IELTS Practice Test 8

Transcript (on the real test you hear this once)

Mel: Morning, everyone, and welcome to Tallowood Wetlands Reserve. I'm Mel Davidson, one of the rangers. First, a bit of history. Because of all the ponds, visitors often assume this was a sand quarry, but the ponds were only dug when the restoration began. Back in the eighties a developer wanted to build a golf course here, though that never went ahead. For about eighty years before that, the land was grazed by dairy cattle.

The car park's small, so at weekends do think about the shuttle bus from Bellbird Creek station. Your leaflet says it runs every thirty minutes, but the timetable changed last week, and it's now every forty — except on Sundays, when there's only one an hour.

A word about dogs. Until last year, dogs on a lead were allowed on the Heron Loop and at the picnic shelter. But since we reintroduced bandicoots, which are very easily disturbed, dogs can't go any further than the car park.

Have a look at the map. We're in the visitor centre at the bottom, with the car park to the west. The path goes clockwise round the main lagoon. Walk straight up from the car park, and the first place the path reaches the water is the canoe launch. Carry on up the western shore and, about halfway along, you'll come to the picnic shelter under a huge fig tree. At the top, directly across the water from the visitor centre, is the bird hide. Just past it, in the north-east, there's a wooden platform — people mistake that for the hide, but it's a photography lookout with no roof. Then the path comes down the eastern side on the boardwalk, and just before you get back here, on your left, is the frog pond.

People often ask why we spent so much on that boardwalk. It does make the eastern side accessible for wheelchairs, which is a bonus, and it's a bit quicker. But the reason we built it was that walkers were trampling the reeds along the bank, exactly where the swamphens nest.

There are also three longer walks. The Heron Loop used to flood after heavy rain and we'd have to close it, but it was raised last winter, so that's no longer a problem, and it gives you the best views across the lagoon. The Paperbark Walk is the shortest, only twenty minutes, though I'm afraid tree roots make it unsuitable for wheelchairs. Some of you asked about doing the Ridge Track on your own. Unfortunately it crosses a neighbour's land, so it's only open when a ranger takes a group up.

Now, volunteers. Weed removal is every Tuesday morning. Water testing used to be on Wednesdays, but the lab now collects samples on Monday afternoons, so we test on Monday mornings. Schools visit most weekdays, but staff handle those, and volunteers only guide school groups on Fridays. Saturdays are for tree planting.

As for what to bring: please don't bring your own gloves — we wash ours between sites so weed seeds don't spread. We've got gumboots in every size, too. And leave insect repellent at home; it washes into the water and affects the frogs. What you will need is a broad-brimmed hat and a refillable water bottle.

Every volunteer fills in a registration form on the first day. Volunteers aged fourteen or fifteen are welcome, but they'll also need a consent form signed by a parent. And finally, our annual bird count used to be held in November, but by then many birds had already left, so it's now the second weekend of October, with a short training session for counters at the end of September.