Toby Davidson thumps along in his four-wheel drive on an unsealed road, looking left and right for a round and hairy bump in grassy fields.
The hairy bumps he’s looking for in the Macdonald Valley area are wombats — particularly ones with a parasitic mange infection.
If he does see a wombat with ripped and raggedy fur, it’s go time.
“When I see a wombat with mange, I slam my foot on the brakes, hop out of the car,” Mr Davidson says.
“I catch the wombat in a net and then I give it medicine.”
Videos on Instagram showing Mr Davidson treating wombats with mange have gone viral.
He approaches the scraggly, mange-infected marsupials, sometimes trapping them in a large net, and pours liquid on their back from a bottle.
It’s all in a day’s work for the 25-year-old, who spent half his upbringing in the Macdonald Valley area.
He used to split his time between helping wombats in need and a digital marketing job in Sydney, a two-hour drive away.
But now, thanks to the generosity of strangers on the internet and a leap of faith, he’s leaving that full-time job to dedicate himself to helping wombats.
A wombat with ‘cracked, bleeding eyes’
Mr Davidson remembers the first time he saw a wombat as an eight-year-old on his parents’ property near St Albans.
He saw it while out walking and wanted to see how close he could get.
He managed to get close enough to touch it — but there was a disturbing reason why the wombat didn’t notice him until then.
Mr Davidson didn’t know it at the time, but the wombat likely had mange, which left untreated leads to blindness, starvation and death in wombats.
“It peered up at me through these cracked, bleeding eyes,” Mr Davidson says.
“I needed to know what that creature was. I needed to know what was wrong with it.”
Dawn of The Wombat Guy
Mr Davidson treated his first wombat on his family’s property in 2014, when he was 15.
He used medicine he bought online and got around on a pushbike, often staying out late to treat them.
“Once I fixed the ones at our place, I went to the neighbours and then went to their neighbours,” Mr Davidson says.
“Then they told [others] about me and now I’m just all over the place.”
It’s earned him the nickname “The Wombat Guy” among locals.
Since then, he’s upgraded from the bike to a four-wheel drive, and he now gets requests from people in the community, as well local wildlife organisations such as WIRES.
“It’s a bit less ad hoc now,” Mr Davidson says.
His mission has since gone into overdrive, after a video he posted showing him pouring treatment on a mangy wombat went viral.
Following the video’s success, Mr Davidson asked for some donations to help him pay for medication with a GoFundMe, and ended up raising $70,000.
“I didn’t even expect to crack $1,000,” he says.
“I’ve been able to quit my day job that I’ve used to pay for the medicine … now I’m basically catching wombats almost full-time.”
Where there’s wombats, there’s mange
Mange is a problem for wombats well beyond the Hawkesbury.
Sarcoptic mange is an infection caused by a mite called Sarcoptes scabiei.
It appears in more than 200 mammals, but has been particularly bad for wombats, according to biologist Julie Old.
“It’s probably got something to do with the fact that they live in burrows and in the burrows it’s a nice standard temperature and humidity,” she says.
Dr Old’s studies suggest the mite likely came into Australia through livestock and animals.
“The mite burrows into the skin of the wombat and they cause the wombat to become very itchy … so they’ll scratch a lot,” she says.
“Over time, it’ll open up wounds and they’ll get bacterial infections, and so they end up dying from that.”
Dr Old runs WomSAT, which collects information on citizen sightings of wombats with and without mange around the country, and says the problem is widespread.
“Basically, wherever you find wombats, you find sarcoptic mange,” Dr Old says.
“Wombats can’t get rid of mange themselves … it’s a terrible disease.”
More boots needed on the ground
Wildlife rescue charity WIRES treats around 1,000 cases of mange in wombats around the state every year, if not more.
The group are training hundreds of volunteers in a new course to help treat mange in wombats.
It’s a free online course, designed to teach landowners and keen conservationists how to treat mange.
It also supplies them with the necessary pour-on medication.
WIRES program manager Kristie Newton says wombats can be treated for mange “out in the field”.
“There’s too much mange and not enough of us, so we really need the community to help us,” she says.
‘Archaic and basic, but it works’
Another solution to wombat mange, used by Mr Davidson and WIRES, is burrow flaps.
The flap is set-up at the entry of a wombat’s burrow and attached is a cup of mange-treating medication, which tips onto the wombats back when they enter.
Ms Newton says this technique is more effective for treating whole populations.
“It just means that even if we can’t physically see the wombat, we can still make sure it’s getting that treatment that it needs,” Ms Newton says.
“It’s very archaic and basic, but it works.”
The biggest challenge is that the medication only stops the mites that are on the wombats at the time, and they can be reinfected.
Ms Newton says to rid mange from an area and stop the cycle, it’s necessary to treat between 150 and 200 burrows for a couple of months.
“You need a lot of human resources. So even if we have a lot of people, we still need more.”
A vision of the future
Topping up the burrow flap medication is a regular feature of Mr Davidson’s day and sometimes, flaps have been knocked over and need to be reset.
Just as Mr Davidson is walking back to his car after a day of fixing busted burrow flaps, a bush rustles in the distance.
“There,” he says, spotting a wombat.
He crouches down and tries to get close, only moving while the wombat’s head is down grazing the grass.
Just 10 metres away, he stops and looks to his right — and spots another wombat ambling up a slope in the bush.
Mr Davidson can’t wipe the smile from his face.
Both the wombats are mange-free and looking healthy, he says.
This evening’s sightings are exactly the future he wants to see.
