T FIRST GLANCE, Robert McLean seems
an unlikely conservationist. A meat-truck
driver by day, he’s a bloke who loves steak,
beer and thongs. But most weekends you
won’t catch him putting his feet up watching
the footy or imbibing the amber fluid at the
pub. Instead you’ll find him deep in the Dryandra
Woodland on the frontline of a battle to save Western
Australia’s faunal emblem from extinction.
Robert’s passions are photography and numbats,
and he has successfully combined the two into a
constructive obsession. On weekends he heads inland,
driving for several hours from his coastal home to the
Dryandra conservation area 170km south-east of Perth,
to find and photograph numbats. His unusual hobby
has led him to form a strong bond with three other
unlikely conservationists: airline worker Sean Van
Alphen; power-company employee Matthew Willett;
and John Lawson, caretaker of the Lions Dryandra
Woodland Village and former stonemason. The group
met on individual searches for the elusive creature after
bumping into one another while following the
network of old logging tracks that criss-cross Dryandra.
Together they formed the Numbat Task Force,
initially to lobby for protection for the numbat from
feral cat predation. But when plans were announced
to site a major rubbish tip just 6km from Dryandra,
McLean says it was “all hands on deck” in a campaign
to save the creatures. The four friends set up a
Facebook page (facebook.com/numbatTF) and now post
every shot they can of the numbats captured on their
cameras. Their efforts have managed to overturn a
decision by the state’s Environmental Protection
Authority not to assess the tip proposal. It was a
significant victory for the team, assisted by local WA
Greens MP Lynn MacLaren, and means the potential
impact of the waste facility on Dryandra will now be
examined by the environmental watchdog.
It’s hard work finding numbats and it takes
patience and perseverance. In the years that the four
men have been photographing the small marsupials,
they have seen the numbers in Dryandra plummet
from more than 600 in the early 1990s to fewer than
50 today. “If the tip gets the go-ahead then thenumbats won’t stand a chance. The tip will attract feral
cats and it won’t take them long to move into this
area,” says Robert, who’s worried that cats will wipe
out the population.
Numbats are adventurous and at times seemingly
ignore the presence of people as they dig the forest
floor in search of the 20,000 termites they need to
eat every day. It is this apparent disregard for danger
that puts them on a collision course with voracious
feral cats. “Numbats are the clowns of the forest,”
Robert tells me as we drive at “numbat pace” through
the woodland, keeping watch for the diurnal creatures.
“They are like meerkats on steroids,” he says.
Their long, bushy tails, striped backs, reddish coats
and long snouts make them appealing to look at and
their skittish behaviour is endearing. “Once you see
a numbat in the wild. That’s it. You’re hooked,” Robert
says, and he’s right. After two days of traversing the
dusty tracks in the company of the four men I see my
first numbat. It’s just a glance but worth the many
hours spent peering out from the back of a ute.A
Perth Dryandra
42 Australian Geographic
Members of the Numbat Task Force – (L–R) Robert
McLean, John Lawson, Sean Van Alphen and Matthew
Willett – ready their cameras. The four friends are
working to save Dryandra’s numbats, one of only two
natural populations of the endangered marsupial left.