The local bird group – The Tempe Birdos has recently added a 100th bird to their bird list for birds seen at the Tempe Wetlands and Tempe Reserve. This is a fantastic achievement from a dedicated group of citizen scientists.
White Plumed Honeyeater
I went and joined the group for their usual second Saturday of the month observation morning at Tempe Wetlands. Continue reading
After being sick at home for the best part of a week with a bad cold, it was pleasant to get out and enjoy some local nature. I headed down to the Cooks River area to photograph some local wildlife.
I cycled along the cooks River from Dulwich Hill to the Cup and Saucer Creek Wetlands and then up Cup and Saucer Creek, and eventually finished off at the Landing Lights Wetlands. Continue reading
Today – The 7th September is supposed to be “Threatened Species Day”. How sad then that it has been marked by the destruction of a local forest area, an area that was one of the few remaining remnants of critically endangered Cooks River – Castlereagh Ironbark Forest.
This is a small area adjacent to the M5 Motorway and lies in the Wolli Ck Valley between Kingsgrove and Beverley Hills. Why have the trees been removed? The reason is that the land will be used as an access ramp – either for the expanded motorway or to access a tunnel. As native forest, it provided a haven for wildlife – including birds such as powerful owls. It takes many decades for trees to form hollows suitable for nesting birds and homes for sugar gliders. Continue reading
Ian Brown’s Wild Blue Mountains Calendar for 2017 is now available. Ian is a Blue Mountains based nature photographer, and once again has taken a very nice series of photographs which he has published in his calendar.
Copies can be ordered online from his website Ian Brown Photography or from selected bookshops in the Blue Mountains.
I have just finished reading a fine new book on the climbing history and other aspects of Balls Pyramid. The book is called “South Pacific Pinnacle – The Exploration of Balls Pyramid” and had been edited by Jim Smith with the aid of Keith Bell.
Balls Pyramid has been called the “worlds tallest sea stack”. It is an amazing pinnacle of rock, the last remnants of an old volcanic caldera that lies close to Lord Howe Island. Its spectacular summit is about 560 m above the sea. Continue reading
It had been a while since my last visit to the zoo. It was time to go again. Another reason for going was to see the newly arrived baby Langur – a Francois Langur or Leaf Monkey. These are an endangered species from Vietnam.
So after a train trip to the Quay and ferry and gondola ride I entered the zoo. The first thing I noticed was that the alligator section seemed to be closed. I don’t know why. The alligators seem to have no physical barrier separating them from their pool and where you get off from the gondola ride. Continue reading
I can remember seeing The Rock quite a few times as a young child – on car trips with my parents. It was hard to miss as you travel on the road from Wagga Wagga to Albury. It is quite dramatic in the way it rises up above the surrounding flat farming country.
I knew that there was a walking track up it, and it sounded like it was worth climbing. I had suggested it to David Hufton as a good place for a stopover on our road trip. On our drive out, it had not been convenient to call in there, but it was on the way home. we had spotted it from the Sturt Highway as we left Wagga Wagga early in the trip – and it certainly looked good. Continue reading
After our visit to the Pink Lakes, David Hufton and myself left Victoria and drove to Balranald, where we stopped for lunch and took advantage of those showers at the Discovery Centre that we had seen earlier.
We then headed to Griffith, and after a look around the town, we continued on to Venda and then into Cocoparra National Park. We had seen online that parts of the park were closed due to rain, and this was confirmed at the Information Centre at Griffith, so that greatly restricted our plans. But it looked like we could visit Falcon Falls at the south end of the park and camp at the Spring Hills Picnic Area nearby.
Falcon Falls
This proved to be a good plan. The road in was OK and the short walk to Falcon Falls was attractive. The waterfall was a little disappointing – there was only a trickle of water flowing over, but its situation was attractive with lots of rock outcrops and small cliffs. The rock appears to be sandstone and conglomerate. Continue reading
The next place we visited on the road trip with David Hufton was The Pink Lakes in NW Victoria. The lakes are situated in the large Murray Sunset National Park – but they are close to the edge of the park and can be reached on an all weather road.
The lakes lived up to their name – they really were pink. They are four salt lakes – Lake Hardy, Lady Crosbie, Lake Kenyon and Lake Becking. They are all salt lakes, with salt concentrations around 80 times higher than sea water. This makes for a fascinating environment. Their pink colour is due to a salt tolerant algae that lives in the water. Surrounding the lakes is salt tolerant vegetation. Continue reading
This was the main place David Hufton and myself wanted to visit on our road trip. We had continued on our way along the Sturt Highway via Hay to Balranald. There we called into the Discovery Centre – which is not only the local information centre, but also a great cafe with hot showers in the adjoining toilets (which we took advantage of later on the trip).
At the Discovery centre, we could obtain the latest information on the road conditions and the status of the national park. We heard that the park was open, but one of the roads going into the park seemed to be closed. Outback roads are often closed when it rains, as the road would soon be wrecked by vehicles if they drove along it in wet conditions. The road that was closed seemed to be the main road into the park from Balranald. But it sounded like an alternative road was still open and OK for 2WD cars. The other alternative was to drive further to Mildura and drive to the park from there – but that was a lot further out of our way. Continue reading
