Extract from ABC News
Being isolated for four months is the stuff of nightmares for most people, but for Sally Gray the biggest wet season in 100 years is a welcome chance to dust off her macro camera lens and capture the natural beauty of her backyard.
Piccaninny Plains Wildlife Sanctuary, in the middle of the Cape York Peninsula, is one of the last wild, undeveloped places left in Australia.
"So it's just really special because it's like a little time capsule of what country used to be like before when we changed it … 'we' being European settlement," Ms Gray said.
"What is magical about this part of the country is that it is still wild, and it is still how it has always been."
Making the most of record rain
Ms Gray, the assistant manager of Piccaninny Plains Wildlife Sanctuary, has been stuck at home since before Christmas after the region recorded 2,420 millimetres, or 2.4 metres, of rain.
"We can't move out of our homestead at the moment without bogging ankle deep as we walk around in the grass and we certainly cannot get off the property unless we have a helicopter," she said.
"We haven't been able to get to our front gate, which is five kilometres away, since just before Christmas."
For the most part, Ms Gray doesn't mind the isolation, as it offers the opportunity to photograph the landscape as it transforms before her.
"We probably won't see anyone else on the property for up to four months, maybe even longer," she said.
"But having said that, it's an absolutely extraordinary experience to be so embedded in country like this and to live with country and the cycles of the season and the animals so intimately."
Managed by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC), the 176,000-hectare property is protected habitat for threatened species.
"We go from parched, crispy, dry in the dry season, to this iridescent, almost blindingly green landscape in the wet season," she said.
"It's something that very, very few people would ever experience."
'It will look incredible'
Ms Gray said she was also looking forward to seeing more of the property, once the water had receded.
"I'm really excited to get out again and get down to the rivers and see what's happening and to see the animals again and to see how the country is looking because it will look incredible," she said.
Ms Gray said there had only been one day without rain since the third week of January and as a result native grasses were dominating.
"We've had very little sunshine, so the growth of grass is actually quite minimal this year compared to other seasons," she said.
"Normally in a regular wet season where we get rain, sun, rain, sun, the introduced species of grasses dominate.
"So it's going to be very interesting to see what the feeding of those native grasses brings in terms of your seed-eating birds and animals."
She said there were 70 wetlands of national significance on the property that would become inundated and cleaned out.
"So it's that whole cycle again of wet and dry and flushing the wetland systems out in the lagoons that bring fresh water in," she said.
"But this year, it's just like we're experiencing with all of our weather everywhere with climate change … the peaks are becoming higher, and the troughs are becoming lower.
"Up here, the country has the capacity to absorb the water so it doesn't take long after the rain stops, and the sun comes out and the wind blows for country to dry."
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