and pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space
Jewel of the Sapphire Coast, or so merimbulatourism.com would have you believe. It certainly is pretty, lots of beach, a lake. It’s surrounded by national parks. It has an aquarium. It has grown apace in recent years.
I was on the rocks at the end of Short Point as the sun prepared to rise out of the sea.
Then a long walk by the lake and around the town …
The red flowers of this tree which I believe is Erythrina fusca, were extremely attractive to the local nectar eaters.
The subdued early light shows off the plumage of this heron to perfection.
Today we wake in the Lake Tyers Forest Park. Tonight we will be in Merimbula. The population density in the intervening country could easily be the lowest in coastal south east Australia. We will be passing some of my favorite places, the Croajingalong and Ben Boyd National Parks. These are denied to us today because we have the dog.
One spot than we can visit is the Cabbage Tree Flora Reserve. Baron Ferdinand Jakob Heinrich von Muller is credited with discovering this isolated pocket of palms in 1854. It is said to be the only patch in Victoria and it is the most southerly occurrence of any Australian native palm.
They grow quite tall, 20+ metres, along the creek surrounded by the wet forest .
As well as being scenically splendid this place is usually a birding hot spot. Not this day, the only creatures flying around were the mosquitoes.
The next port of call was Eden, watch out for the snakes, the first place of note in New South Wales. There is an old joke about spending a week in Adelaide one Sunday, you can do it in a Saturday afternoon in Eden. It does, though, have a very fine harbour.
We arrived in Merimbula just in time to catch the sunset.
Living in western Victoria there is some splendid countryside in easy reach but it’s nice occasionally to have a little variety. My home is just on the inland side of the Great Dividing Range. Great it is, but in length rather than height. It sweeps off to the east and then heads north. Its highest point is in southeastern New South Wales at Mount Kosciuszko which stands 2,228 metres (7,310 ft) tall. From there it continues north to the tip of Cape York in Queensland. It’s total length exceeds 3,500 kilometres (2,175 miles).
Whereas my part of the world is pretty dry, the Great Dividing Range catches a lot of rain. East of Melbourne, especially, it supports a lot of forest and that means a very different suite of birds.
I took the wife, the dog and my trusty camper trailer and spent a few days making a circuit of South East Australia.
We spent a couple of days in Melbourne at each end of the trip, in between we covered about 1400km in five days.
On day one we stopped for lunch in Sale. At a picnic spot by the lake the local avifauna consisted of an unruly mob of mostly rejected pets. They were quite happy to provide a close encounter so I sat down with a little bread and tried for a wide-angle close-up. It was hard getting them to pose nicely, their manners were appalling …
Whilst this guy was peering down at me I noticed that there were some much better behaved ducks on the water. Just a few feet away there were half a dozen Freckled Duck , not at least interested in the feeding frenzy nor all that bothered by my presence. They are Australia’s rarest waterfowl. A photo opportunity not to be missed …
Our camp site that night would be in the Lake Tyers Forest Park. A beautiful spot where the dog is legal and so is a campfire.
There are several designated camp sites reached by Tyers House Road just east of Nowa Nowa.It was a crisp and starry night.
I’ve been having a bit of a run around western Victoria and one of the highlights has been a visit to a couple of waterfalls on the Wannon River. They’re about 9km apart 16 km west of Hamilton and they’re well signposted off the Hamilton to Mt Gambier Road (B160). You can camp in the Wannon Falls Scenic Reserve.
The Wannon arises in the Grampians beneath Mt Abrupt and flows into the Glenelg River which reaches the sea in the far west of Victoria.
The geology of the falls is quite different. The Wannon Falls tumble over a hard lava bed between 1 and 2 million years old lying on top of softer rock. It’s a single drop of 30 metres into a plunge pool.
The Nigretta Falls tumble from shelf to shelf on much older rock (~400 million years) that is hard from top to bottom making it rather more spectacular to watch.
The tour ran from February 19, 2017 until March 7. The southern extension kicked off the next day and finished on the 13th.
The leaders were Uthai Treesucon and Keith Valentine and they were excellent.
The itinerary and accommodation were well chosen, transport was handled well. The food was good.
A group size of twelve could present problems but Rockjumper briefs participants on etiquette and on this occasion things ran very smoothly. How the organisation might have handled a crisis was never put to the test.
It is a hardcore birding tour, if your spouse is not a keen birder it would be tough for them. There is no associates program, days are long, the focus is intense. And for the birder very productive. The final tally for the tour was over 500 species, I saw 471 different birds and some good mammals. If you carry a camera you will bring back some very nice photos but it’s not the tour for the dedicated bird photographer the tempo is quite different from their requirements. One of the group has put a very large collection of their photos up <HERE>. If you’re preparing for a trip you could test your diagnostic skills on them.
So to mark Rockjumper’s report card … A+. I’ve already booked another tour. The next one is to Bhutan. What about the participants?
Most were repeat Rockjumper clients which says something about the company. The guys were gentlemen bird watchers, always polite, tolerant and cooperative. The girls on the other hand … I don’t know how many times I found myself examining the backs of their head through my binoculars. No, I exaggerate the group was remarkably congenial. There were tales of other trips and a lot of good humour. We were occasionally entertained by the sayings of Polly’s Mum one of which was …
If you’re looking for sympathy you’ll find it in the dictionary between shit and syphilis …
which is well worth remembering.
It is axiomatic that …
So it follows that if you can’t identify the arsehole it must be you.
I therefore tender my apologies to the fine men and women that I traveled with. I enjoyed it.
Krabi just before sunrise (it’s worth clicking on this photo) …
More time in the mangroves, first on foot and then by boat.
Two of the group, Polly and Paul, celebrated their 4,000th species on this little voyage, and even on this last day I was still adding lifers to my list including this one …
Tigers to the left, Possums to the right. The distance between Bali and Lombok is just 25 km but Asia’s woodpeckers, barbets and trogons are on one side, Australasia’s honeyeaters and cockatoos on the other. Huxley’s modification to the line tidies up a few problems, an excellent example being the genus Pachycephala, a literal translation – thick heads, more flatteringly known these days as the Whistlers. There are 32 species (following the Handbook of Birds of the World in this instance) and all of them are found to the east of Huxley’s version of Wallace’s Line.
When an Australians go birding in Asia they are confronted with not just with new species but whole new families. It can get confusing.
I’d been in Thailand for three weeks. New species were raining down the whole time. It was possible that I was missing the derisive laughter of the Kookaburra or my wife, or maybe the scent of eucalyptus. We were birding in the mangroves when I saw it, a little Aussie expat. It warmed the cockles of my heart springs …
I’ve seen Golden Whistler and Rufous Whistler in my own back yard and six other species in Australia. Some Whistlers have made it way out into the Pacific to the islands of New Caledonia, Tonga and Samoa but only one species straddles the mere 25 km that separate Lombok and Bali, the Mangrove Whistler. And it didn’t stop there, it can be found all the way up the Malayan Peninsula and then along the Asian coast from Vietnam to India.
It was then that I knew it was time to come home.
Our last patch of lowland forest, Sri Phang Nga National Park spans 246 square kilometres along a range of hills parallel to the Andaman Sea coast. It is just part of a larger forest which is big enough to sustain Great Hornbill, White-handed Gibbon and Dusky Langur. The forest is on a grand scale but access is limited , it is worth an extended visit but be prepared to cover the same ground repeatedly, although the nature of tropical birding is such that your encounters will be varied because of the high diversity of species and low density of most individuals.
Let me whet your appetite …
Streams in the park hold a diverse range of fish, tossing in a little food can bring a spectacular response.
This is Thap Lamu, not far from Khao Lak, where we caught the ferry. As you can see the sun is already up so we are somewhat behind our regular schedule but we do have an hour’s head start on the tourists …
Similan means Nine Islands in Yawi, which is the native tongue of the area. There are 11 of them. But then one of Victoria’s tourist destinations is called the Twelve Apostles …
The trip out takes about a 90 minute on the faster boats. The target birds were Pied Imperial and Nicobar Pigeons, they can take a while to find, I’m told. We found them very quickly. An unexpected Black Bittern also put in an appearance. Squirrels and Flying Foxes were present to represent the mammals.
The islands are absolutely gorgeous, sea, sky, rocks, beaches, Sea Eagles cruising by. Like the tour guide says, Paradise.
The tour guide doesn’t mention that paradise is a victim of its own success. By 11 o’clock it was an absolute zoo. We were the animals and the cage was getting pretty crowded and still the boats were disgorging more. We bailed at midday.
If you are tempted to go either stay on the island and make the most of the early mornings (making sure you are self sufficient so far as food goes) or stay on a boat. The diving and snorkeling look very tempting.
Day time birding in Khao Nor Chuchi was fairly good but it was the night birds that quickened the pulse.
One way or another birds had provided the locals with a small income for a long time. Initially it was by trapping for the cage bird trade, still quite big in Thailand, and when that became unfashionable money could be made taking the punters to see Gurney’s Pitta. That no longer pays but there is still a wealth of local knowledge that can be put to good use. The compulsive twitcher wants to come back from their trip with the biggest possible list and owls are among the hardest birds to find. They tend to use day time roosts repeatedly so if you know where they are you’re in business.
It meant that we were in the forest from before dawn to well after dark. One evening our targets were well beyond the reach of our minibuses so we transferred to a couple of 4WDs, one a nice new Prado, the other a ute. There were 12 paying passengers, two guides plus the local talent who would show us the birds. The Prado seated five, the ute seated two, the remaining nine traveled some very rough terrain in or almost in the tray. There are people who imagine that bird watching is dull.
In the space of a couple of nights we had good views of Brown Wood Owl and Blyth’s Frogmouth. The highlight for me was an encounter with a Colugo. Something collided with a tree close by. Playing the spotlight on the source of the noise revealed a mammal climbing the trunk. It would move both fore feet then both hind feet, it was quite quick but not particularly graceful because its progress was hindered by folds of membrane that were too large to fit completely beneath it …
The commentator calls them little but they can weigh up to 1.3 kg. The ability to glide has emerged independently in several distinct groups of mammals, the Colugos are the most accomplished of them and also the most closely related to ourselves. They are in the Euarchonta as are the primates.
As well as night birds by night we also saw a couple at their daytime roost, the Spotted Wood Owl and Barred Eagle Owl. They are both very shy and will bolt readily. We were conducted singly and with great stealth to see them half obscured in dense foliage. When everybody had taken a look the guides gave a sigh of relief and we all relaxed. At that point a youngster that had clearly not read the manual presented itself for a photo …
bobmcgee 