8 April 2011

Alice Springs is the world famous remote town at the centre of the continent. It is easily Australia’s most accessible outback destination. Daily flights connect it with most state capitals, and there is a even a trans-continental train for those who prefer to overland. Most come here to gawp at Uluru or wander around on some red sand dunes but I would say they could be missing out. Any wildlife enthusiast visiting the Red Centre should consider making a visit to the Alice’s sewage ponds their highest priority…

Great-crested Grebe in Alice Springs. Photo by Mark Carter of DesertLife

Its no secret to birders that sewage treatment ponds are good locations to find birds. Dependable large bodies of open water set away from human disturbance, heavily populated with teeming invertebrates and furnished with convenient vegetation, these sites are premium avian real estate. These enormous man-made wetlands are popular enough in moist, lush landscapes, so imagine the pull they have for birdlife in the arid-zone. Outback sewage ponds are literally oases for our desert avifauna, and Alice Springs is gifted with one of the best in the country.

There are several factors behind the site’s success: its large size, its desert location, its surrounding mosaic of habitats and its sympathetic management.

Just 4 km south of Alice Springs CBD lies this cluster of about a dozen ponds. It adds up to about a third of a square kilometer of open water: its a desert water feature visible from the International Space Station. In drier years it is probably the first sizable reliable waterbody which arriving migrant birds will encounter after leaving Newcastle Waters 700km to the north. It is a joy to watch as squadrons of Wood Sandpiper and Marsh Sandpiper, Greenshank and other arctic-born migrants drop from the skies at dawn in springtime and immediately set to feeding. Many a long distance wanderer uses the ponds as a stop-over, and some even stay for the whole northern-hemisphere winter. From siberian tundra to summertime Central Australian sewage ponds must be on of the most jarring annual changes of scene in the natural world! Each year a few birds overshoot their intended destinations and instead ride storms to Alice Springs. Little Curlew, Oriental Plover and Swinhoe’s Snipe are recent examples of such wayward wanderers.

The 'birdwatcher's shelter', complete with logbook, field guide, sightings & interpretation boards

Australia’s deserts are unique in the world. Instead of a rigid annual rainfall cycle with  wet and dry months, we instead have a vague decadal rhythm with eight or more ‘dry years‘ with only sporadic and random rainfall, punctuated by dramatic ‘wet years’. We are currently experiencing those ‘wet years’: Alice Springs last year had rainfall well above than the annual average for London! There is the phalanx of Australian nomads such as Red-necked Avocet and Pink-eared Duck which go for broke in the boom conditions in wet years but retreat to ‘lifeboat’ areas to sit out the dry. The Alice sewage ponds are a vital refuge in those dry years. In 2009, we had less than 80mm of rain all year Grey Teal and Pink-eared Duck flocks numbering into the thousands were present. Now their numbers have dropped-off as these remarkable birds spread out across the freshly wet outback landscape. They will be back.

The ponds shouldn’t be seen as one stand-alone location. They are part of an ecologically sensational networked landscape- they sit sandwiched between the sandstone ridges of the Heavitree and Ilparpa Ranges, abutting both a sizeable ephemeral wetland and the Red Gum-lined fringes of the Todd River. These surrounding features push the list of birds using the ponds ever higher: Wedge-tailed Eagle and Peregrine Falcon breed on the Ranges and hunt over the ponds. White-winged Fairy Wren and Spotted Harrier make forays from the nearby wetland, Black Falcon and Little Eagles make raids from the cover of the Todd’s corridor of green. It all adds up to make the Sewage Ponds an exciting prospect for a birder.

Birders’ access to the sewage ponds is accommodated by the government-owned operators of the ponds, the Power and Water Corporation. For a small deposit they will give you a key to the site. Last year they installed a new bower shelter with a sightings chalkboard and even a tethered field guide to check your IDs in should you forget your own. This enlightened approach to public use of what is, from their point of view, an industrial site is to be commended: it would be all too easy to close the site in the name of paranoid health and safety fears as has happened at ponds elsewhere. At the time of writing the ponds were temporarily closed due to a resident band of wild dogs which has taken to attacking humans at the site. We’re pleased to report now that the Corporation has now re-opened them. These dogs have been taking a toll on the birds at the site in recent months so their eradication will be very welcome.

We desert dwellers have a funny relationship with water. We all know its a vital resource, yet Alice Springs has the highest water consumption per capita in the country. Occasionally, environment-minded activists give the Government a hard time over all that aquifer-sourced water ‘wasted’ by the utilities company by letting it sit in those huge evaporation ponds. They lobby instead for the water to be recycled: put to use in yet-to-be-developed market gardens. This would be very reasonable except for the reputedly vast cost of a recycling plant, and the fact that water currently going to those sewage ponds is not being wasted at all. As the litany of birds using the site shows, our wildlife love it! Besides, the huge majority of the water used in Alice goes on irrigating gardens and sports fields, not flushing sewage.

The way I see it when you go to the toilet in Alice Springs you are doing a little bit for conservation. Alice toilet-goers should simply sit, relax and think of all those thankful waders and waterfowl!

Go birding with Mark Carter of DesertLife by contacting him here.

Why not also check out Chris Watson’s Poo Ponds Page