And some more pictures attached. They are: A very tall palm tree, some interesting looking vegetation (strangler fig?), Elabana Falls (we were at the top of the falls), one of many awesome mushroom-y things, Moran Falls and surrounding scenery, and the road leading to O'Reilly's. Note: the first two pictures have uploaded sideways.
I am enjoying reading these posts LD, O'Reilly's sounds like a fantastic place. I think it would be a great place to visit on my next trip, but then I looked at the prices online. Maybe not...
It is an absolutely amazing place which I would definitely recommend a visit to but I think 'jolly expensive' sums it up well (if you do go, bring your own food to save money. We brought enough to do two meals a day in the room (which for our room only had tea and coffee facilities) to only have to eat one meal in the restaurant). For me booking well in advance it was a little under $600 for three nights for a twin room so around $100 per person per night. The only alternative though is to stay in the campsite that I mentioned which is only $4.50 per night for a plot but you would of course need your own tent.
I just stayed in the campsite run by the National Park. It is a couple of minutes walk from O'Reilly's and, like LaughingDove says, just a few dollars a night.
Also you can actually do the O'Reilly's activities even if not staying there (I think that is mainly for people visiting on day trips but I assume people on the campsite can as well) and if I remember correctly the morning bird walks were $20 each for people not staying there.
I am very much enjoying this thread. What are some of the quirks that you, as a tourist, have noticed about Australia? For example, one Zoochatter commented when they first moved to Australia that they didn't get how we had to use a gold coin to release a trolley in the supermarket, or that in many shops you had to spend $20 or more to use a credit card.
I might point out that said Zoochatter didn't "not get it", he just thought (paraphrasing) that it was idiotic.
And still thinks it idiotic... And so uses multiple baskets for shopping in such supermarkets and buys vouchers for multiple coffees to avoid card fees in cafes (at least my local).
The nearest Coles requires a gold coin to unlock the trolley for use, although it more a bond, as you get the coin back when you return the trolley to the trolley bay.
Putting in a coin to get out a trolley isn't something that I noticed as weird in Australia because it is far more common in the UK than it is here. I've only seen a very small number of supermarkets in Australia that require coins but the vast majority in the UK do. Anyway I think that makes perfect sense to stop people leaving trolleys lying around and making them put their trolleys back as they should. A while ago I mentioned the other quirks with supermarkets that I noticed: the '12 items or less' signs, the fact that they give you loads of plastic bags for free rather than making you pay to encourage you to bring your own bags, and also that there are no 1 or 2 cent coins so they can't give proper change if buying something for .99. There aren't too many quirks that I noticed because this wasn't my first visit to Australia, I visit at least once every two years to see family. One thing that comes to mind were the ridiculous number of political adverts in the weeks before the election which rather than talking about their own party were just talking about how terrible the other parties were!
Day 11 – Another Day in Lamington National Park – 17th of July I had one more day in Lamington which I wanted to use to get a better view of the lyrebird and also to visit part of the non-rainforest section of the national park to get a few more birds that I couldn’t get in the rainforest bit. As it turned out, I found a route that could do both of these which was a track leading through supposedly lyrebird-infested forest ending in the Eucalyptus forest. Anyway, we did of course start with the early morning birdwalk. It was with one of the usual guides this time and we did the same route as the previous day and all of the tame birds came up – the bowerbirds, scrubwrens, turkeys, robins, and whipbirds and we chanced upon a spinebill too - however the guide didn’t present them with quite the same, how do I put it… flare, as Glen the previous day. I did see one new bird from this part of the boardwalk though, a Bassian Thrush which was very similar to the Russet-tailed Thrush of the first day, but with a few small differences allowing it to be identified. However in addition to the boardwalk through the forest, we went down to the bottom of the lawn area of O’Reilly’s grounds, near to the same area as I saw the Superb Fairy-wrens yesterday and while we were looking at a Grey Shrike-thrush in a tree above the giftshop and café I noticed another bird fly in. A female riflebird!!! I couldn’t believe it, it was right here, metres from where I was staying! I called out of course and let the guide and the other people on the tour know. As well as the main guide doing the walk there was a second guide who was still learning and you may recall in the previous post I mentioned that there was one new guide who joined two and a half weeks ago and hadn’t yet seen a riflebird. This was his first. So the two of us were really excited while the rest of the group wondered why we were so excited at this brown bird while the more experienced guide who was leading the walk looking on in seeming amusement. Well rather than a fleeting glimpse like the previous day, this female stayed in the tree for a while hopping between the branches digging in the lichen even allowing me to grab a few not terrible pictures before it flew away. An amazing sighting. I spent all day yesterday looking for them and it just turned up practically outside my window, as is the way with birding. There was one final highlight right at the end of the walk too which was a pair of Satin Bowerbirds in the tree above the O’Reilly’s entrance with the male picking lichen off the tree and giving it to the female who took it, which was pretty cool to watch. After the bird walk I again wracked the guides’ brains to find what I should do that day to plan out my route to try and get the lyrebirds and the most accessible bit of Eucalytus woodlands. Rather than one of the main marked and maintained tracks we took a much less used one which was an official track but not maintained so there were many fallen trees over it that took some clambering over but because were weren’t just 'bush-bashing', as they say in Australia, I hoped this meant we wouldn’t fall off a cliff or run into a stinging tree (like a stingy nettle on steroids) which luckily did indeed turn out to be the case. The track we took started out with the initial part of the ‘Python Rock’ track (which was the same as the one we partly did on our first afternoon in Lamington) with a turn off behind a sign talking about George, a now deceased lyrebird, leading off onto a narrow and far less well trodden path but well marked enough to follow. I could actually hear many lyrebirds around here, though I saw very little at all even of the more common birds because the forest was so dense, though I did see several Red-legged Pademelons. At one point I’m also fairly sure I heard a Rufous Scrub-bird and I saw something, but I don’t know if that was it. We soon came up to a lyrebird that was calling quite close to the path. Eventually I found it in the binoculars moving around a bit in the vegetation some distance away which I could just about make out as a lyrebird. I would have tried to get closer but I didn’t know how many stinging trees and big thorny things I would encounter as I slid down the slight slope on the leaf litter, and I though me crashing through the vegetation would scare it off anyway. Again not quite as nice a view as I had hoped but better than nothing. I would hear lyrebirds again later that day, but that would be my final view of the species of the trip. Surprisingly, soon after that sighting we reached the edge of the rainforest and entered the far sparser Eucalyptus forest. It wasn’t a gradual change at all but over less than five metres the rainforest turned into dry forest, really cool. The first birds I saw in this very different environment were a pair of Crimson Rosellas around a hole in a tree with one sitting halfway out and the other next to the hole. Of course I had already seen many Crimson Rosellas at O’Reilly’s but it was cool to see some properly wild ones which were not mobbing you for food as soon as they had seen you. There were also many little brown things in the branches around which I suspected may have been new but I never managed to get a good look at them so I don’t know. Soon the forest became even thinner into more scrubby terrain as we approached an area called Pat’s Bluff. There was a fair bit of kangaroo/wallaby poo around and I soon startled a small group of them that bounded off and of the two possible largish macropods, either Red-necked Wallaby or Whiptail Wallaby, they had to be the latter. I did hear one other group of wallabies that I must have startled but I didn’t actually see them, I’d like to think they were the other species but I have no reason to do so. There was also a variety of different birds around and the most common species flitting around were Spotted Pardalotes which are really pretty birds and there were many spinebills around here too at a much higher density than in the rainforest. Continuing the honeyeater trend, in addition to many Lewin’s Honeyeaters I saw two new species around here, both White-naped and Yellow-faced Honeyeater and there were lots of little brown things flitting around of which there were many Striated Thornbills but I’m sure there was other stuff as well that I didn’t get good enough views of, though going through my pictures I’ve just found a picture of a bird that I was planning to try and identify but completely forgot which turns out was a Buff-rumped Thornbill. As well as the different vegetation and birds the other really cool thing around this area was the view over rainforest and dry forest which was really spectacular and I spent some time just looking at the view. There were also many Sulphur-crested Cockatoos flying around, though sadly no birds of prey at all. After a while exploring this area we headed back along the same track and back into the rainforest, hearing lyrebirds but not seeing anything and not actually seeing much at all with it being around 2 PM and not the best time for birds. A bit later in the afternoon we decided to finally do the whole of the Python Rock track which I had half done twice but not ever reached the end despite it not being a particularly long track. I saw lots of cool birds that I had already seen like logrunners and yellow robins but nothing new, however I still enjoyed walking in the forest. At the end was a viewing platform with a fantastic view over the forest and down to Moran Falls at the end which I had seen closer the previous day but it was really nice to see from a distance. There were no new birds on the way back either but I didn’t mind too much about that, I had seen the majority of species that I wanted from Lamington anyway and as I was walking along the main road heading back just before sunset I finally managed to get an in-focus picture of the Fan-tailed Cuckoo. That night was our last there before going to Brisbane the next day so we went out again for some more spotlighting in the hope of finding a Marbled Frogmouth but we were unsuccessful again and just saw both Common Ringtail and Short-eared Brushtail Possums as with the previous night however also like the previous night, there was a Long-nosed Bandicoot digging in the lawn and being still enough to allow me to get a picture just using the torchlight. The next morning I would be getting up for one final morning birdwalk before our transport arriving at nine. New birds seen: Bassian thrush White-naped Honeyeater Yellow-faced Honeyeater Striated Thornbill Buff-rumped Thornbill New mammals seen: Whiptail Wallaby
And some more pictures from Lamington National Park! They are: the view immediately upon reaching the edge of the rainforest bit, the much dryer scrubby area with only a few trees on Pat's Bluff, the view from Pat's Bluff, another view from Pat's Bluff showing how vastly different the vegetation is, the view from the end of the Python Rock track, and the rainforest along the Python Rock track.
Day 12 – Departure From Lamington and Arrival in Brisbane – 18th of June We started with the morning bird walk of course with the third guide who I had not done a walk with yet, and it was roughly the same route as the previous ones but it was really interesting to see the same birds and the same environment presented in three completely different ways but all by very knowledgeable and experienced guides. Today though the guide seemed to be more of a birder than a general person interested in nature because he referred to 'birding' rather than 'birdwatching' and asked me what species I was 'chasing' in Lamington National Park and what stuff I still 'needed' and using various other subtle birding terminology throughout. Just a little observation that I thought I’d include. There wasn’t anything new seen on this walk, but one of the whipbirds did come a long way out of the forest and down the road with us and we were also taken to a very large Brush Turkey mound in the staff accommodation area which was considerably bigger than previous ones that I had seen. After the birdwalk we went back to check out of the room and while I was eating a snack on our balcony a large number of King Parrots flew over onto the railing to say goodbye. I suppose the way parrots say goodbye is by trying to steal your food. After we checked out of the room, we still had over an hour until our transport was due to arrive at nine so we left our bags in reception and went off for one last short walk which I did enjoy, you can’t get tired of the amazing forests at Lamington National Park. The Eastern Yellow Robins are a joy to watch, and Logrunners are just awesome. This is all coupled with the incessant sound of whipbirds and the machine gun calls of the Lewin’s Honeyeater. The Pademelons are great too. So in case it wasn’t obvious from that, I loved Lamington National Park. Not a cheap place to stay unless you’re camping but I enjoyed my time there very much. I’d have loved to spend longer if I had the time and if I could afford it! The same car and driver that brought us up three days ago arrived right on time so we headed off down the same road winding its way down. The highlight of the journey down was a Brown Quail that ran across the road right in front of us and luckily the car was going slowly around a tight bend so I had enough of a look to identify it (and we didn’t run it over!). Also seen on the drive once we were back in the outer suburbs of Gold Coast was a White-faced Heron in a field by the side of the road. Now that was a very overdue year-tick! We were dropped off at Nerang Station in Gold Coast (you may recall from a few posts ago that the coach company that was supposed to take us cancelled so we couldn’t be dropped off in Brisbane and had to be dropped off in Gold Coast instead) and we planned to get the train right up to Roma Station in Brisbane which was directly opposite our Brisbane hotel. Easy. Well, actually it wasn’t quite as easy as that. The railway was being repaired or something so there was a bus service replacing the train which took considerably longer and was a bit of an annoyance because it wouldn’t take us to Roma Station but dropped us off at Central Station requiring another train to get back. A bit of a pain and a waste of time but not so bad. It was early afternoon by the time we got to the hotel so we were able to check in before heading off to the Botanic Gardens for the rest of the day. These were really rather nice gardens on the banks of the river and as well as formal gardens there were a few interesting things like a mangrove boardwalk and a lily pond. The most common bird in the gardens were Noisy Miners and there were loads of them around. There were also many large Australian White Ibis in the palm trees and a few Grey Butcherbirds, rather than Pied as I saw in Gold Coast. And there were many Rainbow Lorikeets flying around too. It wasn’t too long though until I saw the main bird that I went to the Botanic Gardens to see. In the main lawns there were many little patches planted with trees and in these areas there were many Bush Stone-curlews just sitting there, it was rather surreal to have these amazing birds just sitting on the lawn in a garden in the middle of the city. In total I saw fourteen bush Stone-curlews sitting around on the lawn. (at least eight can be seen in the above picture) The other two parts that were particularly interesting were the lily pond and the mangrove boardwalk. There were several large Eastern Water Dragons on the lily pond as well as common waterbirds and a very large eel which was a bit of a surprise. In one of the palm trees next to this pond there was a Blue-faced Honeyeater which wasn’t new, but was a longer view than in Gold Coast which I enjoyed, and also not new but also a longer view than in Gold Coast was a small group of Scaly-breasted Lorikeets around a nesting hole as well as many Rainbow Lorikeets. And while I was watching the Scaly-breasted Lorikeets which were in a nice exposed place, I heard the screaming call of the Bush Stone-curlew which was nice to hear, and I saw the birds making the call too which was due to a small child walking up to them. The mangrove area was also very interesting. The only birds there were some Silver Gulls, Noisy Miners, and a Little Black Cormorant on the river but the mangrove plants themselves were really cool with their little pneumatophores and generally awesome structure and the ground of the mangrove was covered in lots of little fiddler crabs, many of which were waving their big claws around. Really a lot of fun to watch. That was pretty much all of the animal stuff, but the plants and garden are really nice and there was a macadamia tree planted by the superintendent of the Brisbane Botanic Gardens in 1858 and the first planted by Caucasians so ‘represented the birth of the world macadamia industry’ which was quite interesting. After we had seen the gardens it was still fairly early but there wasn’t much else to do that day so we went to a shop to buy food for the next three breakfasts and also had dinner in a food court before having a relaxed evening and going to bed because we were both very tired after doing a lot in Lamington. New birds seen: Brown Quail White-faced Heron Bush Stone-curlew Post from the day: http://www.zoochat.com/24/trip-australia-june-july-2016-a-449389/index4.html#post966650
I have attached pictures of: the huge Brush Turkey mound in Lamington National Park, the very old macadamia tree in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, the lily pond where the Water Dragons and eel were in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, part of the mangrove area in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, and the cool mangroves including many pneumatophores in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens.
Just a quick note about the quirks: I never have coins, so a supermarket employee usually releases a trolley for me. Aldi Supermarket doesn't give you plastic bags - you need to buy them or bring your own. I can't say I recall the political adverts. What you may or may not know, which I definitely think is an Aussie quirk, is that voting is compulsory here and we get fined if we don't vote. This year, the ballot paper was more than a metre long, and wider than the voting booth!! Anyway, back to your trip thread. Do you have a blog? Your posts would have a good home on a blog, especially since you do so much travelling.
Rather than a quirk, I think the compulsory voting is probably a good thing, maybe if voting in the UK was compulsory, we would still be in the EU! I don't have a blog for these posts, in fact the only place they are on the internet is here! Though they are all saved on my computer too of course.
Day 13 – A Museum, Rain, and More Rain, Brisbane – 19th of June It didn’t look like it was going to be a good day in terms of the weather. In fact it was supposed to be a huge storm and torrential rain and would possibly cause some flooding. So we decided to do the Queensland Museum that day. It wasn’t very far from our accommodation at all and we were staying in a very central location so we didn’t have to get up too early that morning to still get there at a reasonably early time. The Queensland Museum is located near to the state library and there are several museums and other things like that around too. Coming up to the museum we passed two huge whales which were cool and we could see in to various dinosaurs and things in the windows. Entry to the museum is free which is good and there is quite a lot there despite one fairly large hall being closed and several hours stretched to half a day could easily be spent there. Though the museum is free to get in, it would be quite easy to spend some money in the gift shop and I certainly would have if it wasn’t for the fact that I had a flight on a budget airline (JetStar) with very limited luggage (and it was a good thing too – on our flight from Cairns back to Perth the two of us combined were only 300 grams off our limit). There was lots of really cool stuff in the museum, not quite as good as the London Natural History Museum and not quite as big but there was lots of different stuff that was very nice to see and naturally being the Queensland Museum, almost everything there was from Queensland. There were some pretty cool rock and mineral displays and there was a very large display of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander stuff which was also extremely interesting. There were also a couple of little bits and pieces with other human stuff but the vast majority of the museum was natural history. A giant squid was the first really awesome thing that I saw followed closely by a really weird display of a Perentie that died swallowing an Echidna with the two then being mummified in the desert. We then entered the 'Lost Creatures' display which was a large hall with various extinct Queensland species from dinosaurs to more recent extinctions with lots of different really cool displays, interactive things, loads of fossils and it was generally awesome to spend a fair while looking around. The centre of the hall had a Muttaburrasaurus langdoni with things spread around including the back wall which was being projected with dinosaurs running across mud and below was a big slab of fossilised mud filled with dinosaur prints. I won’t describe each display, but I have uploaded pictures to the Australia – Other gallery which should give a good idea of the museum. There were various other animals dotted such as a preserved Great White Shark and a stuffed Wedge-tailed Eagle but the main area with lots of animals was the 'Discovery Centre' and I spent a lot of time there. Just outside the entrance to that hall though was a large display with rows of skulls of various mammal species and just inside was a Blainville’s Beaked Whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling. Most of the animal displays were in large cabinets all around the wall. (part of the bird section) These included corals, insects, crustaceans and all manner of different invertebrates with lots of weird and wonderful things. There was also a large variety of vertebrates including reptiles, amphibians, mammals, birds and fish and everything was grouped taxonomically and I really enjoyed looking around all of this and they were all species from Queensland too. There were other displays in the middle of the hall including a few half-taxidermied animals which was interesting, and there were a few live animals too which were: a 'Pond Creatures' tank, Green Tree-pythons, Leaf-tailed Geckos, Giant Burrowing Cockroaches, and stick insects, as well as a display of a newly discovered species of spider, Dolomedes briangreenei. I spent quite a while here and also looked at all the other exhibits but even so this wasn’t a full day museum so we were a bit stuck as to what to do for the rest of the day. Although when we arrived at the museum it was only drizzling lightly, the rain had become quite heavy at this point. We had a quick look at the small outdoor area of the museum which was a little courtyard thing with some dinosaur models but it was too rainy to spend long out there. Once we had seen everything in the museum, had a snack in the café, and looked at the most interesting displays twice, there was still a considerable portion of the day left with very little that we could do in the very heavy rain which was forecast to get worse all through the night before being sunny the next day. We browsed the museum gift shop a bit and also did a quick run through the rain to reach the nearby book shop at the state library where we looked around there a bit. There was also an art gallery nearby which we had a very quick look in because it was free, but I didn’t find it at all interesting to be honest. By the time we had milled around here a bit it was about four so we headed back to the hotel room. Of course we got rather wet in the process because we had to run through the rain when leaving. The rain did lighten up a little bit for a short while but by the time we got back to the room and sat down for a little bit the rain was incredibly heavy with the sky filled with dark clouds so we spent the late afternoon and evening relaxing in the room which was actually a very small apartment so had a little table and seating area as well as the beds. Because it was raining so heavily we decided to order food online for dinner from a nearby Thai restaurant that would deliver, however the rain was so heavy that the roads were flooded so an hour after the food was due we got a call from the restaurant saying they were struggling to get food out because the roads were flooded and it would just be another twenty minutes. Also because it was so late they would give it to us for less than half price. Excellent. We had a relaxed evening that night before going to bed early while it was still raining very heavily, and we hoped it would have stopped raining by the next day (as it was forecast to do) so we could visit the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. Post from the day: http://www.zoochat.com/24/trip-australia-june-july-2016-a-449389/index4.html#post966890
This may be the last current update from Australia because I only have just over twenty four hours until I fly back to Poland. My parents have flown back already (you may recall that they flew to Australia much later than I did and because they took a different airline, it was cheaper for me to book a return flight with the same airline rather than two one-ways) so I will be flying back to Warsaw by myself and I leave very late Friday (tomorrow) night. Not really relevant to this thread, but I thought it was worth a mention that when I get back to Warsaw I will only be there for a few days and during those days we are moving house so I doubt I will have time to write any posts for this thread, but after that I will be going to the UK for a few weeks so I will have lots of time to write posts and also to post pictures of some wildlife and of six zoos in Perth (I was going to do all the Queensland posts before doing any Perth pictures but I think I may do a few pictures and a few posts here and there alternating them). I don't actually go back to school until early September though so hopefully I will have everything written and pictures posted before that.
What I tend to do is buy books and things, then mail them home. In this case you could have mailed them to Perth instead, assuming you're not near your weight limit on the flight to Warsaw. Hix
