Ross Garden said he spotted his first wombat just before disembarking from the ferry, limping across a dusty road just a few meters away.
This compact, furry mower, about the size of a pit bull and with a slow waddle, was clearly in search of fresh grass, but I’d like to think it came out specifically to greet me.
Where is Maria Island?
We just arrived at Maria Island, 115km away.2 After a 30-minute sail through the Mercury Channel, we arrived at a forested rock formation off Tasmania’s east coast. Follow in the footsteps of the indigenous people who regularly crossed the island by canoe. ukrawiwayna I had just 24 hours to explore an ecosystem that has flourished for millennia and what naturalists call ‘Australia’s best example of Noah’s Ark’.
Maria Island is home to countless creatures, but what I really wanted to see were wombats. And as it turns out, it wasn’t at all difficult.
On the short walk from the ferry port to the long-abandoned accommodation in Darlington Township, I passed several females, including one with a joey, all of whom were grazing peacefully and seemed unperturbed by my presence.
Wombats were primarily solitary animals (known as “wisdom” when in groups), and their well-spaced positions in the vast surrounding grasslands appeared to have been carefully orchestrated.
wombat on maria island
These are the Flinders Island wombats, a subspecies of the common wombat that is abundant throughout Tasmania and parts of mainland south-east Australia. There are two other species. One is the Southern Hairynose, which is found in areas of south-central Australia. The other is the northern hairy nose, which is restricted to two locations in Queensland. With only a few hundred individuals left, the latter is now considered one of the rarest land mammals on Earth.
Australia is home to many small and interesting marsupials, but the wombat is one of the most familiar. They are not small, weighing up to 40 kg, but they would have dwarfed their giant ancestors. Diprotodon chooseslived during the Pleistocene and finally became extinct about 12,000 years ago.
The giant wombat, as it is known, is considered to be the largest extant marsupial, growing to 1.8 meters at the shoulder and 4 meters in body length, and weighing almost 3 tons.
Wombats have “the scariest butts in the world”.
Modern wombats have some strange characteristics. First, they are known to pass stools in cubes, as many as 100 pieces a night. These deposits, stacked in a manner reminiscent of stone balances, are used to mark territory and attract the opposite sex. Second, wombats have “the scariest butts in the world.”
Composed of thick bony plates that act as armor and have few nerves, its back is used to slam the skull of a predator against the roof of its burrow. Third, they have continuously growing teeth and are adapted to a herbivore diet of grasses, shrub roots, and tree bark. In fact, there’s a lot to love about these charismatic and trusting animals who have become so at home on Maria Island over the past 60 years.
Maria Island History
But Maria Island wasn’t always an oasis of the wild. It served as a base for whalers and sealers in the early 1800s, and as a penal colony from 1825 to 1850. The island was chosen for such a service due to the rich natural resources available through convict labor and the island’s location, 4 km from the mainland.
But for prisoners building rafts, the expanse of water proved to be little deterrent. Maria Island soon became notorious for its frequent escapes, and although it ceased to be a convict settlement in 1832, it continued as a probation office until 1850. It was also home to fishing and farming communities at various times in its history, and even a cement factory built to process the island’s rich limestone deposits.
Currently, apart from a few park rangers and a growing number of tourists visiting Malia, the island has no residents. The buildings were left to crumble and the prison ruins are now a World Heritage Site, but the barracks have been converted into bunkhouse accommodation.
Maria Island’s natural features once made it suitable as a penal colony, making it an ideal sanctuary for endangered species. So in the 1960s, efforts began to increase the island’s diversity.
The native pademelon, a species best described as a smaller version of the wallaby and whose native Australian name means ‘little kangaroo of the forest’, has been joined by the forester (gray) kangaroo, Bennett’s wallaby, bushtail possum, Cape barren goose and, of course, the wombat. These dramatic conservation measures earned the island national park status in 1971.
I left my bag at the bunkhouse and went for a walk, and as the sun set, the beauty of the island was exposed. I sat on the balcony of my dilapidated house, watching the island sink into darkness with wildlife all around me.
A herd of kangaroos was hopping silently across the grass, presumably for better grass to eat. Yet another wombat came very close and I could hear it munching effortlessly on the grass, occasionally looking up as if to keep an eye on me. I couldn’t help but wonder how the prisoners would have felt years later if they had had the chance to admire the wildlife that now roamed the island they were once imprisoned on.
Later, as we sat on the walkway outside the excavation site under the stars, we met another resident of Maria Island. As a zookeeper, I’m used to having my personal space invaded by animals, but seeing wild creatures passing by in the dark is an absolutely fascinating experience. I turned on my flashlight and locked eyes with a southern brown bandicoot who was staring at me. Bandicoots, mouse-like marsupials with pointy noses, are omnivorous and forage in leaf litter for fungi, plant roots, insects, and even fruit, seeds, and other plants. After determining that I was no match for a meal, the creature hopped off into the darkness.
Wombats have few natural enemies, especially on islands, but one creature that loves these marsupials has recently arrived here. In 2012, 15 Tasmanian devils were transferred to Maria Island to provide a reserve population free of devil facial tumor disease. The disease has wiped out a whopping 80 percent of the species elsewhere in its range.
Their arrival brought mixed blessings. The data suggests that while the scientists helped restore the island’s ecological balance by controlling the island’s overwhelming population of black rats, they also decimated the population of some of the island’s nesting seabirds.
Manure monitoring has shown that wombats are also part of the devil’s diet, but there is no evidence that wombats prey on adults and there has been no negative impact on Maria Island’s wombat population. There was also some positive news about the overall plight of Tasmanian devils, with the spread of facial cancer slowing in what has been described as a surprising evolutionary response.
After spending the night in the barracks, I woke up to a warm, cloudless sky. Tasmania’s east coast has a milder climate than much of mainland Australia, with average temperatures ranging from the teens to mid-20s. I hiked 7 miles to the top of Bishop and Clark Peak. At 620 meters above sea level, Bishop and Clark Peak is the second highest point on the island after Mount Maria (711 meters).
Wombats don’t seem to be early risers. When I started my walk, I didn’t see a single person. As if to make up for it, a bandicoot showed up 5 minutes into my journey. Unlike the bolder one I encountered last night, this one stayed a long distance away, maintaining its statue-like stance. Bandicoots are nocturnal, so seeing them in the early morning light can be unnerving.
As we continued to climb, the terrain quickly changed from grassland, where wombats primarily lived and thrived, to woodlands where bandicoots and pademelons became more resident, taking advantage of the additional cover provided by potential predators. We reached the top and had a breathtaking bird’s eye view.
Back in town, I sat on the balcony of an old house and had lunch. Suddenly, a mother wombat and a joey jump out from under the building next door. Like many of the ruins here, its foundations have been reused as a burrow system. In fact, wombats are the largest burrowing herbivores on Earth, using their front claws to burrow and pushing soil backwards with their hind legs and butt.
They create underground systems up to 30 meters long and several meters deep, with various entrances and exits. Burrows are used to rest, hide from predators, and keep warm in winter and cool in summer. Wombats tend to have multiple burrows and overlapping home ranges, so these homes are often shared. As a casual pair grazed right in front of me, the mother stepped away, moving effortlessly through a messy attack course of brick and ruin, and her young began a spirited trot behind her.
My 24 hours are almost over. I took one last walk around the meadow before heading to the ferry port. There, the island provided one last memorable moment. There was a mother wombat and a joey just down the road.
I’d like to think they’ll come see me off.
Ross Garden is a zookeeper at Berkshire Agricultural College and a wildlife photographer from Oxford. You can see more of his work at @rossgurdenphotography.
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