WILD Blog 03

Is That Summer Outside?

I’ve recently been reading a book called Incredible Journeys by David Barrie. I’ve also noticed that since September this year, I feel like I can count the sunny days of Strahan on one hand!

This is an exaggeration, of course. I actually believe I could count the sunny days on two hands. We are pushing on as always, however, and are so excited by our keen guests and friends who come out on our tours whatever the weather. It is, after all, why the tour has ‘adventure’ in the name!

Now that the unusually wet weather is easing off, and things are starting to change, I’ve found myself asking a question- how does the local wildlife follow the seasons?

Well first of all, we have to accept that they don’t. Not in our sense of the word anyway. Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter don’t mean anything to Tasmanian animals. Their perception of the seasons doesn’t come from flipping a calendar, it comes from change. Primarily;

-Change in the environment around them (weather, day length, polarisation)

-Change in food sources (flowers, new leaf growth, wildlife migration)

-Internal change such as hormones and circadian rhythms (which can be dictated by the above two points).

If you’d like to flash around a fancy word, try ‘photoperiod’. It’s a fancy way of saying day length, and sounds a lot cooler. Marsupials recognise this part of life and, so do you. Changes in photoperiod can trigger bodily responses such as hormone change (think shedding fur or growing a thicker coat) and can encourage an animal to seek new lands or food sources though migration. It’s also the reason why adding our tours to the calendar six months in advance is an extremely calculated and long process- as we time every tour with the changing sunsets!

As the cold weather continues, so does an animal’s rest period. Have you ever wanted to sleep in on a cold, dark morning? Of course you have! Unfortunately for us humans our parents call that laziness. Marsupials do the same thing, but they get away with it by calling it ‘torpidity’. It’s a survival strategy when resources are poor. So next time you sleep in, don’t be so hard on yourself and remember your pygmy possum cousins.

And then there’s the rain. Ongoing rain may prevent a possum species from becoming active, as it dulls flowering on plants such as banksias. On the other hand, it may encourage another species and boost population survival (WILD Blog 02 mentions frogs). This is just scratching the surface- wet ground makes roots easier to access, or harder, depending on the plant, burrows may strengthen or collapse in hot weather, insects may pop out of the ground- if you can imagine it, it probably happens. It gets even cooler though…. Ever heard of infrasound? My Grandma always used to say if you see the cows lying down it means rain is coming. I’ve never really tested that hypothesis but it has some truth to it- certain animals can sense weather events before we have any idea they’re about to happen. Bird migration, an elephant seeking shelter, a whale navigating the open ocean, these can be aided by infrasound – sound not detected by human ears, caused by vibrations, distant storms, volcanoes and even human made machines. Though not usually relating to long term seasonal change, it’s an example of weather and natural events dictating the daily decisions of wildlife.

So, here we are wondering where spring went. Has it started, did it happen, will it happen, or are we now in summer? During an era of unpredictability and climate change, maybe it’s time we stopped looking at the calendar for help.

Next time you’re in the garden or out on a walk, take note of the flowers, the smells, the birds that are around. Are the possums in that tree in your garden again? Is that blackwood dropping it’s leaves, have the tea trees got that wonderful shine to them? I mean, literally take note, write it down and then next year see if it’s the same. The more you observe the more you might notice, nature tends to know exactly what it’s doing and it may be best to trust it over your calendar (even if it has pretty pictures and fills a great space on your kitchen wall).

What I’m saying is, if it’s mid spring Saturday and it just hailed outside, channel your inner pygmy possum and have a lie in.    Here's a photo of a cute pademelon.

Josh Selby, 16/12/2025

WILD Blog 02

A New Season Our first season of the Night Walk Adventure saw people from all over the world experience the wonders of the Ocean Beach Conservation area with Whitmore’s Wild. That’s a fair chunk of people who gained valuable knowledge and experience to take with them on the rest of their travels around Tasmania and beyond.

One of our favourite outcomes from a tour is when guests contact us later on in their adventures. They might say they managed to identify a bettong bouncing by their caravan at St Helens, or how they noticed some Tasmanian devil poo on the trail near their house up North, or just that they had so much fun for the rest of their holiday having a few minutes before bed seeing what was in the field by their hut.

As always, the animals in the Conservation Area are wild and free to roam and pass by us as they please. We can never guarantee wildlife sightings, but what we can guarantee is that it’s just as exciting to become equipped with the skills to sight wildlife wherever you go, and to learn these skills whilst in the natural environment of those incredibly unique animals.

It is very rare to see a wild Tasmanian Devil whilst out on foot, but to be in a place special enough to show signs of their habitat, to know they are out there in the darkness, to pass through their land respectfully knowing that they are thriving all around us on the trail- that never fails to give us goosebumps.

As we continue into our second season, we’re more excited than ever to share this special part of the world. We’re excited that our guests are braving the west coast weather, and we’re all embracing it to see how the wildlife behaves differently.

As of November, it’s been a particularly rainy spring! But what does this mean for the fauna of Strahan? Well, one example on the nightwalk is that we can note more success in frog species survival- puddles that have usually dried up by now are thriving with hundreds of tadpoles of various species, and we can also note an entirely new marsh that we hadn’t seen near the trail for the previous years - which after surveying we have found to be home to a whopping six species of frogs, based on their calls. Have a listen to their concert below!

Just to name a few other sightings; we saw our first wandering trapdoor spider of the season this week, recently caught a glimpse of the first ever spotted tail quoll seen on tour, have witnessed the shearwaters returning to their burrows, and have had amazing views of microbats feasting on the moths that are out above the path.

As we continue into December, what’s next as the rain passes, the sun comes out and the daylight lingers even longer?

As always, it’s up to the wild to decide that. We’re just here for the show.

Josh Selby, 27/11/2025

WILD Blog 01

The Beginning.

October 2023. We arrived in Strahan, Tasmania, neither of us having ever been here before. We had done a bit of research on the town, seen it on a map and thought 'Wilderness Area.. that sounds cool. I wonder if you can go there?'. Having found jobs in tourism in the area, we came with open minds and didn't really consider how long we'd want to stay.

We had both spent time in Tasmania before and loved it enough to want to come back. However, at that point we had never seen a Tasmanian devil in the wild. Naturally, this was one of the first things we set out to do.

Over the next few weeks, about three nights per week, we drove out towards Macquarie Heads, parked by the side of the road and waited. Sometimes we'd call it at 10pm, sometimes we'd wake up in the car at 2am. We did our best to be sensible as we both had full time jobs, but despite the lack of sightings we persevered. We also learnt to find other traces of devil activity such as footprints, burrows and poo. The latter of which is quite distinctive and, if you've been out on the Night Walk Adventure, you know it gets us pretty excited.

One night, we came across a pademelon that appeared sadly to have been hit by a car. Someone had already moved it to the side of the road (if safe, the best thing to do to protect further wildlife incidents from occurring), and although tragic we decided this was a good spot to wait for a Devil to show up- they are after all attracted to the smell of carrion and feed on dead animals. Once again, no sightings, despite how quiet and still we were- though we did hear a nig rustle in the bushes. We headed off to bed and to work the next day.

The following evening we returned to the same spot, and something interesting had happened; the pademelon had moved. It didn't take much searching to find that just a few metres away were the remains of the pademelon. Without going into too much detail.. there wasn't much of it left (to say the least). There's only one animal in Tasmania that can chew through solid bone, fur and flesh and leave nothing behind. Kaylee and I had an exciting realisation - right there, where we were both standing, had been a Tasmanian Devil just hours earlier. Maybe even more than one. This meant that there were, in fact, devils in the Ocean Beach Conservation Area. We were pretty starstruck.

Months later on Christmas eve during one of our outings, we had once again fallen asleep in our car. I woke up at around 1:30am, having dreamt that a devil had walked past and we missed it. I turned on the car headlights and couldn't believe my eyes: a Tasmanian devil stood right in front of our car. I woke Kaylee up, who looked out and saw him too. Honestly, if it was just me that saw him, I would have thought it was a dream. We were so fascinated that we didn't touch one of our four cameras we had brought along, and enjoyed the moment.

We watched as this brilliant animal stood quite still before raising his nose, picking up a scent, and following it into the darkness with that awkward but graceful trot. To this day, he is the largest Tasmanian devil we have ever seen, both in conservation and in the wild, and we named him Big Nick, on account of us first seeing him on Christmas Day. We later captured him on a trail cam, which you can see below.

It wasn't long after this that Kaylee came home one day and said 'I have an idea. We should do a night walk in Strahan.' A lot of application, planning and hard work followed; an entire years worth, in fact.

One Year later, on New Years Eve 2024, along with three dedicated guests, Whitmore's Wild ran it's first ever Night Walk Adventure on the Ocean Beach Trail.

In the four months that followed, over 160 guests went out on the trail with Kaylee on the Night Walk Adventure, and their feedback led to Whitmore's Wild becoming a People's Choice Finalist in the 2025 Tasmanian Tourism awards.

Above all we hope that those guests went on to look at the wild differently; whether it be in Tasmania, the bush back home, their local city park or the back garden, our aim is to show that there is wonder in every forest, every open plain and every nook and cranny of this natural world that we are all part of. We are showing you our wild, but yours is there too, right where you live. It can be there to appreciate, respect and care for forever. At the end of the day, we just want other people to get as excited about devil poo as we do!

Second season starts on October 21st- we can't wait to see you out there.

Josh Selby, 07/10/2025