Starving wombats on mallee country spark 1968 South Australian community campaign for Moorunde reserve
Peg Conquest, an instigator of the Moorunde Wildlife Reserve with husband Jack, gives water to a distressed southern hairy-nosed wombat in 1967 at then-Portee station near Blanchetown, South Australia. Natural History Society volunteers (top right) maintain the reserve that became home to thousands of wombats.
Images courtesy Natural History Society of South Australia
Public response, backed by the efforts of volunteers, returned and revived 7,000 hectares of mallee country in South Australia’s east with a major rescue and rise in southern hairy-nosed wombat numbers.
Moorunde Wildlife Reserve, between Blanchetown and Swan Reach on the south side of the Sturt Highway, was land previously cleared for sheep grazing, wood fuel and charcoal production on Portee station.
The initial impetus for the Moorunde project in 1968 came from wombat enthusiasts Jack and Peg Conquest who had long campaign for wildlife reserve for endangered native animals – and particularly the plights of the wombats on Portee station such as the wombats. Unable to gain state government interest, the Conquests won the support of the Natural History Society of South Australia whose members accompanied them to Portee station in December 1967. They found starving and dying wombats on the drought-ridden station.
The society gained state government fauna conservation department approval for individuals to take them into their homes to save them. Foster parents for the wombats were found, with ABC Adelaide television broadcasting an appeal for help, and a few wombats were saved but many died in the burrows from malnutrition.
The Portee station owner Louis Power was willing to sell a well-treed 3,000 acres that, with rabbits eliminated and water provided from a nearby pipeline, could be fenced to keep sheep out, and let wombats in, when food was available in the reserve.
The Natural History Society launched an appeal to raise $12,000 to buy the property and $6,000 to set it up for wombats to breed and multiply. The general public was asked to donate $4 for each acre of the reserve and $2 to provide fencing and water. The appeal gained enthusiastic cooperation from Sunday Mail editor Ken Parish and wide coverage from reporter Bill Reschke. The first week of the successful appeal raised $4,000. Jack Conquest was appointed first director of Moorunde Wildlife Reserve, with fund trustees: president Bert Molineaux, secretary Marjorie Molineaux and vice president Alwin Clements.
With the reserve fenced and water provided via tanks and ponds, the revegetated area was monitored by Natural History Society members over the next 40 years. From about 150 wombats on the reserve in 1968, estimates grew to 500-600 on this original section of the reserve. In 2006, more sections of Portee station were available to buy. This time, with some bequests in the bank, the society had a significant proportion of the required money.
Donations from the society’s patrons, John and Mary Holt, members, and like-minded organisations tenabled epurchase a further 4,900 hectares of sheep country next to the existing original Moorunde reserve. This raised the estimate to around 2,000 wombats on the expanded 6,900 hectare Moorunde Wildlife Reserve.
Volunteer rangers regularly patrol ledthe fences. Volunteer working bees also maintained the reserve and its biota, removing weeds and repairing tracks and damaged fences. Research projects included monitoring wombat populations, DNA analysis of wombat scat to determine the species of plants they eat, recovery of flora and monitoring of grazing pressures from all fauna on the reserve.
