In the second week of September families came together at 14 Mile, Fortescue Marsh, for this year’s Nyiyaparli Kids on Country Junior Rangers camp.
After last year’s successful inaugural camp, this year’s camp was much anticipated.
This year we were lucky to have Hollie and Tess from Biologic join us to lead a fish survey activity. Tess, Hollie and Dean from Biologic and Harriet Davie, Senior Biologist from Roy Hill, are working with the Nyiyaparli Ranger team to set up a baseline aquatic health assessment study at key yindas within the eastern Fortescue catchment. With Hollie and Tess’s help we learnt how fish survey nets are set, what species of fish and turtles are found in the marsh and what fish eat. We also checked out some cool water bugs under the microscope. We would like to thank Hollie and Tess for joining us and our project partners Roy Hill for supporting this activity. We had lots of fun!
During the week, we also set up some camera traps. We learnt how the ranger team use these camera traps to monitor invasive species like cats, camels and rabbits, as well as threatened species like bilbies.
Mum’s, dad’s and kids together created a big mural canvas of the marsh, featuring jalinirri (brown kangaroo), marantu (goanna), paru (Spinifex), jina (feet), maanu (hands), red dirt, wildflowers, mirrumayi (fish) and the stockyards. The canvas will take pride of place in the new ranger office.
On Thursday, KNAC’s Cultural Advisor, Streamy and Ranger Field Coordinator, Cedric, created some beautiful walanu (boomerangs) out of snake wood. Streamy yarned about walunu and how they were used to hunt. We then painted our own walunu.
With the help of Ranger Project Officer, Noel, we recorded singing the chorus of our Junior Rangers song from last year, and also created a brand new song!! Look out for its debut later this year!
We also had fun capturing country with Polaroid cameras, and collecting some bush plants to add to the ranger team’s plant press and reference collection. There was, of course, also, lots of fun had playing in the mud and swimming.
Big thanks to the Red Country Management crew for your event and logistical support this year, helping to create a great camp set up. Thank you also to all who attended and made the week such an enjoyable experience. We look forward to next year’s event, which promises to be better again!
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