Australia the Beautiful - Deserts and Wetlands

Australia land of extremes often hostile endlessly in charting from the red Center where barren deserts bloom to mysterious Lake air a ghost that comes and goes from the Flinders Ranges where nature brook settlers hearts to Kakadu and the monsoons dazzling explosion of life these are wonders to behold these are riches of deserts and wetlands looming from the red heart of Australia uluru the great monolith a freak of nature revered by both indigenous and non-indigenous Australians alike a cluster of sibling formations juts from the horizon within sight of uluru once called the olgas these blushing domes now go by their Aboriginal name carter tjuta together these rocks are the focus of the world heritage-listed uluru-kata tjuta national park covering more than 1,300 square kilometres this most conspicuous of landmarks was named ayers rock by European explorers it's so significant to the Aborigines that its original name uluru has been restored it's a towering presence in the flat landscape nearly 350 metres high 3 kilometers long and up to 2 kilometers wide yet what you see is merely the tip of the iceberg the rest of the rock is varied as much as six kilometers underground originally Uluru was created under an ancient Inland Sea a sediment was deposited in horizontal layers violent earth movements pushed the rock upwards the original layers becoming the vertical ribs seen today the unangan people have they're dreaming or creation stories to explain shapes in the rock the pock marks were left by the Spears of poisonous snake men and the cracks were made by an enraged Python woman striking out at her enemies kata juta is also a highly sacred place to the Aborigines it was once a single land form until an ancient upheaval opened up joints which eventually eroded away to form gorges today the 36 domes of kata Tjuta stand alongside guru as geological monuments in a vast sandy desert eons of weathering and leaching of nutrients has left the desert soils impoverished in a place characterized not by abundance but by diversity only the most specialized plants and animals endure Hardy desert survivors scour the landscape for scarce food and water red kangaroos the great desert nomads travel far in search of grass that grows after storms birds like zebra finches are quick to locate pools filled by rain una Rouge caves provide shelter from the heat for masked wood swallows in the cool of the morning they come out into the open to search for insects by drinking on the wing they avoid attack from predators like snakes the caves also offer protection from birds of prey for desert animals the search for a meal is constant a Death Adder homes in on a skink a Kestrel has spotted it too where food is scarce its first in first served animals plants the earth itself all our fundamental parts of the australian aborigines universe this precious tribal knowledge has been passed down through generations of central desert people through storytelling traditionally one of the most important ways was through rock art now paint and canvas is the medium for telling the timeless stories of the Dreaming central desert Aborigine Johnny possum Chapel Jerry captures this world meandering lines are a common motif in Aboriginal painting often representing journeys of ancestral beings journeys that leave telltale tracks another frequent symbol in their art in Aboriginal custom a man cannot paint another man's dream time story Chapel Jerry is the keeper of the ring tailed possum story the faintest of prints in the sand are like words on a page to the desert people Angra Levitas kangaroo tracks are the signatures of the animals revealing what made them when they were made and where the animals are likely to be hiding Chappell Gerry lines the journey path of the opossum ancestor with decorative dots much of the landscape dot painting of the central deserts is in the style of a map viewed from above showing the tracks rocks creeks and plant life jebel jari completes his painting by depicting a desert blooming after rains at such times gravel use and desert roses decorate the sand dunes with splashes of color rain in the desert brings a breath of cool fresh air and plants and animals are quick to respond beautiful desert Oaks bloom attracting many birds such as honey eaters that feed and nest in their branches red kangaroos make the most of the new grass and for them rain and plentiful food is the signal to begin breeding far from the confines of the pet shop wild budgerigar start breeding in enormous colonies as soon as there is water and grass seed about they sweep across the plains in their hundreds of thousands one of Australia's most spectacular wildlife displays after rain uh LaRue is like an island oasis in a sea of sand in the cool shadows pools of water linger sustaining both animals and plants another oasis of the red Center is the spectacular Kings Canyon it's part of what our National Park to the north of Uluru sheer walls plunging more than a hundred meters were formed when the massive sandstone ranged split away at a vertical joint the resulting Canyon became a time capsule of rare ancient plants that existed across Central Australia millions of years ago under the protective shade of the cliffs more than 50 rare plants survive around the waterholes here the MacDonnell ranges cycad grows a primitive plant from a far wetter past one that you would expect to find in a forest not a desert temperatures in the interior can soar to 50 degrees Celsius while the blistering heat is debilitating for most creatures that's not so for the reptiles since they depend on warmth to drive their metabolism and movement this is truly the land of the lizard there are more lizards here than anywhere else in the world most obtain all the moisture they need from their prey in times of drought meals can be few and far between but insect eaters like the thorny devil are really without supplies in the heat of the day a hunter scavenger prowls the low desert scrub tasting the air with its tongue for any scent of prey either dead or alive the Parenti is Australia's largest lizard it can grow to more than two and a half meters but most desert lizards are finger size making them bite-sized for another creature a relative newcomer to the desert it's a formidable indiscriminate predator the feral cat although they're not native millions of domestic cats now call Australia home feral cats have a devastating impact on native wildlife biologist Rachel poultry is finding out why she's particularly interested in learning how the common cat can possibly survive in the 10 mi one of Australia's most hostile deserts wild cats are highly elusive and Rachel's challenge has been finding any at all she enlisted the help of local aborigines skilled in desert tracking cats are not adapted to long-distance running they actually tire out quite quickly this is how Aboriginal people are able to capture cats initially following their tracks then flushing the cat out there's no way that I'd be able to capture cats without the help of the Aboriginal women so that cats can be located and their pattern of movement followed each is fitted with a radio transmitter next day rachel picks up signals from kilometers away aboriginal trackers can interpret from its tracks where it's gone and exactly how far it's traveled how many times its pounced on prey what it's eaten how many times it's sat down what's happened when it's met other cats pretty well everything that's happened rachel's work has revealed how cats survive in the desert like their reptile prey they can live on just the moisture in their food and don't need to drink the more we understand about the behavior of feral cats the greater will be our chances of counteracting them the success of the cat threatens many native species with extinction most at risk is the malla or rufus hare wallaby fewer than 400 remain on mainland Australia their only hope is to be protected in fenced enclosures until cats are controlled it's hoped that one day these rare animals will reclaim their rightful place in the dry sandy expanse of the red cinder Uluru not a lonely sentinel in a harsh barren land but an integral part of a dynamic desert environment together the rocks and wildlife of the red centre create a rich and extraordinary landscape alive with the spirit of the dreaming billabong a word as sweet as water to a thirsty man brimming Billabong's and flowing creeks were life itself too early pastoralists the inland of South Australia this is how it looks in a good season back in the early 1850s similar conditions encouraged pioneer settlers to venture inland pushing their sheep further and further north they reached the fenders ranges what they found here excited them they settled build their homes and began to live off the sheep's back the pastoralists were not to know that this seductive land also had a dark side the Flinders Ranges stretch for 420 kilometers and embrace three national parks they're only a thousand meters high but said against endless flat plains they have a majesty all of their own the Rangers present a dramatic contrast to the continents parched interior emus thrive in the valley woodlands living off grasses and shrubs echidnas fossick france and termites among the leaf litter lizards soak in the Sun ever weary of birds of prey a kite rests in a gum tree between hunting forays the stately river red gum is a symbol of the Flinders Ranges it's elegant form graces the river banks and creek lines hundreds of years old the gums have endured the ravages of countless floods droughts and fires they're abiding spirit is best captured in Harold Kaz knows famous photograph of 1937 titled the spirit of endurance the same tree still stands here today it's the high walls of the Flinders that make possible an abundance of life in this arid region they deflect moist warm air upwards where it cools condenses and falls as rain nowhere is the effect more striking than in wilpena pound it was once a deep valley enclosed by high mountains now it's eroded to a vast Basin some 11 kilometers long like a fortress it holds back the relentless march of the desert outside its ramparts the land is dry and dusty but inside lush grasses and forests flourish when settlers first arrived at the Flinders Ranges there had been long periods of good rain and feed was plentiful the circular walls of the pound made it the ideal grazing run their flocks soon thrived there were entire forests of cypress pine for building and fencing stone was plentiful and houses could be built easily but all was not rosy with rain the grass grew but so too did introduced weeds the salvation Jane or Patterson's curse that painted the hills with color was potentially poisonous to stock was still from 1864 to 1866 not a drop of rain fell sheep and cattle perished many runs were deserted as settlers fled back to the coast to places where rainfall was more reliable while the red gum endured the will of the settlers collapsed along with their dwellings the stone ruins a testament to a pioneering spirit that fought against unbeatable odds elsewhere a reminder that human habitation in the flinders was a very recent event indeed in brash Nagor j-- there are rocks which tell a story of another age here there's a fossil legacy from 500 million years ago at that time the Flinders were flooded by sea and only the most primitive life forms existed these beautiful patterns were once living corals that inhabited shallow waters when the only life on land was bacteria as well as barring treasure from the distant past the rocks of the Flinders are home to a living treasure the yellow footed rock wallaby they are nimble fast and able to leap up and down rock faces with ease the rock wallabies share the cliffs with the witch tailed eagle Australia's largest bird of prey its wings span more than two meters the Eagles powerful talons can exert more than two tons of crushing weight the yellow foots young stay hidden among the rocks when danger lurks human hunters have posed a much greater threat to the Wallaby highly prized for its soft gold coat the animal was shot to the brink of extinction today with the protection of national parks yellow foot numbers have bounced back and their future looks bright after two centuries of European settlement in Australia we now understand much more about this land and the vagaries of its seasons we know that the true bounty of the Flinders Ranges lies not in farming but in its natural heritage the clock has been wound back to a time before grazing and the Flinders Ranges have been returned to nature for safekeeping ghost leaks that's what Australia's inland lakes are sometimes called and like ghosts they disappear into thin air most of the time they just dry salt pans for three or four times each century rivers flood with drenching rains that have fallen thousands of kilometres away the water eventually makes its way to the lowest point of the continent 15 meters below sea level this is Lake Eyre the largest salt lake in Australia it covers more than 13,000 square kilometers the floodwaters have swept billions of fish along with them and the lake bursts into life mysteriously pelicans arrive in tens of thousands from thousands of kilometers away how on earth do they know that the lake is filling one theory is that they can sense far distant storms but the mystery remains wildlife cameraman Lindsay Cooper is fascinated by pelicans and their nomadic life the best way of getting around on the shallow lake is by hovercraft arrogance probably 10 years since I first thought about making a Pelican film I think it was probably my my first visit to like here when I first saw them breathing back in 1990 30 what you know what a magic story he's been to lake eyre many times since and has captured wonderful images of these birds and their behavior Lindsay lived alongside a colony of pelicans on an island for so long that they came to accept him and his hide as part of the scenery pelicans breed as fast as they can while their new food supply is plentiful in times of widespread flooding a hundred thousand birds have been known to breed here nesting on islands in the lake even in years of minor floods when small lakes form it's an important breeding ground for a number of different species so important that Lake Eyre was declared a national park it's one of the few places where the rare banded stilt breathe Caspian turns are also visitors to Lake Eyre where they nurture their young in large colonies while one pelican parent minds the family the other will go off fishing sometimes traveling as far as a hundred kilometres to find a good spot with their heavy cargo of fresh fish on board they skim low to the ground on the Homewood flight it's really fascinating watching pelicans feed their chicks small chicks pick their parents beak to prompt them to regurgitate little fish into the nest larger chicks have more demanding they actually delve their heads right deep into their parents gullet parent bubble will let them feed but obviously when she's run out of fish she's got to force the chick to get out of her gullet but then the chick feels he hasn't had enough and just goes in this it's like a real mental sort of convulsion and it flaps around and sort of squawks and pecks itself on the wing and just goes absolutely berserk you think the poor thing is absolutely dying but after a while and when it gets no attention it gets up and walks away again when like--are dries up the pelicans run out of food all the fish are gone and their chicks starve we make a valiant effort to keep them alive but in the end I've got to just abandon them and return to the coast eventually the last of the pelicans will fly from Lake Eyre what water remains will soak into the desert sands and the pelicans will find another Waterworld far from this ghostly far away in Australia's tropical north is a much wetter place here pelicans join thousands millions of other water birds this is the renowned kakadu national park for water birds of Australia's top end the threat of drought is rare but there is a threat from the animal at the top of the food chain the Australians saltwater crocodile is the largest reptile on earth all lo Lieh creatures are nervous in its presence kakadu is the kingdom of the crocodile covering nearly 20,000 square kilometres kakadu is Australia's largest national park and a world heritage area it stretches from the coast through river plains to the Arnhem Land escarpment 140 million years ago it's believed that much of Kakadu lay submerged beneath the shallow sea the sandstone escarpment we see today would once have been sea cliffs these spectacular rocks rise more than 300 meters above the plains and stretch for more than 500 kilometers it's a contradictory land of dry tropics and monsoonal flooding bursting with a rich and unique life as many as 1700 plant species flourish here and more than a third of all Australia's bird species this garden of eden' is home to more than 50 types of mammals and over a hundred and twenty reptiles from the meek to the mighty in the wet when the monsoonal rains come this great National Park laws into Waterfalls add their runoff to rivers that become a vast floodplain spreading to the sea the floodplains have settled at many different levels during the advance and retreat of the Ice Ages the Aboriginal people of kakadu have lived through at least 40,000 years of these dramatic changes it's the longest continuing surviving human culture in the world and it's left us with some of the oldest art galleries on earth painted more than 20,000 years ago there are more than 5,000 sites in kakadu surely the biggest rock art gallery in the world in the distant past kakadu was a very different place much of it was open savanna where Aborigines hunted kangaroos in those times the Tasmanian Tiger would also have stalked kangaroos but it became extinct here about 4000 years ago a rock painting of the tiger at obeah is at least that old by the end of the Ice Age 8,000 years ago sea levels had flooded the lowlands all the way to the escarpment then fish became the main game turtles - were depicted in the rock art and one of special significance the existence of the pig-nosed turtle in Australia was unknown to science until its discovery in 1968 ironically Aborigines have always been aware of its existence this ochre image reveals it's been here for thousands of years at nourlangie rock there is a famous gallery that tells of a creation ancestor nammar gong or lightning man who conjures up the violent storms that occur every wet season with the axes on his head elbows and feet he splits the dark clouds asunder nearby is the margins wife and his children the kakadu galleries also contain a more recent story about the arrival of Europeans with their gums below the stone country of the escarpment sprawls kakadu 'he's most common vegetation tropical wood land here some eye-catching characters hang about the frill-necked lizard is usually a mild mannered creature but when danger looms he undergoes a dramatic personality change he puffs up his fiery frill pretending to be larger-than-life stiff rods of cartilage connected to muscles in the tongue and jaw raised the frill but if a predator is not intimidated by this display the frill neck resorts to his final ploy retreat also living in the woodland is the top ends largest kangaroo the end till a pine Wallaroo over the dry season she survived on a meager diet of roots and tree bark but with the bad times behind her she will soon be anxious to breed again as more and more water tumbles off the escarpment rivers overflow to flood the low country in the north these wetlands are kakadu x' most famous sprawling across two and a half thousand square kilometers this is what people from all over the world come to see monsoon water plants and heat together they act as a perpetual solar engine of life everything gathers to make the most of the opportunities to feed and breed seeds that have lain dormant in dry mud rapidly sprout attracting magpie geese back to the floodplain after months of struggling to find food they now gorge themselves on the new growth of aquatic plants but at all times they need to maintain a wary eye the geese are joined by elegant Brogan's these birds are famed for their language dance steps fish trapped in shrinking Billabong's over the dry season spread out through the floodplain and multiply they're jumping catches the attention of a pair of white breasted sea eagles and a black nape to turn with appetites satisfied the magpie geese turn their attention to sex lovers quarrels break out as they prepare to mate and nest you at the edges of the wetland the frenetic activity is replaced by the peaceful pace of life in the paperbark swamp you breaking the stillness is a busy forest Kingfisher with young beaks to feed rather than building their own nests these birds have taken over one built by termites evicting the tenants and making it their family home agile Wallabies are also enjoying the growth of the wet season here in the forest they can relax the vegetation providing cover from predators like dingos the monsoon season has reached its peak and now the floodwaters begin to recede Lotus lilies reach full bloom and their sweet perfume is irresistible to insects as they go from plant to plant spreading pollen they assure the future of their favorite food source more than 10,000 insect species live in kakadu but as always a beast lurks amid the beauty of kakadu one that has stood the test of time surviving virtually unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs the saltwater crocodile can grow to more than five meters and live for up to a hundred years at this time of year water birds like the Egret are dependent on the floodplain to feed and find a mate crocodiles need only patrol the shores to find their next meal they are the masters of ambush once they have targeted their prey they disappear with barely a ripple any unwary bird is likely to end up on the crocodiles menu in kakadu the dramatic cycle of life and death is inevitable but as fearsome as the crocodile is it's as dependent as any other creature on the lifeblood of kakadu water for as long as monsoonal rains urban flow kakadu national park will remain the kingdom of the crocodile and a sanctuary for some of the most exquisite life forms on the planet you you

Channel: Questar Entertainment

Views: 128,653

Rating: 4.7270341 out of 5

Keywords: Questar, Australia, Australia the Beautiful, Australian Wetlands, deserts of Australia, wetlands of Australia, Australian Deserts, forests of Australia, canyons of Australia, King's Canyon Australia, King's Canyon, Flinders Ranges, Lake Eyre, water birds, Kakadu, waterfalls, Aboriginal, Aboriginals, Aboriginal art, Aboriginal rock art

Id: EPKSDwXxWAY

Length: 56min 39sec (3399 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 12 2016