Day 1. Sept 10th. Brisbane to St George

Many tourism brochures are written as though the outback starts in the cattle farms just 50km inland.  I don’t feel we’re in the outback until we’ve past all the farmland, all the cotton crops etc. and onto free-range country or wilderness, with red soil and semi-arid vegetation. Thus our first day took a us a few hundred kilometres west to the edge of the outback, the town of St George, stopping briefly for morning tea, lunch and birdwatching, and to show our English guest his first wild emus. The end of the day saw us strolling along the Ballonne River, watching woodswallows and white-plumed honeyeaters, a hearty pub meal and settling into our ‘luxury’ accommodation for the trip, a motel with private shower and toilet   Day2.

Just after dawn Darren dropped us at the edge of town so we could walk across the bridge into the outback, but pausing for birdwatching as we did so. A royal spoonbill was swishing his bill around in the water below, two beautiful night-herons sat in company with great egrets on the trees overhanging the water, and a raptor – either a little eagle or a whistling kite flew quickly overhead and out of sight.   Soon we were stopping the vehicle again for a group of Major Mitchell cockatoos feasting on native cypress cones. We were cautious at first not to disturb them but they seemed unperturbed by our presence as we tried all angles for photos.

A red-winged parrot was more wary, flying in for a brief feed and continuing quickly on his way. A spiny-cheeked honeyeater perched above us for a short time. Our English guest soon saw his first wild kangaroos. We saw both reds and greys, but the photo to the right is of two red kangaroos – a female (they are grey in colour) and a young male, probably her offspring. On our way to Bollon, we also saw several groups of emus, a wedge-tailed eagle and a brown falcon.   As we reached Bollon, three emus were casually strolling across the road in the middle of the township.

It was mid-afternoon when we reached our first unsealed road, travelling south of Eulo on red sands to the start of Currawinya National Park, our main destination for the next couple of days, and we saw quite a few kangaroos and emus.

At the Royal Mail Hotel, Hungerford, our guests tried the trick of throwing money, wrapped around a couple of 20c pieces and periced by a drawing pin, to the ceiling as a donation to the Flying Doctor service

Day3 Our day started with a birdwalk, seeing the ubiquitous emus as well as white-plumed honeyeaters, woodswallows and a whistling kite, and Darren  changing a flat tyre. While feasting on a big breakfast al fresco and chatting with a couple of pilots of light aircraft who’d flown in for the night, spiny-cheeked honeyeaters and grey shrike-thrushes visited the trees nearby. And instead f the usual noisy miners, the shrubs were occupied by yellow-throated miners Darren had a go at riding a “backwards bicycle” – turning the handlebars to the right made the bike turn left, and vice versa, so a fair bit of concentration is needed

The RAMSAR-declared lakes were full of water but not as many birds as we had hoped.  Still, we saw plenty of pelicans, black swans, terns and a few other species, and PLENTY of emus.

The Granites rise suddenly from the surrounding plains, giving an entirely different feel to the landscape, and we always enjoy exploring these.

As we left, ur guest Andrea spotted a Central Australian bearded dragon on a tree. He sat motionless, apparently convinced his camouflage was fully effective, as we approached for a better view, and was still in the same position as we left.

We tried to find the ranger for a second time but the office was – as for the day before – unoccupied.  I had tried a couple of weeks previously to ring to book our campsite, but there is no online booking for this park, and no one at head office was able to give me the number of the ranger’s office.  I finally had found the number from the owner of the Hungerford pub, and left a message on their answering service, so that plus the form I filled in and left in the box outside the office had to suffice, but Ialways like to chat a bit with the rangers when we visit. After looking around the old wool-shed, we continued north towards our campsite at the Paroo River, stopping along the way to watch the full moon rise.

After a three-course meal of soup, coconut lentil curry and pavlova under the full moon, we settled into our ‘beds’. One guest had brought a swag that she set up facing the river so she could watch for waterbirds in the moonlight and see the sunrise without leaving bed. The rest of us strung comfortable hammocks between the trees and viewed the procession of stars and moon through the night any time we awoke.

 

Day 4

The moon set as the sun was rising.   Several white-headed herons flew lazily by, as did a whistling kite.  A black-eared cuckoo fossicked  on soil and tree-trunk, and we saw many white-plumed honeyeaters and woodswallows in the trees.

The small town of Eulo had some drama recently as the general store caught fire and burnt to the ground,  and a gas cylinder torpedoed across the road, setting fire to the verandah of a house – a verandah on which a lady was standing at the time. It seemed strange to see the empty space and burnt-out petrol bowsers

The date farm was temporarily closed, so we couldn’t pick up a bottle of their delicious date liqueur or relax in a warm mud bath

At the nearby lagoon we watched yellow-billed and royal spoonbills, black-fronted dotterells and a little friarbird, in addition to the usual magpielarks and willy wagtails, then spent that night in the Eulo Queen Hotel.

We headed pre-dawn to the well-known birdwatching spot by the waterhole a few kilometres out of town, but this time it was rather disappointing, except for a red-capped robin and a rufous whistler in the nearby woodland.

Bowra is a former cattle station near Cunnamulla long known as a birding hotspot and now belonging to the Australian Wildlife Conservancy.  We had originally planed to spend a couple of nights here but had shortened our trip, but decided to take a quick look anyway. The highlights were a river lined with river red gums and a male emu with a beautiful brood of chicks

Our final night was spent once again in St George, where in the morning we watched a small flock of red-rumped parrots feeding on the lawn, presumably on fallen seeds or grass seeds

 

 

And finally back to Brisbane, missing the red sands, emus and major mitchells and looking forward to next year’s excursion out west

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