In 2019 I left inner-city Melbourne and moved to a cottage in the country in southern Tasmania. One of the reasons I did it was that I wanted to live with animals. The idea collapses pretty quickly - there were plenty of animals at our place in Footscray, including ants and blackbirds and pigeons and humans - so I guess what I really wanted was some more romantic notion of myself sitting in a meadow while wrens jumped on to my shoulders and wombats gamboled by a pond. Or something.
The real estate agent could smell it on me, and when he showed us around the house where I’m now typing this, he said ‘this is wonderful quoll country. You’ll have them running around your backyard!’ What kind of real estate agent mentions quolls?
Anyway, he was right. It took four years but thanks to a plumbing disaster, which involved pulling up the planks of our deck to access the septic tank (a cunning place to put it) and of course being too lazy to ever put the planks back on, we now have quolls running around our backyard.
What? Oh, sorry; that wasn’t very clear. January is the time when young quolls get kicked out of home and are on the prowl for new digs, and apparently the space under the deck next to the septic tank makes an excellent den.
I feel so proud. My garden is rubbish at looking pretty or producing food, but it is an excellent home for eastern quolls (also loads of pademelons and birds and skinks and microbats annoyingly in the wall of my writing/sewing room and occasionally an echidna. Oh, and once a Tasmanian devil!).
The pictures below were taken with a wildlife camera that I borrowed from work. It’s part of the WildTracker citizen science program which, if you live in Tasmania, you can also join.
It makes me happy to think that even though I live here, other animals are still happy to live here too.
Love "The real estate agent could smell it on me"
They always can....