The Wilderness Garden

Turkey Tangential
By Spencer Shaw of Brush Turkey Enterprises,
 
The Wilderness Garden
 
After 12 years in down town Maleny the Shaw’s are about to pull up roots, go rural and move a few kilometres west to Reesville. Surprisingly in moving from town to the country, what we will miss most (for a year or so – until our plantings develop) is the abundant wildlife we share our lives with.
 
In those 12 years we have packed our small 800m² block with as many native plants as physically possible and reduced the lawn to a few metres square. We have reached a stage where we share our little piece of paradise with an awesome variety of local wildlife.  
 
In the shed tucked up on the rafters on a cool day is our friendly Carpet Python Morelia spilota variegata and a Common Bearded Dragon Pogona barbarata affectionately known as “Billy” has shared his life with us in our front yard for almost 2 years. Yellow Faced Whip Snakes Demansia psammophis hunt for a variety skinks amongst the rock walls. A family of Pale-headed Rosellas Platycercus adscitus call here “home”; the nest boxes a mere 5 metres from our kitchen window. Black Possums Trichosurus caninus and Ringtail Possums Pseudocheirus peregrinus bounce across the roof on moonlit nights, Grey Headed Flying Foxes Pteropus poliocephalus raid the bananas and of course there’s always the Brush Turkeys Alectura lathami, magnificent megapodes that are around every corner. There are Red-brow Finches Neochmia temporalis raiding our bamboo grass for their nests in the Davidson Plums and there are Spangled Drongos Dicurus bracteatus clearing Citrus Bugs off the Finger Limes and so many more….
 
Our garden has been proof that you can live in town and still be surrounded by wildlife. If diversity is the spice of life, I guess you could say our garden is a curry, and it’s very tasty.
 
When we moved into our place in Maleny 12 years ago the front garden struggled to grow grass and had a spindly assortment of azaleas and exotic bulbs. Now our front garden is totally wild, with a complex range of native plants from groundcovers, ferns and grasses to shrubs, vines and small trees. One spectacular wildlife attracter has been our Native Elderberry Sambucus australasica. This plant fruits most of the year attracting a range of small fruit eating birds – but the Lewins Honeyeater Meliphaga lewinii just can’t stay away. Muttonwood Rapanea variabilis is also another great bird feeder even though it only fruits for 4-6 weeks in summer and the Cat Birds Ailuroedus crassirostris and Bower Birds Ptilonorhynchus violaceus can’t resist them if they’re in the area.
 
However, too many people will panic when they see a wild garden. That sense of order that we impose on the landscape around us (so as to override the inadequacies of the modern human psyche)  is rampant. It is evident in the vast expanses of lawn and the waves of exotic plants that we flood the landscape with. It is also evident in the fear of all things making their own living in our territory, whether they have feathers, scales or fur.
Cats, dogs and birds in cages are just fine but a possum raiding your fruit tree, a brushturkey scratching up your mulch, or a carpet python keeping down the rat population are just too much for the many of us. This is ‘our’ space and we think we must remain in control and tolerate no free loaders.
The extremes to which some individuals will go to, to maintain this sense of order and dominance over ‘their’ backyard would make your average fascist grimace with inadequacy. Recently in our area, maimed Brush Turkeys have been appearing, with partial or complete beaks missing. After pondering the situation and speculating some disease of the beak, it appears now that someone in our neighbourhood, driven to distraction by the Brush Turkeys propensity to scratch up mulch, decided to take the law into their own hands and set steel jaw traps with food as bait! Steel jaw traps may result in a quick death if all goes right (but rarely does), but what if a possum, bandicoot, dog, cat or a child steps on one – the consequences don’t bear thinking about ! Two things the individual who set these traps had some problems with – a) thinking and b) understanding consequences.
Nature is abundant – when given half a chance. Diverse ecosystems are crucial to our very survival. Our lives can be enriched by sharing ‘our’ territory with our local wildlife.
Plant local grasses in your garden and think before spreading the Rat poison, plant local shrubs in your garden and think before you spray insecticide over your favourite exotic, plant local trees in your garden and calmly rake that mulch back onto the garden that the bl…dy Brush Turkey scratched up! Human life and nature’s abundance are not mutually exclusive, we can work together.