Expeditions: Northern Queensland

In July 2007, Dr. Yuriy Kuzmin of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences accompanied Vasyl and Scott to Northern Queensland. Yuriy is the project’s nematode expert. We started from Townsville and spent a very cold couple of nights in the tropical rainforests of the Atherton Tablelands. We made our way up the Cape York Peninsula to the Wenlock River, the expedition’s northern extreme. Some billabongs near the Wenlock were good to us, providing us turtles for the research and plenty of freshwater shrimp and crayfish for our bellies. This peninsular part of the trip was strangely marked by a complete absence of longnecks. Both Elseya and Emydura flocked into our traps but not a longneck was to be found.

All of that changed as we headed west along the Gulf of Carpentaria. Leichardt Lagoon outside of Normanton provided us with trap-stretching numbers of Chelodina rugosa and a stay at the guesthouse of Armraynald Station allowed us to collect both Chelodina rugosa and Chelodina canni. As we moved south the longnecks disappeared again, though we had great luck trapping Elseya latisternum in the Einasleigh River and Cobbold Gorge, where we were treated to some spectacular scenery.

We returned to Townsville and spent some time with David Blair of James Cook University. David has provided this project with support since 2004. David arranged a lab for us to dissect our turtles and uncover numerous parasites.

Not all Australian kingfishers are as big as cucaburra	Stone curlew
Vasyl pampers his feet with a mud bath	Trees in wet tropical forest are impressive
Unfortunately we did not see one	Fearsome-looking tarantula
Too many local plants are like this	Feeding cockatoo
Australian eel grows large	A large spider climbed up Yuriy's shoulder during our late dinner by the fire
Fresh from the tree!	A field solution to a microscopic problem
Catching some sun (remember, it is winter!)	Sunrise
At the end of a long day	This scene repeated twice each day
Birds find protection from predators and rain under big leaves	This is a termite country
Look out!	Black ibis
Black headed python	Australian bustrad
A glimpse of aquatic file snake Acrochordus arafurae	Scott with file snake
Vasyl with file snake	Elseya at Cobbold Gorge
Vasyl with Elseya	Gothic termites
Dinner and temnocephalans!	Nematodes under the sun
Curtain of roots	One of Australian species of carnivorous Drosera
An annoyed ant soldier	Furina ornata: beautiful, venomous, but not very dangerous
Cucaburra's trademark curious look	Winner of the croc beauty pageant
From left: Vasyl, Scott and Yuriy	The work never stops!
Trapping at Armraynald Station
One of the famous bowerbird constructions	What are you doing on my continent?
A wild koala behaves entirely like one in a zoo	Yuriy on the trail
A veiw from Magnetic Island near Townsville

Authors: Vasyl V. Tkach, Scott D. Snyder, Yuriy Kuzmin