We headed north today and out of the wet Tropics it seemed. We visited Granite Gorge where my dad knew we would see rock Wallabies even though they would be habitualised, in that I mean used to and interacting with humans. The landscape was drier and a more open woodland of Eucalyptus and tall grasses. This is more like I remembered Australia when I visited with Trish. The colours are faded and bleached. Where there were crops it was vast fields of bananas or maize.
On our way I saw something dead on the road, a big bird that turned out to be an owl. Rigor Mortis had set in but the eyes were still glass like. We were able to identify it as a Southern Boobook. I’m sure the car that passed us slowly thought we were completely nuts picking up roadkill.
Granite Gorge is a campsite come park. It was a strange place with a menagerie and farm animals. The rock wallabies were very tame and used to people, they even provide food for them. We didn’t feed them. We did get some pictures and did see some later, behaving naturally away from the center.
We took a walk among the Granite rocks, it was hot and quite strenuous for both of us. It is a strange place, clearly a lot of water runs through here at times and quite recently by the way logs and debris were pushed up under some of the boulders.
I read afterwards that someone died when swimming in one of the pools because they got pulled under some of the boulders by the current.
I did try to go further on a tougher route leaving my Dad to wait, but after precariously balancing above a hole between the boulders I decided I was not able to fly and should turn back. I thought if I twist my ankle, our holiday would be ruined as I’m the driver. When I got back to where I left dad, he was nowhere to be found! He had gone quite a way ahead.
My dad is fit but he describes himself as doddery which has meant giving a hand on the narrow or uneven paths but, my god he yomped up a steep granite slab, we were both breathing hard when we stopped.
As we left the Gorge we saw a Great Bower Bird. It was such a fabulous find with a mauve breeding plumage in the back of its head. It didn’t take long to identify it.
Driving on to Mareeba, we stopped in various places around the town and picked up a number of new birds and some that seem so common now like the picture below, the Australian Ibis.
We took a long drive to a wetlands reserve that was closed so we drove on to Mossman. We took a bit of a diversion because we saw a sign which we misread and it led us through some woods to a dead end but just before that, we saw a Pademelon (not sure of the variety) cross the track in front of us. There was some sort of rescue centre dedicated to them nearby.
It’s very strange as we crossed the mountain range back toward the coast the temperature and the humidity increased and it becomes tropical again.
A quick tally with Dad this evening and it looks as though we’ve had 71 species of bird so far. Not bad for the blind leading the blind! Tomorrow we will have a local guide who will hopefully be able to identify some of the song birds and some of small birds we have no idea about.
The Travelling Bee 