Some views of interest from 2004 and 2005, plus a look back in the years

Then- the Bat House in 1991 - still sitting in the guinea grass that covered the property (it had been cleared in 1970 for cattle).
	The Bat House 2005 - with the novel solar 'tracker tower' which provides power for this small Wet Tropics Interpretation Centre. The vegetation has grown up in the 14 years since the 1991 image (and the Bat House is almost double its original size).
The interior of the Bat House after its recent upgrade (2005), with our resident bat in its new enclosure (mandated by EPA). The Bat House now has 12V DC compact fluoro lights supplied by the external pole mounted solar panels.
	Hilde, a Bat House volunteer from Sweden, with Rex. The slogan "GUANO HAPPENS" is our leit motiv!
Cassowaries have started to appear at the Station - here is Dad with (the rear end of) a well grown baby.
	"Big Foot" - the juvenile cassowary (whose behind can be seen in the picture above). Cassowaries are very territorial birds - the males establish the territories (and rear the babies) while the females roam from one male to another. However occasionally, as happens here, the male and female operate together to raise the chicks.
Our new laboratory. This is supplied with filtered and dehumidified air and provides a remarkably clean and fungus-free environment in the VERY wet tropics. If you look hard you can see we even have a photocopier!
	The "business" end of the new lab, with our Varian Gas Chromatograph and our ISCO-Waters HPLC. The darkroom has proved to be very useful for our electronic design work. So we are well equipped! Next door is our chemical and apparatus store, which is even drier.
Hugh's cabin in process of becoming&. Our wonderful 2004 volunteers put the wall framing and floors up, 2004 ISV team put the roof on, our excellent carpenter Steve, put the cladding on - it all takes time! (the theme song of this place!)
	2005 was very wet! - these 'bridal veil' fungi attest to that! These are members of the stinkhorn fungi, the spores are held on the brown top of the fungus, it smells like musty rotten meat - flies are attracted to the fungus and get the sticky spores on their feet - and spread it around.
2005 brought three groups of ISV (International Student Volunteers), who, as ever, performed wonderful things for the Station and the local environment. Here Jamie (inside) and Patricia (on top) - fix holes in the Bat Cage to frustrate the ever present amethystine pythons (who love bats for midnight snacks).
	One of our dreams for the Station was to put in a trail through the regeneration area adjacent the Bat House (some 10 acres) - so, in one week, ISV group 2 put in 300 meters of trail! Here Ryan (left) and Ki wheel in the 100 or so loads of gravel that covered the trail.
Nathan, from USA came to practice his engineering skills, and rebuilt the air-to-air humidity exchanger for the first laboratory that assists the dehumidifier in its operation.
	In August we had a lightning visit from Gabrielle Greeves and Julie Tessler (Daintree Rainforest Land trust (New York - www.DRLTrust.org), together with some of the Yalangi elders (Renee Sykes, David Solomon and Andrew Solomon) and a colleague Ray Rex (far right). We were able to further enthuse Julie and Gabrielle and the elders, that there were great possibilities for obtaining local land for training indigenous folk in conservation techniques.
Elder David Solomon shows a traditional spear and axe sharpening site to a group of ISV students. Having aboriginal involvement has been a great plus to the ISV program here at Austrop, and we hope that it will continue and intensify over the years.
	Guy Watts up a tree! - Guy, one of our local Wildlife rescue colleagues is also a tree "surgeon" by profession - and these two Blue Quandongs (Eleaocarpus grandis) were planted in 97 - near the toilet block and have grown like rockets&.so, sadly, they had to come down, as they posed a significant cyclone risk (and they are great limb droppers).
Decapitated and about to be dropped - Guy prepares to descend. Sad to see them go - but suddenly there was light! And the solar hot water system worked again!
	In late 2005 Adou (Adeline Menet from France - via ISAB), joined us as an intern, to work on the impact of coconuts on littoral (sea shore) vegetation . Here she prepares wood for quadrat marker stakes.......
......that she is using here to mark the quadrat boundaries on the beach......
	.......with the assistance of the Director (!!??). Unfortunately the stakes didn't stay in very long - as helpful strangers pulled them out or children used the ribbons to make beach sculptures - ah, such is field science!
The object of Adou's study was the impact of the introduced coconuts (planted since the 50's), on the native vegetation of the littoral rainforest.
	More volunteers arrived - Sandra (UK), (Jamie (UK)) and Sarah (who was a local from Cairns). So we set them to clearing a long standing mess - the removal of the insulation from the eating area ceiling
- the transformation was wonderful
	Following immediately on Adou's heels came Katelin Craven (SIT USA) who was here as a student for 1 month, to study the activity of white tailed rats (which love to eat coconuts) in the littoral forests of, yes, Coconut beach We knew they were around, as they really make a mess of traps (and coconuts) - the scrapes show the size of their teeth!
Eventually we lucked out and caught a white-tailed rat, but not after catching many melomys, and other native rats.
	Finally a white Tail!
In addition to tracking rats - Katelin surveyed the density of white-tail rat eaten coconuts on a number the beaches in the area, assisted by Naomi and Stephanie from UK. Here they are surveying coconut densities at Cowie beach, a remote beach to the north of Cape Tribulation.
	While Kaitlin was tracking her rats, this brush turkey was feeding on the remains of coconuts that we cut up for rat bait.
The rats that got away... white-tailed rat footprints in the sand at Coconut beach, photographed just after Kaitlin left - probably mother and offspring - "now, just over there your sister got caught in a trap&.."
	Rural communities throughout Australia use barbed wire for fencing - it's traditional and cheap (cheaper than ordinary wire)- and this results in many hundreds of bats (and other animals) meeting an unpleasant death impaled on barbed wire spikes. Here Hugh removes a spectacled flying fox from a barbed wire fence in the Daintree, and thanks to Cheryll's efforts, it survived to fly again..
While coconuts are the bane of our beaches (due to out-competing native vegetation, with disastrous effects on the coastline) - we don't usually try to burn them down. Here some campers on Myall beach appear to have managed to set this grove ablaze by their camp fire igniting the fallen dry fronds - I can't say we were sorry to se it happen!
	Here we have a local beach, almost totally coconut free - North Tribulation beach. We don't know why the palms have not invaded this area to the degree that they have invaded Coconut Beach and Myall Beach (but research such as that by Adou) will help us find out.
Monica Bianchi (from California) - is the latest long-term volunteer addition to the Station - Monica is a Vocational Agricultural Science Teacher - and was one of our very early volunteers (in fact she helped put the roof on the original Bat House). Monica is here for a year and is seriously savouring the possibility of making it a permanent move.
	Jamie Lloyd and Daryl Eisenbath were here in November - Daryl beat the land speed record for shovelling road soil - and as a result of his efforts we now have a bog-free main drive into the Station (in 2004/2005 it was "pot-hole city"). Jamie and Daryl are shown here with the frame of the new baby flying fox cage.
In early December 2005, we hosted a TAFE (Technical and Further Education) group of local Aboriginals, who came up to the Station to learn about the use of Herbicides and pesticides and gain an AC/DC certificate (Agricultural Chemical Dispersion and ,,,, course. Here TAFE Instructor Vito Musumeci teaches the group the fine points about using oils in spraying.
	before you spray, you must prepare the grass for spraying - here two members of the group carry out the time honoured technique (for the Station) of 'stomping' - flattening the guinea grass by foot. This technique doesn't use any mechanical devices, and allows us to locate small tree seedlings amongst the grass, so they can be saved.
After stomping comes spraying - here group members learn to apply glyphosphate (Roundup) to the crushed grass - this is an essential part of the practical component of obtaining an AC/DC certificate.