“Tinkering”

“Tinkering”

Sep 16

Written By Anthony Lovell

FULL POEM

Tinkering

You can’t tinker around the edges

When it comes to saving the Tinkerfrog

Confined to Kroombit Tops, high and remote

Sandstone-capped Tableland and escarpment

In the mighty Fitzroy Basin, Central Qld

Thankfully there’s an Association for that

Tasked with oversight and protection…

Kroombit Tops

An ancient Caldera

Collapsed in on itself

Some 215 million years ago

Became the floor of an ancient sea

Now the sandstone tableland cap

We now know as Kroombit Tops

Left elevated around 900 metres

As the surrounds weathered away

Home to Australian wildlife

Some unique, evolved in situ

Cool montane amphibian characters

Found in Picabeen Palm rainforest patches

Boulder scree gullies, leaf-littered

Above 500 metres

Tinker Frog

Including one little frog

(Among six others, Tudylactus)

Named after Pleione’s Torrent

Tiny frog with a Big History

Post-Gondwana relict

Found only in Kroombit

Not setback by the Arrival

Of the first Australians

Before Australia had a name

But now Critically Endangered

Nearly swept away by the second wave

And the now well-known things

That came with settlement

And modern world civilisation

Historical Logging, land clearing, mining

Introduced pests - feral pigs and weeds

Especially Chytrid fungus

Decimating frogs worldwide

They’ve always faced natural events

Wildfires and flash-flooding, that’s Australia

Destroying their habitat, now Climate aggravated

But finally set aside for protection

In its National Park and Forest Reserve designations

So that still we can hear

The ‘tink, tink, tink’

In the wet season

A call to mates that we mistake

For metal striking metal

Giving them their striking name

A call that was drastically decreasing

Increasing going unreturned

Not the Tinkerfrog

Not even those who first heard it

(who could not make the metal ‘sounds like’)

Could ever imagine it would be in decline

No more than hundreds left, maybe less

Or that second wave magic

Indistinguishable from advanced technology

Would be used to monitor - like eDNA

For baselines to measure against

And automated acoustics call recorders

Identifying suitable sites

For Captive -bred for release

80 or so frogs to be returned to their wild

Bred in the ‘Frog Lab’ of Currumbin

(No small task, we will soon see

For a frog that lives in scree

Rocky ledges and leaf litter

In only nine rainforest gullies

On the Eastern escarpment

Cryptic and nocturnal, a double blind

That makes them hard to see

And has never been observed

Breeding in the wild, out of sight

Their tadpoles likely growing

In water-filled cracks and soaks)

Stakeholding entities cooperating

To keep them here

Doing what Tinker Frogs do in Kroombit

Under watchful eyes, and electronic ears

And now by Ash's canine nose

Hot on their unique amphibian scent