Care For The Land

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday September 20, 2008

David Wilson

A love of the outdoors leads to a big change, writes David Wilson.

It was once Natalie Middleton's job to help put Australia's top-gun pilots in the sky. As an aircraft manufacturing quality engineer with aerospace company Hawker de Havilland, she was involved in the production of the F/A18 fighter jet used by the Royal Australian Air Force. It was a role she cherished.

But in 2003, after 15 years in the job, she decided it was time for a change. After considering her out-of-hours interests, including camping and travelling, she opted to embark on a career caring for the environment as a park ranger.

Middleton's first step was to enrol at the University of Melbourne for a three-year bachelor's degree in natural resource management. The course prepares students for a career tending Australia's land, water and unique flora and fauna.

"I found the degree quite tough at the start," Middleton says. "I hadn't completed much study since I left school many moons [before]." Despite not having studied science subjects, such as chemistry or biology, Middleton graduated in 2006.

Next she undertook volunteer work for Parks Victoria and started applying for a series of jobs with the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS).

"Competition for each job is very high, especially jobs near the coast," she says. "Landing a ranger job with NSW NPWS is very hard."

Middleton's persistence paid off when she was employed as a ranger in the Sturt National Park, stationed in Tibooburra.

Her first days in the role were nerve-racking. It was challenging just to get her head around the size and diversity of her beat.

The park is the state's third-largest and covers 325,000 hectares. It has habitats including red sand dunes, a range of flat-topped hills known as the Jump Ups, the spectacular Grey Range, swathes of pebbly country and the Dog Fence, the longest fence in the world.

Middleton's role is to manage the park and its surroundings. This can entail surveying the land, planning infrastructure improvements, patrolling camp grounds, identifying snakes that are handed into the office and, sometimes, firefighting.

The last bushfire in the park occurred in 1977 but she gets sent in a fire engine to other bushfires raging on the service's land across the state.

Firefighting is hot work, Middleton says. "The trouble is you are wearing all your personnel-protective equipment and working hard to put the blaze out."

While her old and new careers are vastly different, Middleton says some skills were transferable. These include being able to operate computers, carry out major planning and communicating with people.

The most challenging aspects of her new job are the flies, the lack of decent coffee in the outback and the heat.

Tibooburra is the hottest and most remote town in NSW. During summer, the temperature regularly soars above 40 degrees, sapping energy fast.

The nearest large town, Broken Hill, is a five-hour drive away, 300 kilometres to the south. Because 10 other staff members work in the area, including some "fantastic and inspirational" people, Middleton never gets lonely.

Much of her day is spent at a desk, writing environmental plans and managing projects. Typically, a ranger spends 85 per cent of their time in the office and 15 per cent in the park. "I would love it the other way around but it isn't possible," Middleton says, adding that paperwork and red tape are the biggest down side.

The most entertaining aspect of her job is dealing with children. She says she recently was amused when Tibooburra parks service donated a threatened plant species to the local school. While the plant in question, Grevillea kennedyana, occurs in a few select areas within NSW, when the children saw the plant they all claimed to have one in their backyards.

Middleton says the best aspect of her job is that every day is different. On a busy day she may cover 350 kilometres, crossing from one side of the park to the other and see plenty of wildlife, including red kangaroos, emus, wedge-tailed eagles and, during the warmer months, all kinds of reptiles. These can include central bearded dragons, shingleback lizards and the king brown and eastern brown snakes.

Middleton's favourite place is a sacred site, a scattering of 400-million-year-old granite outcrops that give Tibooburra its name ("heaps of rocks") and lure visitors from all over the world. She says she enjoys showing visitors the best place to walk at sunset and the best place to camp out under the stars.

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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