Schouten Island shenanigans!
From the north and the south they travelled to this iconic, much visited National Park. But they did not come to gaze in awe at the granite mountains, nor the white sands, blue waters or eagles soaring effortlessly overhead. No, they came to work. Well, every now and again one or two could be seen straightening their backs and looking at the water or up to Bear Hill.
I suspect that knowing they were in paradise meant that they renewed their efforts to keep it beautiful. How else could they have searched for, pulled or cut and pasted 11,879 gorse plants, stopped the march of the sea spurge by pulling out all 4 plants on the island, attacked blackberries around the historic sheep dip, sprayed 200 litres of herbicide on the periwinkle as well as moving the solarisation plot and hand digging out other pesky patches of periwinkle, and combing the beaches clearing up rubbish.
If that does not impress you, it should, after all there were only 8 of them and they did have to knock off sometime to go for a swim, or climb a mountain or check for insect bites. They took their new solar powered kit down with them (thanks to Wildcare Inc.). I’m told that it works a treat seeing as how the sun always shines over there.
I suspect that there were tears shed as they left the island and traversed the calm blue waters of Schouten Passage. I understand that many of them want to come back (of course), so if you, dear reader, want to kick them off the next trip and do as well as they did, keep looking on the Wildcare website for details of the next trip. I met someone at the pub who knew a friend of one of them who overheard that there was going to be another trip in December.
They were; Ian and Joan Fitzallen, Sally Salier, Nigel Ricketts, David and Trauti Reynolds and Dave and Christine Harris.
P.S. I have just learnt that they walked up and down the Wineglass Bay Lookout track picking up rubbish whilst they waited for the boat to the island. Talk about committed.
From a roving correspondent
Schouten Island – 24th February to 10th March