S6E06 Sparkle Scat

There is a surprising amount of digging required out on a project for Desert Discovery. Some of the survey teams needed to move a lot of sand for their data collection methods and the base camp needed deep pits for the toilets.  Geoff and Jenny ran both the Logistics Team, which managed the base camp set up, and the Mole Team, so they were up to their armpits, literally, in holes and trenches. 

What can animal droppings and footprints tell us? Quite a bit it turns out. In this episode we follow the Desert Discovery tracking team around for a day and one of the first things we find out is why echidna poo sparkles.  I feel like my day with the tracking team forever changed how I observe the ground beneath my feet and what can be seen, via tracks and scats. Often the marks are very tiny and very subtle, but they're there.  They're indications of all the life that we coexist with that we often don't see. All the critters that we share our world with that are often invisible to us because they don't wanna be seen by us. But we are sharing our landscapes and our ecosystems with them. Transcript, links and show notes available on the Saltgrass Website.

Bilbies, great desert skinks, malleefowl and stick nest rats. Burrows, mounds, and many kinds of excretment. Clues, fragments, and ancient relics. No matter what team you were on, everyone on Desert Discovery was told to keep an eye out for these rare and unlikely species or what they may have left for us to find in the landscape.  Transcript and show notes available on the Saltgrass Website.

Meet the invertebrate team as we peel back bark, turn over rocks and shine lights on sheets to catch insects and arachnids out in the Australian desert. One of the smallest teams on Desert Discovery they were looking at the some of the smallest critters, but they had their eyes open to all levels of life.  Transcript and show notes available on the Saltgrass Website.

In the last episode we had a chat with Mayor Toby Heydon and YIMBY co-founder Lucy Young to explore the impacts of the rolling out a Food Organics / Garden Organics (FOGO) kerbside waste service in the shire.  It seemed clear there was a lot more to say! So this episode we are joined once more by Lucy and also by Anthony Jansen who runs Greenaway, a garden organics waste service. Together we talk about what we might be able to imagine for the shire if we choose not to run with FOGO bins, but rather manage the FO (food organics) and GO (garden organics) in creative and practical ways.

This episode was recorded from a live show on MainFM on 4th of May 2026. The Mount Alexander Shire Council is soon to vote on whether our shire should have  FOGO bin, that is, a Food Organics / Garden Organics kerbside waste service.  Saltgrass host Allie was joined in the studio my Mayor Toby Heydon and YIMBY co-founder Lucy Young to discuss the proposed service and why it may or may not be the best option for our shire. 

Citizen science is a bit of a buzz word, but what is it really all about? Desert Discovery did not start out as a citizen science group, at first it was a group of nature lovers having adventures together. Over time the group's focus has shifted more and more towards citizen science. So, in this episode, we unpack what citizen science is and also how Desert Discovery became a citizen science group.   

Join us on the first full day of the Desert Discovery Yeo Lake Project. Allie hitches a ride with the Botany Team to find out what a day of data collection looks like for them. We hear team leader Alan Bedggood talk about how it all works and share in the enthusiasm of the participants.  Links and transcript at saltgrasspodcast.com

Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth. The majority of people live in the major cities that hug the coast line, and as much as Australia is famous for the 'red centre', many Australians have never been. This season Allie, Saltgrass' host, will take listeners on an adventure to a remote desert location in Western Australia with citizen science group Desert Discovery. This first episode is just the beginning, setting the scene, and introducing you to the first of many colourful characters.     

A little window into what is coming!