Like so many people passionate about the environment,
Sean Morrow lives and breathes it.
Every day, he brings his work home with him,
or is it the other way around?
As a professional landscaper,
Sean specialises in gardens filled with habitat features.
And this is his home -
a glorious 6.5 acres in the Noosa hinterland.
It's surrounded by mountains and bordered by creeks,
and there's very few neighbours.
It's here that Sean's been able to indulge his habitat hobby -
building frog ponds.
So, how many ponds have you built here?
About 50 to 60 at the moment,
but I had plans for 150 at the least.
Um, yeah, look,
I can't...I can't stop, mate.
(CHUCKLES) I'm obsessed.
(LAUGHS) Definitely.
I like obsessive people.
Doesn't matter if I'm attracting frogs or birds or lizards,
there's little niches that all those little creatures want,
so I've just gotta create those diverse niches.
It's basically creating real estate and then the animals move into that.
It's instantaneous.
Sean's obsession with wildlife and ponds
started early in life.
Can't think of a time when I haven't been excited by all of nature.
So, I said my first pond went in when I was eight.
Managed to get three ponds in. Convinced my dad to do that.
So... But that's where it all started.
Sean's been here for 20 years,
and in that time, his passion for and knowledge of local wildlife
have grown enormously.
But I spend so much time just sitting still, watching,
even seeing birds interacting with each other that I hadn't seen before
or seeing...you know, seeing a kookaburra
fly down and grab a snake off the ground
and just...it's powerful.
So for me, observation is absolutely critical.
And along the way, he's transformed this former horse paddock
into a biodiverse paradise.
So what was it like when you first arrived here?
It was just grass, gum trees and the house and a dam.
But there was nothing else - there was no other habitat.
A few other trees planted up here
but predominantly it was open lawn
and nowhere for any animals to hide or find food or find a mate,
so it was very barren.
So where did you begin with the project?
The first thing was started putting ponds in,
and then after about five years I started putting...
..I got to about 12 ponds at that point.
And then animal numbers started building up, particularly frogs,
and then as time went on,
all the other animals came into the system,
so all the animals that like to eat frogs came in.
So, effectively, over a five-year period,
you built a new food chain.
Yes.
Instead of allowing water to flow straight into the dam,
Sean's followed the natural watercourse over the block,
installing habitat at every turn.
It's about observation - observing where the water flows -
and then some of those channels get dug out,
so actually trying to divert water into locations.
What did you need to bring in?
So, the most important thing, water, and then mulch,
rocks, logs,
and then what's really critical is layers of vegetation,
'cause frogs are living in all of the layers of vegetation.
They're right up in the trees, they're in the palms,
they're in the grasses, the ground covers.
I need to have those layers of vegetation as well.
I notice that you've planted quite heavily around the ponds
rather than in them.
Yes, yes.
Look, I prefer to have a lot of vegetation
that spills around the edges.
Cane toads don't like penetrating through thick grasses like this,
so I used to keep a lot of thick grasses around my ponds
to stop the toads breeding.
Your species selection really brings a lot of biodiversity with it.
Yes. I use dianella, which is a local native species
which also has an edible berry that I like to eat and birds like to eat.
Lomandra - Lomandra hystrix is my favourite one.
In terms of inside the pond, sometimes I use juncus, isolepsis,
or I use woolly frogsmouth.
So, what varieties of frogs like this ephemeral type of pond?
In South-East Queensland,
almost a third of the species breed in temporary water.
Cascade frogs
and the big, large green tree frogs that everyone knows,
they go from egg to frog in a matter of a few weeks,
very rapidly.
They love ephemerals. They generally prefer a temporary water supply.
Other species, like many of the tree frogs,
prefer an elevated outlook.
I started experimenting with star pickets and bathtubs,
lifting them up high,
so I've got some even higher, some lower,
to see what kind of animals would come and utilise it.
And what were the results?
Well, I got tree frogs predominantly breeding in here.
Predominantly for tree frogs, yeah.
How important is location for your ponds?
Look, it's absolutely critical.
The ponds have to be getting some sun
and some shade throughout the day.
Lots and lots of sun, they're gonna get hot,
they're gonna get too much algae growth,
so it's just a nice balance between the two.
Some sun, some shade.
The standard response I get when I say to someone,
"Oh, put a water feature in," or, "Let's make a little frog pond,"
is, "Aaah! No, mosquitoes!"
How do you deal with that?
First, a waterfall or a fountain - get the water moving.
That's the easiest way of doing that.
Introduce fish if you have to,
but my preference is patience
and let nature balance it out naturally.
It's about bringing all those other predators in that eat mosquitoes.
They're really important in the food chain.
Sean has also invested
in more permanent and attractive ponds
that he can admire from his house.
So, this garden bed here
has a pond with deeper, permanent water.
Yeah. So, this is one of the few ponds
that's for me as well as the animals,
because it was important for me to see it from the house as well.
But I love this one because it's linked in to the water supply,
so when the tanks are overflowing on the house,
it flows to a pond here and then it flows into this one,
so it just gets recharged regularly.
If you've only got room for one or two ponds,
make them permanent, definitely.
This is particularly bringing in
little eastern sedgefrogs,
and also striped marsh frogs love this pond.
How many species of frogs have you recorded on the site?
Well, when I first got here, there would have been maybe two or three,
and now, after 20 years, I've recorded about 17 different species.
(CROAKS)
Is there an end to your addiction?
No. No, no, no.
(LAUGHS) Unlikely.
I love it! Then it will be the end of my life.
That will be when I no longer... Yeah.