Buffel on the bank of the Todd.

By ERWIN CHLANDA

The Bradshaw Walk is one of The Centre’s small gems.

Starting at the Overland Telegraph Station, five minutes from the CBD, the slim track winds its way south, along a low range of hills at right.

On the opposite side, from elevated positions, walkers can catch glimpses of the Todd River.

The region’s iconic orange rocks dominate the landscape.

Between them glitter brooks, after the rain we’ve just enjoyed, narrow enough to step across. Tadpoles are celebrating the end of their underground wait.

It’s hard to tell how many of these small water courses there are as you may be crossing the same one several times – maybe five?

Bushes and trees range from mulgas, corkwoods and witchetties to majestic gums.

You’re close to town yet it feels miles away, a mini-version of the Larapinta Trail, an hour return, a hint of the adventures that make up The Centre’s powerful appeal.

This is where the good story ends.

The green that surrounds you is buffel, as far as the eye can see, a malicious plant predator that has overwhelmed much of The Centre, and is continuing its relentless advance.

Renowned Central Australian botanist Peter Latz, who has studied the introduced plant for decades, likens the magnitude of impact on the country of buffel with the megafauna’s extinction.

On the Bradshaw walk there is only one ground cover that is not buffel, interspersed with couch, which is almost as bad.

That patch measures about 30 square metres (pictured).

After decades of warnings and campaigning, and buffel having been declared a weed in South Australia, the NT Government has now taken the significant step of replacing one buffel committee with another.

It is charged with considering declaring buffel a weed but Chief Minister and Minister of the Environment Eva Lawler hastens to add that buffel grass remains highly valued by cattle producers.

Her department says: “All walking tracks are regularly assessed under a walking track assessment framework to ensure they comply the walking track rating against national standards.

“The Bradshaw walk was last assessed on 12 March 2024 to identify a schedule required works.”

The department does not disclose what has been “identified” during what Mr Latz (pictured) describes as the worst buffel season ever. 

The recent heavy rains created an ideal opportunity for spraying the weed which needs to occur during its vigorous growth phase. There is no indication that this is happening along the Bradshaw walk.

Says the department: “In 2023 and to date, approximately 144 hours of ranger hours have been spent on slashing and spraying the Bradshaw Walk, Riverside Walk and various other sections of trails and walks that are located within the Alice Springs Telegraph Station footprint.”

That is about 20 ranger minutes a day.

“This includes engagement of Aboriginal Rangers through the Central Land Council, and the use of low security prisoners from the Alice Springs Corrections Facility. This commitment is ongoing.”

The department did not disclose how many of the 600 inmates of the local gaol were engaged in the work, or could be.

The commitment is not quantified but Mr Latz’s own work is a measure of the effort required.

He has a 10 hectare block: “I’ve spent the last four years trying to get rid of buffel. I only succeeded by hard work for half of my full-time work.

“Australia was dominated by browsers in the past. It didn’t involve grasses that were fire and grazing tolerant. Grasses were mostly under trees and water courses.

“The CSIRO said we’ll fix that, so they went to four or five different countries and brought back all the different strands of the buffel grass, a beautiful gene pool to find the best one to take over this country.

“All the pastoralists were very happy. We haven’t had any bad dust storms for 50 years. But are we better off?

“You just have to drive along Ilparpa Road. On the eastern side there’s been three or four buffel fires and there is hardly a tree to be seen,” says Mr Latz.

“But on the western side, which hasn’t been burned for 50 years, there’s lots of mulga scrub with ironwoods and other stuff in amongst them.

“The only way we’re going to do it is by bringing in biological control just as we had to bring in two diseases to deal with our rabbits.

“We haven’t got rid of the rabbit. But they are no longer a bigger problem.”

Widely reported discussion of biological control includes the importation of buffel eating bugs from Queensland where they are treated as a threat to the pastoral industry.

Mr Latz says conventional control was carried out around the Desert Park, but large area removal is impossible without biological control. 

“But the pastoralists will try to stop it happening.”

By MIKE GILLAM

I strain to see the light reflecting on the surface of another dam in my budgerigar quest. Nature photographers understand the importance of being early, to anticipate is definitely preferable to chasing the light.

Sitting quietly in the predawn gloom I recognise the distinctive flight sound of incoming Bourke parrots, arriving in pairs but it’s too dark to see these secretive birds. 

At sunrise the sound of Bronzewing pigeons is quickly verified as I count seven adults and a few more hanging back in the shadows. Specular highlights of the Bronzewings, in green and bronze flash in response to the rising sun and family groups of mulga parrots follow, iridescent green head plumage competing for my attention.

A pair of galahs, several diamond doves and a family of crested pigeons appear on the opposite shore but their privacy is short-lived as a multitude joins the throng.

A tentative flock of thirty or so cockatiels completes a couple of circuits calling to one another and checking for danger before joining the reassuring grey of the crested pigeons.

Within a few minutes all are vastly outnumbered by the first waves of budgerigars.

In a discrete curve of the bank where “dead finish”, Acacia tetragonyphylla shrubs meet the waterline, small flocks of zebra finches arrive in nervous groups, drink hurriedly and return to safety within the spiky shrubs, their thirst momentarily quenched. A lone dingo approaches cautiously and it’s barely 7am.

Amongst other budgerigar fantasies, I wanted to photograph a flock and render them as soft green brush strokes passing across the flank of a dune with the desert receding to infinity.

Budgies in woodland.

A line of mesas hovered on the horizon, completing the theoretical photograph. But how to capture the blur of budgerigars moving across the frame? Was it a matter of patience, of returning to the same site at the prescribed time for several days in a row?

Frustratingly, I had a few near misses on the first two days as group after group flew past, behind me or above me or too far away, always just outside the perfect frame. Later that night, sitting on my swag contemplating the stars I had an epiphany. On the third morning I changed my shirt.

I had long since discovered that being open, conspicuous and moving slowly around wildlife was often better than sneakiness; swathed in camouflage while attempting and failing to hide.

On this occasion I reasoned that transparency was not enough. Could I intrigue even a few flock leaders to come for a closer look at this strange human and bring their minions with them?

Perhaps a modicum of heat stroke was informing my epiphany but I decided that wearing a fluoro-blue shirt might well appeal to budgerigars with their tetrachromatic vision, a feature that provided increased sensitivity in the ultra violet range. (For the record, I had nothing fluoro green or yellow to hand).

To complete my seduction, I resurrected a spindly broken Acacia where it had been thrust aside during roadwork, planting a tall and substantial branch into the roadside some five metres from my vehicle.

Certainly I’d watched budgerigars moving through landscapes often enough to know that they undulate up and down but also side to side, often veering within easy reach of shrubby vegetation either as a place to pause and rest or crouch and evade fast flying falcons.

For reasons unclear, luck or persistence, or the bright blue shirt that seemed to attract a marginally higher fly past of budgerigars, I finally managed to obtain a satisfactory image.

Drinking.

A few days later the budgerigars performed a mesmerising ribbon dance at dusk which I failed to capture in the manner I’d settled on.

The flock of perhaps two thousand followed the contours of dunes and swales moving in and out of sun and deepening shade, flying slowly at heights of between one and five metres above ground level.

This continued for perhaps 10 minutes whereupon the budgerigar ribbon moved to the tallest dune. Here, catching only the reflected light of the setting sun, the flock “ribbon” became a more rounded “serpent” following the dune crest for several hundred metres, and then abruptly angled skyward gaining height rapidly and shape shifting as it went.

No longer elongated, the mysterious cloud breaks into several smaller parts, folding over, coalescing and dividing once more, ever higher and then as light levels plunge, they vanish.

I know without reviewing any frames that my photographic attempts are unremarkable but there’s little time for despair and there’s always tomorrow.

Consoling myself I follow the flock’s trajectory, passing by the old railway ruins of Engoordina. When I saw the budgerigars settling into trees up ahead, I found a place to camp so I could enjoy their company at a respectful distance.

Ripening grasslands dominated by native oat grass, trembled in the evening breeze between the widely spaced dunes. The aggregation had chosen as their roost, a broad swathe of mulga with outlying desert oaks on all sides.

Collectively I believe there were 5,000 to 10,000 birds present but it’s impossible to know. I lay on my swag in a state of rapture listening to the chitter-chatter of so many voices and still after 9pm by the light of the full moon they continued to arrive in small flocks, guided to this precise place in a very expansive landscape, by what instinct? Wanting to make this time last I battled a strong need to sleep for several hours.

Euphoric in their presence, I gladly accept that most of the imagined photographs crowding my brain can never be realised in three life times.

Even in apparent failure I enjoy every photographic quest. With each attempt I move closer and closer to that elusive miracle of life and light, until on rare occasions I can literally bathe in something glorious. For some-one who remembers all too clearly a teenager’s existence in Melbourne, perhaps otherworldly is closer to the truth.

The alarm awoke me at 5am and I made preparations for the potential exodus, reasoning this would take the super flock west to the nearest water and conveniently past and over a blood red dune, one that had certain Saharan qualities.

I leaned against the trunk of a desert oak and waited patiently for the moment. At sunrise they rose in clouds and volleys, departing every which way except west.

In admiration I watched the bunched and disparate flocks unify and climb, steadily gaining height before flying south and then boomerang style they turned south-west and disappeared from view.

I did not take a single frame but my euphoria was unabated. Recounting this story back in Alice Springs, I cursed myself for failing to record their nocturnal voices on my phone.

AT TOP: Flight of budgerigars.