A precious clutch of endangered, bum-breathing Mary River turtle babies has defied the odds by surviving huge floodwaters and hatching long after rescuers feared they may have died.
Graziers, dairy farmers, and members of the Mary River Catchment Coordinating Committee (MRCCC) gathered to release the hatchlings, excited to have saved them.
The ancient species, sometimes called "punk" turtles for the algae that grows on their heads, extract oxygen from gills in their rear ends.
They can also live for more than a century.
But they take at least 25 years to become sexually mature, and their numbers have dipped dangerously low due to habitat destruction and their eggs once being plundered for the pet trade.
Protecting their habitat was one of the reasons the controversial Traveston Crossing dam proposal was axed.
Conservation effort
So when workers from the Mary River Catchment Coordinating Committee found a nest, precariously laid in a badly eroded sandbank at Kenilworth in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, they sought advice and moved the eggs to a predator-proof cage.
Then an extreme weather event that nobody predicted flooded the nest for more than ten hours at their new location at Moy Pocket.
"We were really despairing because the flood came up quicker than we thought," MRCCC chairman Ian Mackay said.
The average time it take for Mary River turtle eggs to hatch is 55 days but they did not emerge until day 76, one of the longest documented incubation periods on record.
"[We were] just about to give up hope and we sought the advice of Marilyn Connell, and she said 'never give up'," Ms Nash said.
To Ian and Sally Mackay's delight, a daily check found that the eggs had not only hatched, but 14 of the 16 survived.
Seqwater helps fund the Mary River stewardship program and the farmers who gathered have been working hard with the MRCCC to protect the riverbanks the turtles nest in.
"We've got dairy farmers and graziers and many people that have lived and worked along the Mary River for many years," Ms Nash said.
