Chapter 3

I did explore the acacias in the morning. Digging by their roots I uncovered a number of witchety grubs with which I half-filled my hat. Logan ate one and pronounced it "fine," but it wasn't my thing. So I dry-fried the remainder and we had them for lunch. I was unlucky in my hunt for vegetable tucker. Logan said my search had been "fruitless," but I was too hot to appreciate his jokes.

In the following days he found several more frogs, but no Spencer's. The lizards were quite ordinary. The trench I dug near the acacias had revealed some termites and it looked as though some dunnarts had located them, too.

Dunnarts are furry narrow-footed marsupials the size of a mouse, members of the genus Sminthopsis. They are mainly insectivorous.There are 21 species of dunnart. Some of them are the common dunnart, white-footed dunnart, and the Darling Downs dunnart. There is also the fat-tailed dunnart. They are called the marsupial mouse and are usually 10 to 16 cm. long.

We ended up with about a dozen species of ants and three of frogs. The spinifax yielded several types of beetle, largely tenebrionids. I took seven samples. Logan thought there had been about half a dozen types of lizards, all quite common. I had hoped to see a bilbie (a type of nocturnal omnivorous marsupial. The Greater Bilby lives in arid areas of central Australia.), but didn't. Logan said he thought I grown out of looking for the Easter Bilbie.

I guess I had hoped that we would make a great, revolutionary discovery. Or, at least, a colony of Spencer's frogs. But we didn't. Dr. Challis was quite pleased. He felt that we had confirmed the presence of the spadefoot and other frogs. They showed that the lake was home to some of the vertebrates that burrowed into the mud as the water evaporated. The ants, beetles and termites supplied food for the lizards and dunnarts and the boobooks ate lizards and beetles and the occasional mouse.

"It's the day-to-day slog, boys," Dr. Challis said. "There are new species and original samples to be found. But most of the work is establishing ranges and (in the case of the Spencer's) limits. It's been a good week. And we'll all be taking long showers in Birdsville. Now, I want the area really policed. No papers. No tins. The ashes will be fine. Logan, in the morning make certain the latrine area is well-covered over. Gordy, you'll check for other litter. We won't leave here as we found it. But we'll try not to spoil it."

The vegetation of the Simpson Desert is dominated by hummocks of spiny spinifex grasses, various eucalypts, and gidgee trees, a kind of acacia. Termites feed on the spinifex grass, cutting it and transporting it underground for storage. The termites, in turn, are eaten by small mammals and a number of lizards that specialize in preying upon termites and have diets consisting of up to 99% termites. The hummocks of spinifex grass offer food, shelter, and hunting opportunities, creating one of the richest populations of arid-zone reptiles in the world, at 54 species. The desert is also home to 17 species of small mammals and, surprisingly, 4 species of frogs.