Spring has definitely arrived early this year in Alice Springs. Everywhere you look, native shrubs are in flower, the birds are building nests and the hills still have a greenish tinge after consistent rainfall all this year. It is gorgeous. We are even getting a few days now above 20 degrees, although the nights remain cool. Who would be anywhere else?!
Australia is home to more than 100 species of marsupial. Some, such as the Kangaroo, are extremely well known, indeed even synonymous with Australia. Others, such as the small, carnivorous Dunnarts and Kultarrs, are virtually unknown. Modern Australia holds the unfortunate world record for mammal extinctions, with many small marsupials having disappeared since the arrival of White Man and his feral pests such as cats and foxes. Nowadays, remnant colonies of other, endangered marsupials, such as the Rufous Hare Wallaby and the Greater Billby, thrive either only on isolated islands where there are no feral predators, or in specially constructed, feral proof breeding enclosures. These ‘island’ sanctuaries give their species some hope of survival.