A zookeeper went to a former penal colony in Australia and found it full of adorable wombats | Find Wildlife

Ross Gurden says I hadn’t even got off the boat when I saw my first wombat, bobbing on the dusty road a few meters in front of me.

About the size of a pitbull and moving slowly, this compact, furry lawnmower was on his way to find a new pasture, but I like to think he came out to say hello specifically to me.

Where is Maria Island?

I had just arrived at Maria Island – 115km² forested reef on Tasmania’s east coast – after a 30-minute boat ride across the Mercury Passage. Following the example of the First Nations people who have been crossing the boats regularly to the island they know Wukulawiwayna for thousands of years, I had just 24 hours to explore a thriving ecosystem that naturalists call “Australia’s finest example of Noah’s Ark”.

Thousands of creatures call Maria Island their home, but it was the wombats that I really wanted to see. And, as it turned out, it would be difficult at all.

On the short walk from the ferry port to where I live in the long-abandoned Town of Darlington, I walked past several more, including females with their lone joeys, all grazing peacefully and seemingly unfazed by my presence.

Wombats live alone (groups, when they occur, are known as ‘smart’), and it was as if their positions, well separated in the area around the pastures, were carefully arranged.

The wombats of Maria Island

These were Flinders Island wombats, a subspecies of the common wombat, which is abundant throughout Tasmania and parts of southeastern Australia. There are two other types: the southern fur-fur, found in the south-central region of Australia; and the northern part of the woolly nose, ends in two places in Queensland. With only a few hundred individuals left, they are now considered one of the rarest mammals on Earth.

Australia is full of small and interesting marsupials, and the wombat is one of the most famous. Although they are now quite small, weighing 40 kilograms, they would be smaller than their ancestor. Diprotodon choosewhich roamed during the Pleistocene and finally died out about 12,000 years ago.

Giant wombats, as they were known, are thought to be the largest marsupial ever to have lived, growing up to 1.8m at the shoulder and 4m in length, and weighing up to 3 tonnes.

wombats have ‘the world’s deadliest bag’.

Modern wombats have several surprising characteristics. First, they pass cube-shaped feces, and about 100 of them can be passed out in one night. Stacked in a manner reminiscent of balancing stones, these deposits are used to mark locations and attract the opposite sex. Second, wombats have the ‘world’s deadliest stomach’.

Made of thick plates that act as armor and weak nerves, their spines are used to break the skulls of predators on the roof of their burrows. Third, they have ever-growing teeth, which is a habit for eating grass, shrub roots, and tree bark. Indeed, there is much to love about these curious and comforting animals, who have made their home on Maria Island for the past 60 years.

History of Maria Island

But Maria Island was not always a wild place. In the early 1800s, it provided a base for whalers and sealers, and from 1825-1850 it served as a penal colony. The island was chosen for such a service because of its abundant natural resources, which could be exploited through convict labor, and the island’s distance of 4km from the mainland.

However, the water did not stop any prisoner from making a raft. The island of Maria quickly became known for its frequency of escapes and ceased to be a judge in 1832, although it continued as an experimental center until 1850. Also, at different times in its history, it has hosted fishing villages and farmers, and even cement works, built to process the rich deposits of limestone on the island.

Today, apart from park rangers and tourists – who visit Maria in increasing numbers – there are no inhabitants on the island. The buildings have been left to fall into disrepair, and the ruins of the prison are now on the World Heritage List, although the houses have been converted into apartment buildings.

The natural features that once made Maria Island an ideal penal colony also made it an ideal refuge for endangered species. So, in the 1960s, efforts to increase diversity on the island began to work.

Native pademelon, a species best described as a small type of wallaby, and its Australian aboriginal name translated as ‘little bush kangaroo’, were joined by Forester (grey) kangaroos, Bennett’s wallabies, common brushtail possums, Cape baren geese and of course, common wombats. Such impressive conservation measures led to the island receiving National Park status in 1971.

I dropped my bag on the rooftop and went out for a walk, the beauty of the island was exposed as the sun set. Sitting on the balcony of a dilapidated house, I watched the island descend into darkness surrounded by wild animals.

A mob of kangaroos flew to the quiet grass, perhaps to find better pastures. However, one wombat came so close that I could hear it munching on the grass, occasionally looking up as if it was watching me. I wondered how the prisoners would have felt years later, if they had the chance to admire the wild animals that roamed the island where they were once imprisoned.

Later, while sitting on the road outside my excavation under a starry sky, I met one of the residents of Maria Island. As a zookeeper, I’m used to having my personal space invaded by animals, but a wild animal walking through the dark is a more interesting experience. Turning on my head torch, I locked eyes with a southern brown bandicoot watching me. Rat-like marsupials that sport sharp noses, bandicoots are omnivorous, foraging in leaf litter for fungi, plant roots and insects as well as fruits, seeds and other plants. After deciding that I was not something to eat, the animal jumped into the darkness.

Wombats have few natural predators, especially on the island, but one creature with a taste for these marsupials arrived here recently. In 2012, 15 Tasmanian devils were transferred to Maria Island to provide a sustainable population without devil’s disease in the face, a condition that has wiped out 80 percent of the species elsewhere.

Their arrival brought different blessings. The data suggests that they have helped to restore the ecological stability of the island by controlling the population of common brushtail possums, which are described by scientists as stressful on the island, but they have also reduced the number of other seabirds that live on the island.

Scat monitoring has found that wombats are also part of the devil’s diet, although there is no evidence that they eat adults, and there is no negative impact on the wombat population on Maria Island. There has also been good news about the plight of the Tasmanian devil in general, as the spread of facial cancer has slowed following what has been described as a surprising evolutionary response.

After spending the night in the military camp, I woke up to a warm and cloudless sky. Tasmania’s east coast has a cooler climate than most of mainland Australia, with average temperatures in the low to mid 20s. I hiked 11km to the summit of Bishop and Clerk Peak, which, at 620m above sea level, is the second highest point on the island after Mount Mary (711m).

Wombats don’t seem to wake up early. There was not a single person to be seen when I started my journey. As if to compensate, the bandicoot showed up five minutes into my journey. Unlike the brave person I met last night, this one stayed far away, still standing. Bandicoots are nocturnal, so don’t be alarmed when they appear in the morning light.

As I continued to climb, the landscape quickly changed from grasslands, where mainly wombats live and thrive, to forested areas where bandicoots and pademelons are very much at home, taking advantage of the extra cover provided by potential predators. I reached the top of the amazing, bird’s eye view.

When I returned to the township, I sat on the balcony of the old house for lunch. Suddenly, the mother wombat and joey came out from under a nearby building. Like many ruins here, its foundations have been re-planned as a system of pits. In fact, wombats are the largest herbivores in the world, digging using their front claws and pushing the soil back with their hind legs and rump.

They create underground systems 30m long and several meters deep, with different entrances. Dens are used for resting, hiding from predators, and keeping warm in winter and cool in summer. Wombats have multiple nesting burrows, so these nests are often shared. The carefree couple grazed in front of me, then the mother left, walking idly down the path of the vicious onslaught of bricks and rubble, her children scrambling behind her.

My 24 hours were almost up. I took one last walk around the meadows before heading to the marina, where the island provided one last memorable moment. Right next to the road, there was a mother and joey wombat.

I like to think they will see me.

Ross Gurden is a zookeeper at Berkshire Zoo College of Agriculture and a wildlife photographer from Oxford. You can see more of his work @rossgurdenphotography.