scene as any famous musician/surfer dude should; when I explained to him, at one point, over a beer, how I had lived with penguins in Antarctica, Xavier sank deeper into his seat: “Far out, man,” he replied. “What were the polar bears like?” Even if he had his wildlife facts a bit backwards, it was surreal to be talking to the celebrated musician under a starry sky, staring into the flames of the pizza oven, and feeling the heat of the day wafting up from red soil.

In the end, the singer grabbed a guitar from his rig, gave us a couple songs, and said his goodbyes just before midnight; he had to drive out to appear at a “Save the Kimberley” fundraising event the next day, then was off for an 8-month world tour of Australia, North America, and Europe. We told him not to run over any owls on the way out, gave him a piece of Jen’s chocolate cake, and watched our random guest drive into the dark, back to surfing trips with Jack Johnson and gigs with Ani DiFranco. Here, though, he was just another tanned, Aussie surfer dude – maybe a bit out of place at a wildlife research camp, but welcomed nonetheless; and one random encounter I definitely won’t forget!

I spent the day commuting between far-flung Fairy-Wren territories, and, by afternoon, had hiked 4 kilometers off-trail and biked an hour and a half on 4×4 roads, getting progressively dustier, sweatier, and generally grimier as the sun climbed scorching overhead. In the afternoon, with the temperature over a hundred degrees, I hit a patch of red sand on my bike and flipped over the handlebars; luckily, the sand was soft (though very hot), and so was my landing. Just another day at work!

I’ve been at Mornington Station for 20 days now and haven’t been resupplied with food. My stocks have dwindled quicker than I thought, and I’m down to basically empty shelves: a couple boxes of bread mix, one can of baked beans, three wrinkly onions, and a bit of cereal. For breakfast today, I ate cereal; also cereal for my mid-morning snack, and more cereal for lunch; for dinner, I think I’ll stir-fry the onions with the beans.

Handyman Paul departed in a truck this morning for the 12-hour round trip to Derby’s isolated grocery store, and should be back tomorrow with heaps of supplies carefully ordered by each person at Mornington (the grocery store pre-organizes the orders into crates for a small fee). No transportation here is guaranteed, though; last year, this food run was delayed four days when the truck broke down in the middle of nowhere. If that happens, I might have to start eating dirt – not that I haven’t had enough sand in my teeth already! I suppose it would fulfill my daily dose of iron, at least. But a nice, fresh tomato sounds much more appetizing…

When I casually mentioned to Paul this afternoon that I hadn’t seen a snake here yet, he smirked. “I’ve seen five in the last two weeks,” he said, “and had close encounters with four of them.” When I asked just how close, he smiled, and said, “Come with me.”

We headed to a hole in the ground behind the kitchen. “I had a children’s python in there yesterday,” Paul said. “Let’s stick a stick in there and see what slithers out.” Today, the hole was empty, but Paul wasn’t done yet.

“I was sitting on the toilet in the dark day before yesterday,” he said, “and felt something brush my leg. Figured it was a frog, but it slithered up my shorts. Turns out a tree snake lives in that toilet – he just used me for access.”

Paul’s most wicked snake encounter this week, though, was a bit more dangerous. He discovered a five-foot mulga snake in the kitchen – or, rather, the snake discovered him when he opened a cabinet at eye level. “That thing struck at my face,” he said; “I could see the whites of its fangs, and shut the cabinet door as quick as I could. It got pinned with a couple feet of its body on either side of the cabinet hinge. I called for help on the radio, and JoJo and Jen showed up. We got the mulga into a box but it stuck its head into a plastic grocery bag, got disoriented, and slithered straight at us across the kitchen floor. JoJo tried to pick it up but it squirmed away and hid behind the freezer. And that’s where we left it.”

A mulga bite can kill a man within five hours, so all of us have been tiptoeing around the freezer ever since. That snake hasn’t reappeared, but mulgas are pretty common; I should see one soon enough – hopefully from a safe distance.

Jen and I set off at 6am this morning toward some old Aboriginal wall paintings accessible by a 10-kilometer off-trail hike. The directions were simple: where the road ends, start walking. Continue past two sets of rapids until you see a gorge open up on the right. Swim across the river, bushwhack up the fork, and the paintings will be obvious. Easy, right? I packed light snacks and a couple liters of water, expecting to be home by lunch.

In fact, we rolled in to camp at 7:30 pm, well after dark, just before the staff here was ready to start searching for us (they soon got distracted, though, by distress calls from two Mornington staffers in a broken-down vehicle halfway to Derby). The hike was much longer than anticipated, and Jen and I never found the paintings.

By 9am, I had drank all my water and resorted to creek water to avoid dangerous dehydration. Jen’s camera became waterlogged when we crossed the river and shut down completely. We spent all morning searching sandstone rock faces for ancient artwork to no avail – either we missed the spot, or didn’t go far enough. Meanwhile, though, Tin Can Gorge was full of enticing swimming holes, idyllic waterfalls, and other interesting bits seldom scanned by human eyes.

After regretfully turning around in early afternoon, we floated back downriver using inflated truck tires brought for the purpose. It was a nice way to travel except for the three freshwater crocodiles we spotted swimming alongside us; though they don’t usually attack humans, two people have been seriously bitten by crocs at Mornington Station in the last two years, and the ones I saw today were at least 4 or 5 feet long.

When we finally hauled out downriver, just after sunset, I discovered that my drybag had failed and everything inside was soaked. This included my Canon 20D camera, Leica 8×32 binoculars, and cell phone. The camera and phone are probably toast (completely wet inside), but my binoculars survived their two-hour sloshing just fine. Luckily, I have a backup camera body. Unluckily, it was an expensive way to end the day. But still a worthwhile adventure – capped by a nice Australian Owlet-Nightjar sitting on the road after dark!

There’s a big white board outside the research lab at Mornington Station for general updates, scheduling, and communication. Today it said “drinks and snacks for sunset on the hill – 5pm.”

So, after another long day in the field with Fairy-Wrens, people gathered in late afternoon to make the short drive to a nearby escarpment, where a picnic table overlooks an expansive surrounding region of bush. In the distance, red bluffs meld with green trees and brown grass. As the sun went down, most of the Mornington crew munched on various tasties and meditated on life beyond the “real” world. And played with Taegan’s 7-month-old baby, Archer. Sometimes, life is simply incomparable.

Most everyone was in bed by 7pm, even on a “social” evening. I’m still up at 7:30 because I got 10 hours of sleep last night, even though my alarm went off at 4:30am (as usual) – work that one out! Anything after about 8:30 goes by “Mornington Midnight” and is a dark hour indeed.

When sweat began dripping uncontrollably off my nose at 5:45 a.m. this morning, I knew it was going to be a hot one. I was just beginning a long march down the Adcock River to census a distant group of Fairy-Wren territories; basically, this involved a six-kilometer bike ride followed by a eight-km bushwhack downriver (roundtrip).

It took me 20 minutes on the bike and another hour of hard, sweaty, overland hiking to reach the wrens. Think of the Discovery Channel’s “Man Vs. Wild,” subtract the backflips and gross snacks, and you get an idea of today’s hike: slipping, crawling, climbing, falling, up and down riverbanks, over logs, navigating by GPS, and wearing jeans and a long-sleeve in 105-degree sun. At midmorning, the humidity hit 90% – brutal conditions to slog through. By noon, I had waded the muddy river twice above my waist, stood in a red ant’s nest, fallen in mud three times, and used leaves for toilet paper. When I eventually returned to the station in early afternoon, nothing could have been more satisfying than standing inside the walk-in fridge, eating an apple, and downing liter after liter of cold Gatorade.

Here’s some pics to keep all you birders happy!

Michelle and I spent this afternoon guiding a couple of visitors. Two guys are at Mornington this week with 30 remote, motion-activated cameras. The idea is to point the cameras at bird nests, leave them in place, then download the images later. If it works, we’ll get photos of predators at Fairy-Wren nests, and see what’s eating the baby birds.

Of every five Purple-crowned Fairy-Wren nests with eggs, only one will fledge at least one chick. Predators eat the rest (except for a few that are flooded during rainstorms). The most regular villains are probably goanas (5-foot-long lizards) and snakes, but who knows? We’ll have to check the photos. With these cameras, we’ll even be able to tell what’s happening at night, because they switch to infrared during darkness – except, of course, if a cold-blooded snake hits the nest at night, the infrared won’t pick it up.

Another sunny day here, hot, sweaty, and sticky. Yesterday I hiked up a small escarpment next to camp to get an overview of Mornington Station. In every direction, arid bush undulated unbroken to the horizon – this is really the middle of nowhere!

Forecasters are predicting thunderstorms the next couple days, which may foil plans to canoe Diamond Gorge tomorrow (more likely, though, we’d just go in the rain). For now, things remain sunny and hot.

Last night everyone gathered around the outdoor pizza oven for a pizza party, Mornington-style. The raised, open-door oven bakes nicely when filled with hot coals. Pizza-making festivities were as creative as the potential ingredients (or lack thereof); Sara and I layered baked beans, salsa, onions, cheese, and chili powder on our dough. Tasty! Two of our closest “neighbors” even came over for the occasion, flying in from an outlying station 2 hours away.

When I went to bed, though, my feet were itching like crazy. I counted more than 40 mosquito bites on each leg below the knee (that’s probably a hundred just on my legs). Everyone says not to scratch, because it causes heat rash, and at least one field tech has landed in the hospital this year with severe heat rash after a week of unbearable agony – while several others have come down with less extreme cases. Not something to be trifled with, so I try to leave my itchy mozzie bites alone.

About 90% of Purple-crowned Fairy-Wren nests at Mornington Station are placed in one particular kind of tree, called Pandanus. It’s a spiky, palm-like plant that grows along the banks of permanent, deep pools along creeks and rivers.

They look cool, but Pandanus fronds are lined with rows of sharp, serrated edges. My arms are scratched up from pushing through them for the last week. Fairy-Wrens love them, though; territories are built around large clumps of Pandanus, and the wrens spend most of their time skulking through the densest stands. Since the wrens are there, so am I. My days are spent alternately crashing through thick riparian vegetation and making quiet observations along the creek, searching for color-banded birds and hoping to find their nests. All the time, Pandanus is my guide, close at hand; it’s a jungle out there!

Mornington is a giant reserve in the Kimberley, an untracked wilderness in northwest Australia, just north of the Great Sandy Desert. The station is an old cattle ranch (they call them “stations” here), accessible by mail plane or a six-hour 4×4 drive from the nearest down, Derby.

Now, Mornington is run and owned by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, with the intention of protecting wildlife and promoting research. The project I am working on – studying Purple-crowned Fairy-Wrens – is just one research project happening at Mornington right now. Other people are studying Crimson Finches, Gouldian Finches, spinifex grass, and similar aspects of the natural landscape. I’m here for six months (until August), but other researchers live here more or less permanently. There are currently 17 people at Mornington.

The station is made up of scattered buildings in various states of repair. The relatively plush (or, as Aussies say, “swish”) research lab, is the only air-conditioned space (Aussies shorten it to “air-con”). I’m sitting in the lab right now, since the temperature outside is about 106 F; with couches, counters, and a nice atmosphere, it’s a great place to hang out and get some work done.

The communal, open-air kitchen is the other nice building; it’s decked out with tons of counter space inside and all the amenities of food, including a large walk-in refrigerator. Otherwise, researchers sleep in scattered huts around the premises. I’ve been sleeping in a vacant room in a disused building on the edge of things, but will get kicked out soon as more staff are hired to handle the upcoming tourist season. Then, I’ll set up a tent on the hot grass, and hope it doesn’t boil me alive while I sleep!