BY JEM ANSHAW
Injured or sick animals at Aussie Ark have a new place to rest and recover thanks to the team at Bayswater Power Station.
Last month the new Vet Block was officially opened, celebrating the months of work put in by AGL staff to bring the vision to reality.
“It’s amazing for Aussie Ark, it’s been a real game changer for us,” Dean Reid, operations manager, said.
“Before we only had two little vet blocks up at the HQ, which is where the guys live and to have this vet block means we could bring all of our koalas where they were chlamydia tested, and they went to different places, and then they came back.
“We are able to hold animals here, and as you’ve seen today, there’s six animals in there. Without that, we couldn’t do the work we do, so it’s been a key and pivotal piece of infrastructure that we’ve got here.”
Taking animals back to the house was far from ideal, as transporting them was stressful and often impractical, but this made-for-purpose unit is already proving to be a valuable asset.
Aussie Ark is located in the remote Barrington Tops, where access to power is limited so the Vet Block has been fitted out with solar, battery and a backup generator to ensure the inhabitants are comfortable year round.
The partnership between Aussie Ark and AGL is not a new one, as Dean explained they help get a lot of big jobs done.
“AGL have been amazing supporters for us for many years, not only do they do that, all their staff get paid volunteer work eight hours each year. So they come up with two week lots, and it’s 10 people a day for two weeks, it’s like 600 man hours of work that we would otherwise never get done.”
Mitch Seears, head of maintenance and outages at Bayswater Power Station, shared that the idea to do something bigger grew from these volunteer days and realising that while the on the ground support was vital, they had the opportunity to do so much more.
“We have fitters, boilermakers, electricians, engineers, and realised we could contribute a little bit differently than just coming up and spending our volunteer days up here,” he explained.
“We had a fair bit of dialog with the Aussie Ark team, and said, how do we think we could contribute a little bit more with the skills that we have?”
It evolved into quite a significant project that took around nine months to complete and engaged not only AGL staff but some contract partners.
“I think the feeling of contribution to what the cause is up here is rewarding, and to see some of the videos that we’ve already seen so far, where they are bringing the koalas, having the team of vets come up to treat the koalas for chlamydia, and then to be able to release them back to the wild, into the sanctuary, is amazing,” Mitch said.
