Storyteller: Karlene Bain

Ancient feet, modern rows: Gnow in the Mettler Lake plantation

DR KARLENE BAIN presents another captivating wildlife story — this time featuring malleefowl (gnow) and the remarkable work they do to build and manage the mounds that incubate their eggs. At a blue gum plantation on the south coast of Western Australia, Karlene and her PF Olsen colleagues, Bob and Anthony, uncover an unexpected change in the gnow’s choice of mound-building material. Settle in — it’s a rich story, beautifully told.

March 2026

At first light, the Mettler Lake plantation looks orderly and quiet. Rows of blue gums (Eucalyptus globulus) rise from skeletal sands, their uniform trunks stretching into the pale morning light. Between the rows, long windrows of fallen branches and woody slash mark where machines pushed the harvest debris into linear heaps years ago, following the first thinning operations. To most eyes, the slash heaps are debris, the afterthoughts of harvest, rough and angular, drying slowly. But just beyond the plantation’s edge, where long-unburnt bushland forms a dense, tangled refuge, something stirs.

The male gnow forages for insects and seeds at the edge of remnant bush, replenishing his energy to maintain the mound and care for the eggs. Image: K. Bain, remote camera.

The First People of this land have long known him as gnow; to others he has also been known as malleefowl — a bird of intricate camouflage, his plumage a mosaic of bold black, white, and chestnut that allows him to vanish into the dappled light of the bush. His body is sturdy and rounded, his short, specialised beak finely tuned for sensing temperature, and his thick, strong legs and feet are built for the tireless labour of a mound-building architect. He carries the weight of a lineage that stretches back over 25 million years. Gnow is a living relic of the Megapodiidae family, a survivor of an era when giant fowl roamed the continent. While his larger cousins vanished into the fossil record, he remains, a feathered engineer of the earth, bridging the gap between a modern world and a prehistoric past.

He arrives before dawn, moving with deliberate purpose. With massive claws capable of raking through tons of soil and leaf litter, he constructs the enormous incubation mounds that define his existence. His powerful feet rake at the slash heap, drawing loose bark and leaves inward and upward, reshaping the piles the harvest machinery once left behind. He creates a dome from wood, coarse yet softened with age, branches weathered by five seasons of rain and heat, leaf litter scavenged from nearby heaps and the surrounding blue gum floor, and bark scraped into place, piece by piece.

This is not his normal mounding substrate. Traditionally, he and his family construct circular mounds of pale, fine-grained sand, each spanning up to five meters across and rising a metre. Within the sand lies a hidden core of leaf litter and organic debris, scavenged from the surrounds and slowly generating heat as it decomposes. From the outside, the mound resembles a small volcanic crater, meticulously maintained to shield the growing life within from the harsh elements and to maintain a constant, steady warmth.

This mound is different, perhaps a rare opportunity to adapt his traditional architecture to a landscape that has already done some of the heavy work of accumulation. He has already spent a month or more scouting the windrows, scraping through the chaotic geometry of branches and bark to find a site where the debris can be reshaped. Many heaps have been tested and rejected for being too densely tangled with heavy limbs or inverted roots that resist his scraping and scratching. He searches only within windrows that lie close to the safety of remnant vegetation, never venturing far into the open.

In place of the predictable sand, he now contends with a shifting tangle of leaf litter, wood fragments and coarse bark, yet his instincts remain unchanged. With powerful feet, he starts to break down the woody materials, seeking to create a softly woven thermal blanket from the fallen timber and shaping a future for his offspring from the scattered remnants of the past.

His mate comes to inspect his work, and they meet on the rim of his newly constructed crater. They greet each other with enthusiasm, lifting their wings in sweeping arcs and bobbing their heads in a rhythmic display of recognition and communication. The display is a reaffirmation of their lifelong bond and their shared commitment to creating life.

The gnow pair engages in a synchronized social display, wings spread and heads bobbing in a ritual of connection and communication. Image: K. Bain, remote camera.

Although he has led the initial construction, she is far from a passive observer. They work together, their strong feet working in tandem to break down the brittle bark and roughly textured wood into a mulch that mimics the insulating properties of soil. She shifts finer litter into the core, shaping the crater carefully. Day after day, their movements settle into a tireless rhythm, excavating, rebuilding, and reshaping, two architects of an older world attempting to master a modern landscape. Weeks of patient labour follow, their daily return to open the mound allows winter rains to soak deep into the core, where concentrated leaf litter begins its invisible chemical work. Beneath the woven surface of blue gum mulch, the breakdown of organic matter stirs to life, and the first faint pulses of microbial heat radiate through the mound’s heart.

The gnow pair labours over their mound, transforming scattered debris into a carefully constructed thermal blanket for their eggs. Image: K. Bain, remote camera.

As the season shifts, the female becomes the primary judge of their progress. Each day, as they open the mound, she descends from the woody ramparts to probe the depths of the crater within the core. Using the sensitive skin of her beak, she examines the finer leaf litter within the mound, searching for the exact moment when fermentation reaches 33°C. When the heat stabilises, she enters the crater they have so carefully hollowed, depositing a single, large ivory egg within the softened mulch. This ritual repeats every few days for months, with the mound gradually filling as she entrusts their legacy to the warmth of the earth they have reshaped.

The male keeps vigilant watch from the crater’s rim as the female probes the mound’s core to check the temperature. Their teamwork is precise and continuous. Image: K. Bain, remote camera.
Egg laying! Image: K. Bain, remote camera.

Once the eggs are laid, the male assumes a tireless vigil over their incubator. From first light, he opens the mound, raking away yesterday’s work to expose the dark, breathing core. Steam rises faintly in the cool air. On cold mornings, he scrapes the woody blanket thin to let sunlight penetrate. As the day warms, he shifts debris back over the top, shielding the eggs. He balances the cooling breath of wind against the fermenting heat within, maintaining the internal temperature with careful precision. Most of the time he works alone, but occasionally she joins him when the core must be opened wide or to fend off an intruder.

Defending the mound requires vigilance and risk. Against smaller intruders like ravens or raiding varanids, the male is a fierce guardian, puffing his feathers out and rushing with a low, guttural hiss to drive them away. The arrival of a fox demands a different strategy of silence and invisibility. At the first scent or sound of this predator, he freezes, his dappled plumage melting into the shadows of the blue gum debris, or he beats a swift, low-altitude retreat into the nearby bushland. His life is a cycle of depletion and recovery. He spends his nights roosting on a low limb at the edge of the remnant vegetation, positioned between the mound and safe refuge. This proximity also allows him to slip into the understorey to forage for high-energy seeds and insects, replenishing the massive reserves of strength required to maintain the mound for another day.

The male gnow defends the mound against a curious varanid (monitor lizard or bungarra), spreading his feathers and hissing to drive the intruder away from the eggs. Do you see the banded tail of the varanid? Image: K. Bain, remote camera.
A fox sniffs the mound — a reminder of the ever-present threats surrounding the gnows’ carefully tended nest. Image: K. Bain, remote camera.

Then, one morning in January, the rhythm of opening and closing the mound suddenly breaks. From the mound’s eastern flank, a small, dark shape emerges through the woody crust. Downy, damp, and impossibly self-contained, it is the first of the new generation, a chick that has spent hours clawing through the suffocating weight of blue gum debris to reach the air. It pauses at the edge of the mound, blinking against the harsh light, already fully feathered and ready for the world. There is no maternal warmth to greet it, no beckoning call or offer of food. The adult male, standing a few meters away, watches briefly before returning to his raking. His biological contract ends at the soil’s surface. By nightfall, the chick has vanished into the dense sanctuary of the nearby remnant bush, a tiny ghost navigating the shadows alone.

An adult gnow watches from the top of the mound as the first chick emerges and disperses, marking the start of a new generation in January 2024. Image: K. Bain, remote camera.

Two more emerge as the season wanes, each a solitary pioneer in this experimental landscape. Once the final chick has left the mound, it is abandoned to the elements. The male opens the core one last time, exposing the fermenting centre to the air. The vigil ends, and the scavengers move in. Ravens descend to pick through the hollow, one escaping with a fragile shard of ivory eggshell, a ghostly relic of the life nurtured within.

As winter settles over the plantation, the activity fades into a quiet, lingering memory. Motion-sensing cameras capture only the occasional, fleeting visit. A lone bird standing atop the now-collapsed mound, or the pair meeting for a brief, rhythmic display amidst the rain-soaked mulch. These are not random wanderings, but a testament to the map of the land held within them. Even as the mound flattens and the blue gum leaves return to the earth, the site remains a landmark in their geography, a reminder that in this place, the old ways were successfully whispered to the new. The labour of the past few months is not lost. The core of the mound remains a concentrated foundation of organic wealth, waiting to be reactivated. Perhaps in a few seasons, once the scent of the nest has vanished and the predator memory has faded, the pair will return to rake the weathered debris once more, reclaiming their hard-won ground to start the cycle anew.

From the watchers of the mound

Around the gnow, the Mettler Lake plantation goes about its quiet business under the watchful eyes of a dedicated team. Anthony Wise and Bob Edwards manage the forest for PF Olsen Australia on behalf of New Forests, an investment manager dedicated to natural capital. Their role is a daily balancing act that ensures the commercial success of the timber crop while protecting the biological integrity of the landscape. For them, the gnow and other threatened species on their properties are core components of a healthy, well-managed plantation.

I work alongside them as a contract wildlife ecologist, focused on the conservation and recovery of threatened species. By embedding ecology into everyday plantation decisions, I try to nurture an ethic of stewardship that reaches beyond fence lines and timber rotations, and towards the long-term persistence of the gnow and other threatened species across the wider landscape — a landscape in which the plantation now plays an important role.

On the edge of an unburnt patch of bushland — near an active gnow mound — Karlene gains a sense of feeding activity and roost sites. Image: K. Bain, remote camera.

This is not work done alone. It unfolds through conversations at gates, shared walks across sand and leaf litter, and the generosity of the people who know the country intimately. Together, we search the plantation and its edges for signs of life. A footprint in soft soil, a foraging scrape beneath mallee, a fleeting shadow caught on a camera at dusk. We use every camera image, track in the sand, and fragment of behaviour to guide how this working forest is managed and to advocate for a future in which the gnow can thrive within it.

While we plan for the future, the gnow remain busy in their present, largely unaware of the humans who guard their habitat. Hidden away in the quiet of the blue gums, their ancient rhythms continue, captured in glimpses by the lenses of my remote cameras. The cameras capture the morning choreography of the bonded pairs, the moments of tension as potential predators approach, the adults’ tireless maintenance of their mounds and, most importantly, the emergence of the chicks. Each image contributes to precious data essential for their protection.

Within this blue gum nursery, we also observed a second pair of gnow scouting windrows and building these unusual mounds. It remains uncertain whether the two pairs are independent, if one is mimicking the other, or if both are the next generation. Perhaps they are adults grown from chicks that once clawed their ways out of these very mounds and are now returning to the only architecture they have ever known.

Not every mound succeeds. The second pair tended their mound with equal fervour, but it was never entrusted with eggs. Perhaps it was too exposed, too unstable, or its internal temperature failed to stabilise. The line between a nursery and a rehearsal seems thin, determined by a delicate balance of experience, chance, and the subtle structural differences of the timber.

Across two years, the primary pair built two mounds (one each season) and produced seven chicks. While not a large number, it is profoundly significant. It demonstrates that life can persist, and even flourish, in a landscape shaped by saws and harvest schedules, particularly where patches of undisturbed remnant vegetation have been preserved throughout the plantation.

What unfolds at Mettler Lake is a story of hopeful adaptation. The plantation doesn’t replace the bush. It provides important habitat because the bush remains. Long-unburnt, structurally complex remnants nearby provide refuge and food, allowing the birds to make use of the space and resources created by the slash heaps. In turn, the gnow act as quiet engineers. Their mounds transform decaying timber into warmth and enrich the soil with microbial life. Without knowing it, they restore as they survive.

A healthy remnant vegetation patch forms a dense, tangled refuge and provides a diverse food resource for the Gnow.

As blue gum plantations become a permanent feature of the south coast, they are proving to be more than timber crops. They are functioning as corridors, reconnecting fragments of original bush and allowing wildlife to move through a changed landscape. By working alongside the birds, we are learning that these managed forests can support wildlife not just at the margins, but as a protected and functioning part of the system. Anthony and Bob are even trialling the strategic placement of plantation debris in optimal configurations and in areas that could be more suitable for both the birds and the plantation.

The urgency of this work has intensified following the large-scale fires of January 2026. These devastated many of the bushland remnants within the plantation as well as a large proportion of the surrounding landscape. With much of the traditional habitat and nesting materials gone, the remaining remnant patches and nesting opportunities within the plantation have transitioned from a luxury to a lifeline. In this post-fire environment, survival for this species and many others is uncertain because the lack of intact remnant vegetation leaves them without refuge from predators. Proactive management is no longer just best practice; it is critical for preventing local extinctions.

Plantation manager Bob Edwards rakes debris into a carefully positioned pile within a burned section of the property, creating potential nesting habitat for gnow. He positions the pile near an unburnt patch that still offers food and shelter. Image: Bob Edwards.

The future remains dynamic. Harvest will come again, windrows will be reshaped, and debris moved. Burnt remnants will recover in time, but in the interim, the gnow may need a bridge, with nesting resources kept close to the remaining habitat patches that still provide food and shelter, and predators actively managed within the newly open, more hostile environment between them.

For Bob and Anthony, the gnow represent the co-benefits of modern forestry. By integrating conservation into plantation planning, PF Olsen and New Forests support species persistence while improving soil condition and reducing fire risk. The gnow demonstrate what is possible: a future where industry and ecology do not merely coexist but actively sustain one another.

THANKS to Karlene Bain for the story, and Stewart Tutton, Anthony Wise and Bob Edwards of PF Olsen for their input. Editing by Margaret Robertson.

FURTHER INFORMATION

At their Chingarrup Sanctuary near Boxwood Hill (in the Fitz-Stirling section of the Gondwana Link), Eddy and Donna Wajon describe how malleefowl like to build their incubation mounds in the alleyways of revegetation plantings: Chingarrup Sanctuary brings life to the land | Heartland Journeys

Enjoy this National Malleefowl Recovery Group YouTube video featuring malleefowl footage and Dr Joe Benshemesh presenting his detailed knowledge of this bird’s ecology and nesting method: ‘The Amazing Malleefowl’ featuring Dr Joe Benshemesh

The Indigenous Desert Alliance prepared this story about the 2023 Malleefowl Workshop at Morapoi Station involving Traditional Owners, Indigenous rangers and conservation groups: Indigenous Desert Alliance | Working together to look after Malleefowl

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The watchers of Koi Kyenunu-ruff

DR KARLENE BAIN, a wildlife ecologist with nearly three decades of experience, is joyously at home in the bush. Picture her striding and climbing among the peaks and gullies of Koi Kyenunu-ruff (the Stirling Range) as she researches ancient Cataxia spiders. She calls them ‘the watchers’. With reverence, Karlene shares both her deep knowledge of these small creatures and their massive story, from their primeval spider ancestors during the age of dinosaurs and beyond, to the present day threat of frequent, intense fires.

September 2025

Long before humans stood upright, long before the first mammal blinked into the sunlight, and even before dinosaurs thundered across the lush floodplains of the ancient, southern supercontinent Gondwana, there were the watchers. Still, silent, and patient, nestled in cool, shaded soils. Among them was her ancestor, a spider with no need for haste, no yearning for distance, just the damp comfort of home and the quiet rhythm of time.

The lineage she belongs to was already old when dinosaurs ruled the earth. Her earliest kin, small and dark-eyed like her, once crept silently beneath the shadow of ferns, ancient conifers, and clubmosses, in forests thick with the breath of a warm, humid sky. They were ambush predators even then, lying in wait within burrows, beneath leaves and loam, striking with fangs of folded steel. Her ancestors didn’t travel. They didn’t need to. They lived quietly and waited. That was the way of her kind. Wait, strike, and disappear again. No other creature noticed them. That’s how they survived.  

An AI image depicting the watchers – the primeval spiders Mesothelae – that witnessed the age of dinosaurs and beyond. Ancestors of today’s Cataxia spiders that live in the upper gullies of Koi Kyenunu-ruff, carrying the legacy of time quietly in their burrows beneath the earth.

Then the supercontinent cracked! First, Africa and South America began their slow departure, tearing open the new Atlantic Ocean. Her ancestors burrowed deep in the soil that would one day be Western Australia. Later, India wrenched northward, parting from Antarctica in a long, grinding farewell. The ancient lines of spider kin she belonged to started to fracture, each isolated on shifting continents, unable to cross seas they could neither see nor comprehend. The world changed.

By the time the great Cretaceous seas spread across what is now the southern coast of Western Australia, her ancestors were already nestled in what would become one of the oldest mountain ranges on Earth. Mountains were rising. Faults buckled and cracked as the last bonds between Australia and Antarctica wrenched apart. Crust sagged and seas spilled into the fractures, washing over vast tracts of country, turning slopes into shorelines and ridgelines into islands. One such chain of peaks would become known eons later as Koi Kyenunu-ruff (the Stirling Range). Formed from ancient seabeds over a billion years ago, folded and uplifted in deep time, these mountains offered shelter when the lowlands drowned. Each of the peaks rose like islands above the salty tides, their gullies collecting mist, their soils holding tight to moisture. As the sea level rose during the Eocene, these mountain peaks became refuges for those unable to swim, fly, or flee. Her world shrank.

Koi Kyenunu-ruff (the Stirling Range). This ancient, time-worn terrain cradles invertebrate lifeforms, including Cataxia spiders, that have endured and evolved through the ages. Picture: Karlene Bain.

As the seas retreated once more in the Miocene, they left behind a land drier than before. The wet forests of her ancestors gave way to sclerophyll woodlands and open shrublands, bristling with hardy plants, forged by drought and fire. Yet in the creases of the land, small fragments of the old world endured. Mesic pockets clung to shaded gullies and southerly slopes; cool, damp enclaves spared from the harshness above. And in these quiet havens remained the watchers: silent, dark-eyed spiders with no tolerance for heat or sun. In their gully refuges, walls of green pressed close. Dense sedges crowded the wet soil near flowing creek lines and waterfalls, their arching blades woven into mats that glisten with dew. Above them, pale-stemmed thickets of moisture-loving plants rose and tangled, their branches knitting into a dense screen that filtered the light into a soft, green haze. The forest floor was thick with leaf litter, damp and fragrant, its surface scattered with fungi, fallen branches, and the slow, steady work of decay. Moisture clung to everything, to the ferns along the shaded banks, to the roots that braided through loamy soil, to the moss that softened stone. It was a place untouched by the searing light above. A world apart. A hidden remnant of the age before.

The southern gullies of Koi Kyenunu-ruff, cool and shaded, cradle the last of the watchers. Here, in the damp folds beneath stone and soil, their burrows descend like quiet doorways into the old world. Picture: Karlene Bain.

For millions of years, the southern gullies of the high peaks of Koi Kyenunu-ruff remained refugia. Cool, wet sanctuaries in an increasingly dry and fire-prone world. She survived here not by adapting to change, but by holding onto what little remained of the old world. As time passed, populations of her kind that were isolated on different peaks evolved into distinct species. She needed no name, but humans gave her one, Cataxia, and time, working hand in hand with isolation, shaped her lineage into four distinct forms within Koi Kyenunu-ruff: Cataxia sandsorum, Cataxia stirlingi, Cataxia colesi, and Cataxia barrettae.

She is not alone. Other families of her spider ancestors walked the same long path through deep time. Their lineages too were splintered, scattered, and stranded by shifting climates and rising ridges. Humans named them Bertmainius, Proshermacha and Teyl.

Families of ancient land snails, velvet worms, and pseudoscorpions live out parallel stories across these old, folded ranges, descendants of creatures that once roamed the lush, connected forests of Gondwana. From single threads of ancestry have emerged unique species, each now woven into the cracks and crevices of individual mountains. Each found nowhere else.  

The palisade shapes water flow around the burrow, creating stable soil beneath. It also provides a secret hiding spot for the old watcher (Cataxia barrettae) as she waits for prey. Her silken threads stretch outward, sensing threats, food, and kin beyond the soft barrier of her palisade. Picture: Karlene Bain.

And here, in the present, she remains. Deep in the shadows at the base of old rock cairns, where soft, damp soil weaves between the rocks, she lives in a burrow, large for her kind, like a doorway to another world. Around its rim, a delicate palisade of leaves, twigs, and silk rises like the turrets of a miniature castle. Her burrow curves downward beneath the cool surface, following minute crevices between rocks, forming its steady pocket of temperature and moisture. She built it long ago, as a spiderling no larger than a matchhead, fresh from the maternal chamber. It has grown with her, widening and deepening as she matured, hollowing over time like memory. She is old now, a matriarch of her family, and no longer produces eggs. But she does not leave. She has never left. Her lungs, delicate as tissue, cannot endure dry heat for long. She emerges only when the mountains are shrouded in mist, or after the autumn rains soak the ground. When the soil softens and the air thickens, the moisture allows her to breathe and her limbs to move.

Among small rocks that gently divert water, the old watcher’s larger burrow rests in the cool, sheltered valley, where stable soil and soft shadows provide a refuge. Two of her elder daughters live quietly within a silken thread’s reach. Picture of Cataxia barrettae palisades: Karlene Bain.

Around her, her daughters live in similar homes. Smaller palisades scattered through the moist soils in the shadows of rocks, roots, in moist creek banks and beneath low, dry shrubs. Each of them hatched from eggs laid in a silk-wrapped chamber deep within her burrow. After emerging, they stayed close, most moving less than a metre through the damp autumn soil before turning downward and carving out spaces of their own. Now, the spiderlings of her daughters begin to stir. They surface briefly in autumn to test the air, then retreat, waiting for the rains that will soften the ground enough for their first steps outward. They are clumsy, slow-footed dispersers, and like their mothers, they seldom travel far. Around the maternal burrows, they build a scattered constellation of tiny palisades, an ever-expanding arc of kin.

The ancient watcher peers from her burrow, head and legs visible, her large forward-facing eyes surveying the world above, while the surrounding smaller eyes detect motion and shadow – a perfect arrangement for sensing unsuspecting prey. Cataxia barrettae captured on remote camera.
Responding to the slightest touch on her silken trip lines, the ancient watcher emerges from her burrow, body poised to capture an approaching insect. Cataxia barrettae captured on remote camera.

She is surrounded mostly by daughters. Her sons survive only six years before instinct drives them upward, out of their burrows, into the dark autumn night in search of a mate. They do not return. Their bodies feed the new life they help to create. She feels them leave. She senses her kin more than she sees them, woven around her like a web with no visible strands. Around her, her daughters endure, their palisades and burrows growing year by year, season by season. The constellation holds. Life continues.

The ancient watcher pauses at the entrance to her burrow, a quiet sentinel between the hidden world below and the ever-changing land above. Cataxia colesi glimpsed in a rare daytime moment at her burrow entrance. Picture: Karlene Bain.

But the world is shifting once again, this time not through the slow gears of plate tectonics but the feverish haste of human industry. The changes now come faster than stone can shift. The rainfall no longer arrives as it once did, gentle, soaking, predictable. Summers stretch out longer, autumns stay dry, winters shrink. The wet-season refuge of her burrow grows shorter, the soil around it harder and drier. The moist gullies shrink further each year. Her daughters’ spiderlings, if they hatch at all, find it hard to find soft, moist soils to burrow into and they do not always survive their first summer. And then there is the fire.

For millennia, fire came rarely to Koi Kyenunu-ruff, especially to the ancient refugia where the spiders dwelled. The vegetation there was not immune to flame, but the deep gullies held moisture year-round, and fires that raged along the open, dry ridgelines often faltered when they reached the damp, shaded slopes below. The fires that passed through infrequently, left a patchwork of scorched and spared. The spiders, sealed deep within their burrows, could usually endure the flames that swept across the surface. Their palisades would char and collapse, but the sedge and shrub cover often persisted in patches, offering shade and shelter from the post-fire heat and dryness. Beneath the earth, they waited. And as the vegetation slowly returned, so too did the rhythm of life.

Fire affected gullies, the Stirling Range. Picture: Karlene Bain.

But now the fires are hotter. And they come more often. In just two decades, intense fires have torn through the gullies three times, charring and killing plants and killing millions of her kin. These fires move with terrifying speed, driven by hot, dry, and windy weather systems; by steep slopes that preheat the land ahead of the flames; and by the parched vegetation, desiccated by years of drying climate. The heat is now so intense that, in places, the soil itself smoulders, burning deep into the root layer. Shallow burrowing members of her family are killed immediately by the radiant heat, usually young spiders that haven’t reached maturity. Millions more perish in the weeks and months that follow, as bare soils are scorched by unrelenting sun; water erodes soil as it runs off steep slopes with nothing to slow or hold it; and burrows, once shaded by dense vegetation, are left exposed. Hungry predators easily locate the survivors. In a single intense fire, many of the delicate survivors of a hundred million years are gone, and the subsequent fires add to that loss.

Where once her kind formed a tight constellation of palisades, housing millions of individuals scattered across each mountain, now only tens of thousands remain, living in isolated clusters. Each year, there are fewer males for her daughters to mate with. Fewer young survive past dispersal. Species that once spanned a wide arc of mountaintop habitat are now broken into fragments, some reduced to patches no larger than a few square metres. Genetic isolation seeps in slowly and invisibly, bringing with it the insidious threats of inbreeding, disease, and the unforgiving maths of too few individuals. For a creature that cannot move far and with its long maturation period, extinction doesn’t need to chase. It only needs to wait for the weather to shift, for another fire to come, for the daughters to grow old and become matriarchs who can no longer produce eggs. And then a population with no young, no sons, no future.

Orographic mists swirl around the peaks of Koi Kyenunu-ruff, creating floating sky islands and moist gullies where Cataxias burrow. Ancient refuges shrouded in clouds and mystery. Picture: Karlene Bain.

Even the high peaks, once buffered by elevation and the cooling folds of topography, no longer escape the flames. Lightning storms are more frequent, summer thunderclouds roll in without rain, lashing ridgelines with fire. And even where the fires do not reach, the heat does. The dry air presses in. The heavy mists still drift in, though less often now, and they do not linger as long. Without their blanket, the sky islands shed their moisture more quickly; the cool, moist refuges in the south-facing gullies are shrinking, slowly gnawed by drought and heat.

And so, she waits. Still and quiet. A little deeper now. Her kind are older than most creatures alive today. She carries forward a legacy that is longer than any bird or mammal alive. Her own life might span up to 40 years if she is lucky, but her ancestry spans several hundred million years. She has seen many summers, but never so dry. Never so many days when the soil doesn’t sweat, when the earth above feels dead. She waits for the return of the rain, for the tremble of softened earth, the coolness seeping through the walls of her burrow, the shift in pressure that signals moisture above. She waits for the taste of damp through the soil, the chance to rebuild her family.

From above the soil

Crouched at the top of a gully, I gaze over the Stirling Range, taking in the deep gullies below and the rugged landscape that has sheltered life for millennia. Picture: Karlene Bain.

The first time I saw her burrow in 2002, it looked like nothing more than a small ring of leaves and twigs pressed into the damp earth, the kind of thing easily missed among the debris of the gully floor. But the symmetry caught my eye. My mentor Barbara York Main pointed it out and I crouched down to rest a hand on the cool moss-covered stone beside it, admiring the elaborate arrangement of leaves, twigs and flowers. When the light shifted, there was the faint glimmer of silk binding the leaves together. The opening was a perfect circle, descending into shadow and I saw the gentle movement of legs shifting deeper as I peered into the dark depths.

In another season, the old watcher’s burrow is framed by a palisade of Banksia blossoms, gathered from soft scatterings across the gully floor. Her use of local materials marks the passage of time and the changing conditions of her surroundings. Picture of Cataxia barrettae palisade: Karlene Bain.

For twenty-three years I have regularly returned to her and her kin, after fire had blackened the slopes, through summers when the earth cracked with thirst, and in winters when rains had been so heavy the gullies roared, the soil shifting and swelling, sometimes burying or flooding burrows. Each journey became a ritual. I would step off the track, scaling steep gullies and tracing the southern slopes, covering 250 kilometres as I threaded my way over the rugged terrain, eyes glued to the soil beneath my feet, searching. I counted burrows as others might count their treasures, each one a fragile stronghold of life, precious beyond measure.

In those early days, my records filled pages. My journeys led me past tumbling waterfalls, vast rock pools, fast-flowing creeks, and through dense, tangled vegetation. More than once, I found myself hanging by a single hand from a sheer rock face, the other outstretched to measure the still doorway of a burrow, and thinking if I fall here, no one will ever find me. No mobile phones or SPOT Finders. Back then, burrows clustered close, a secret city of silk and leaves, and I had to tread with care, reverently, so as not to crush the delicate palisades. I imagined the hidden network beneath my feet, the quiet lives unfolding out of sight.

I often spoke to the spiders, though I knew they could not understand. “You’ve been here a long time, haven’t you?” I’d murmur, kneeling in the leaf litter. Sometimes I’d press a fingertip to the soft leaves near the burrow entrance, fancying that I was communicating with them that way, through the silken threads weaving outwards.

In the stark, charred aftermath of an intense fire, Karlene moves carefully through the blackened landscape, searching for survivors. Picture: courtesy of Karlene Bain.

On my most recent visit in 2024, I had to climb and walk for hours to find a single palisade and felt grief as I stood where whole clusters of spiders had once lived. There had been intense fires a few years prior, and while some vegetation had recovered, the gullies that had once been lush and green were still starkly black and charred, their soils cracked, dry, and exposed. Climbing was treacherous over steep slopes of shifting rock and mobile soil, a fragile, unsettled landscape. I knew that many of the Cataxias had been lost, and I moved carefully, documenting every surviving burrow with painstaking attention. The numbers were brutal: a staggering 98% decline in burrow counts since my first surveys in 2002.

A gully, once widely occupied by Cataxia, shows the marks of intense fire. Although the spiders persist, they are now confined to the most sheltered pockets beneath rocks, and in moist, sheltered crevices, holding on in the shadows of their fragile refuge. Picture: Karlene Bain.

Each survey has been telling the same story: fewer palisades, smaller clusters, more blank spaces where life once was. I always imagined my work as documenting survival, but now it feels more like recording a slow erasure. Watching is not enough. Something has to change, not just here in the gullies, but far beyond, in the places where funding is allocated and priorities are set by people who have never walked these slopes. The story of the watchers must be told loudly to move resources, policy, and will.

There is still hope. We can safeguard the last refuges of these fragile spiders and the many other short-range endemics that share their hidden homelands. We can reconnect fragmented populations, restore corridors between isolated pockets, and deepen our understanding of the microclimate and microhabitat conditions they depend on. This means committing to careful fire management that honours the delicate rhythms of these ecosystems, nurturing the slow recovery of native vegetation and soil, and enhancing post-fire microhabitats to soften the drying edge of an opened landscape. Long-term watching of the watchers must continue to guide our actions and help us learn what these ancient survivors need. Only through this blend of knowledge, care, and commitment can we hope to keep the watchers waiting, not for extinction, but for the return of rain and renewal. Their survival is a fragile thread woven through time, and our actions now will determine whether that thread endures or unravels.

Crouched at the top of the gully, Karlene takes a rare selfie against the vast expanse of Koi Kyenunu-ruff below. Burnt and recovering vegetation stretches out around her, but in the high gullies, among the rocks and crevices, surviving Cataxia were protected from the fire. Picture: Karlene Bain.
Climbing up a rocky crevice in the upper gullies of Koi Kyenunu-ruff, Karlene searches for Cataxia burrows. Scorched vegetation traces shadows across her face as she moves quietly through their hidden world. Picture: Karlene Bain.

Glossary of terms

Cataxia: Spiny trapdoor spiders of the Cataxia bolganupensis group. The genus is found in temperate montane habitats of the Stirling Range, Porongurup Range and Mount Manypeaks, in Western Australia’s Great Southern Region. This story relates to four species that are found in the Stirling Range.

Cretaceous Seas: Extensive shallow inland seas that covered large parts of the continents during the Cretaceous period, resulting from high global sea levels and the flooding of continental interiors.
Approximately 145 to 66 million years ago (Cretaceous Period).

Gondwana: A vast southern supercontinent that formed around 600 million years ago and remained largely intact for hundreds of millions of years. It included the landmasses that are now South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, and the Indian subcontinent.

This story uses the widely accepted Classic Sequential Rifting Model of Gondwana’s breakup, in which continents separated in a relatively orderly sequence. Under this model, Africa and South America separated about 140-130 million years ago; India began drifting northward around 130-120 million years ago; and Australia stayed connected to Antarctica until it finally separated approximately 85-45 million years ago. Other scientific models offer alternative explanations for how Gondwana fragmented.

Koi Kyenunu–ruff: Understood to be the Menang and Goreng Noongar name for the Stirling Range. It translates roughly to ‘mist rolling around the mountains’ or ‘place of the moving mists’, reflecting the frequent cloud and fog that shroud the high peaks. 

Miocene Sea Retreat: A period during the Miocene epoch when global sea levels dropped, causing the recession of inland seas and the expansion of drier terrestrial environments, particularly in Australia. Approximately 23 to 5.3 million years ago (Miocene Epoch).

Short-range endemic: A species with a naturally restricted geographic distribution, often confined to highly localised habitats.

WARM THANKS to Karlene Bain for the story and photographs. Editing by Gondwana Link’s Margaret Robertson and Keith Bradby. This story is also published in the September 2025 edition of the Southerly Magazine, pp. 22-27.

Further reading

Bain, K., Comer, S., and Main, B. Y. (In Press) Cataxia on the edge: Range contraction of montane mygalomorphs. Austral Entomology.

Rix, M.G., Bain, K., York Main, B., Raven, R.J., Austin, A.D., Cooper, S.J.B., and Harvey, M.S. (2017). Systematics of the spiny trapdoor spiders of the genus Cataxia (Mygalomorphae: Idiopidae) from south-western Australia: documenting a threatened fauna in a sky-island landscape. Journal of Arachnology: JoA-S-17-012R1.

Cataxia barrettae burrow with a beautiful palisade. Surviving in unburnt habitat, more leaf and flower material was available on the ground to construct the palisade. Picture: Karlene Bain.
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