Araucaria three-day Wildlife Tour from Brisbane Australia

This is our longest-running (since 1997) and still our most popular tour, enhancing your understanding of Australian wildlife generally and those of subtropical ecosystems in particular.

Visitors to Australia and Australian residents alike enjoy learning about our country’s wildlife and ecosystems, while exploring this relatively mountainous, fertile and well-watered part of the continent, with the third highest biodiversity in Australia.

Learn what makes Australia so different, on this zoologist-designed tour (see below for an itinerary). Travel through wonderfully scenic regions to rainforests, typical Australian bushland (eucalypt forest), beaches and other habitats seeking a variety of wildlife, including Australian icons such as kangaroo, koala, platypus, kookaburra and wedgetailed eagle, plus other less well-known species..

This is to the best of our knowledge the most comprehensive wildlife tour in Australia, giving the ‘big picture’ of Australia’s wildlife as a whole while seeing a variety of species in the wild, supplemented by close-up views of rare and endangered species and those from more distant regions in a wildlife park run more for conservation and research than tourism purposes.

We see reprersentatives of the world’s three great groups of mammal (Australia and New Guinea are the only remaining countries to have all three) – monotremes, marsupials and placentals, plus many rainforest birds and birds of eucalypt forests, wetlands and coastal habitats. In the warmer months we usually encounter carpet pythons, turtles and various lizards and hear choruses of frogs at night. On warm damp evenings we usually also see plenty of frogs. You can peruse the list of species we see in the wild on tour, but please don;t expect to see all of them on any particular tour.

Please note:

• You will see plenty of wildlife but there are no guarantees for any particular species on any particular day, although we have never failed to find fruitbats, kangaroos, wallabies and various other species. To find out what you might see, go to the Araucaria Wildlife page.
• Let us know if you have any special dietary needs. We can cater for all, but sometimes need a bit of warning, as some of our meals are 30km or more from the nearest town. Also tell us your special interests, and we’ll make an effort to emphasize these.
• We hold advanced ecotourism accreditation for this and other tours, and take it seriously. Please don’t expect us to allow you to disturb birds from their nests just to get an accurate identification, startle animals so you can get good action shots, take flashlight photos directly into the eyes of nocturnal animals or capture anything (the only time we handle animals on tour is to remove them from roads for their own safety, or if you would like a photo of yourself next to a koala at the Wildlife Park).
• The tour starts on a Wednesday most weeks. Sunday is sometimes possible. In the week before Easter we leave on Tuesday to avoid the Eatser traffic and closure of some venues on Good Friday. We do not un tours during the final week of the year as we do need one week a year just for family, and the traffic and crowds at that time of year at some of our venues detract from the usual enjoyment. We can however by prior arrnagement take you on tour (whether a day or an extended tour) just before Christmas and leave you at a venue of your choice.

SCHEDULE FOR THE THREE-DAY WILDLIFE TOUR

DAY 1

Leave Brisbane at 9.00am and enjoy a gentle bushwalk seeking birds, wallabies and koalas. If we fail to find koalas in the wild (there is plenty of forest available to them so they don;t always stay near the tracks), we see a couple of cptive ones, usually orphans awaiting rehabilitation back to the wild, at the Koala Informatikon Centre, and there are other opportunities to search for them during the next coupke of days.

At morning tea you receive your information kit, including a booklet outlining Australia’s wildlife groups and how they differ from wildlife in the rest of the world.

After lunch we head to Kooroalbyn (the Indigenous name for a local snake, which we rarely see) where we look for waterbirds, red-necked wallaby, whiptail wallaby and eatstern grey kangaroo. Although we never guarantee any species, we never fail to see the kangaroos and at least one wallaby species here.

Then it’s off to the Araucaria home property to visit our wildlife information centre (run entirely on solar power)

We then take a stroll throug our butterfly walk (with the foodplants for the caterpillars of the local species of Austraolia’s five butterfly families) to the creek, lloking for birds and turtles and hoping for the emergence of the shy platypus before dusk. NOTE: We have being seeing platypus at home for almost 30 years, and they have beenespeically predictable during breeding season, but extreme flooding in early 2009 appears to have swept them away. We are trying other venues until they return, and still get a good look at them swimming underwater in the David Fleay Wildlife Park on the third day of the tour

After dark we head out to experience the forest by night and (on clear nights) the southern constellations, and seek out possums, koalas, owls, frogs and other nocturnal creatures. (If you’re feeling too weary you can of course retire early.). Succees is hard to predict: somenights we see much more than others, which is one reason we offer two nights of spotlighting, as collectiuvely through the year we do see a lot. Frogs are more often seen on warm wet nights, but we always hear them (and often carpet pythons and other see nocturnal re[tiles) during the warmer months regardless of rain. Some animals seem not to want to show themselves on bright moonlit evenings, and cold windy nights probably cause many to stay tucked up in the shelters.

Accommodation is either in the lovely rooms at Cougal Park or bush camping at Andrew Drynan Reserve (we provide all camping gear, including sleeping bags, plus a 'bush shower', and there are toilets at the reserve).

Elizabeth Starkey of Cougal Park is a wonderful cook, and happy to oblige for all dietary needs (vegan, gluten-free, anything with prior warning). The beds are so comfortable even avid birdwatchers have chosen to sleep in a bit, but if you wish, there 400p acres of tall forest availoable for exploring and birding before breakfast, or you can just relaax on the verandah and watch birds in the garden in comfort.

DAY 2

Most of today is spent in the World Heritage rainforests of the magnificent Border Ranges. We visit warm subtropical rainforestwalkng through groves of native palms and a massive fiug tree to the Brushbox Falls. If you feel like a more energetic hike, we usually travel with two guides, so that some can do this while others are escorted at a more leisurely poace back to the vehicle. Generally the focus is on getting the 'feel" of the forest, stopping to look at the fauna and flora, and learning about their interactions in the rainforest ecosystem

We climb higher up the mountain to a small patch of cool temperate forest with Antacrtic beech trees and a very pretty tree-lined creek. Lunch is usually here under the trees, unless it is raining.Parts of this spot are like a step back into the past, with tall Araucaria (hoop pine) and Nothofagus (Antarctic beech) growing together as they once did throughout much of Australia, Antarctica (before it froze over) and southern South America.

In warm months we usually see goannas and often carpet pythons (large but not venomous), and there is good birdlife throughout the year. Most birds call more in spring and summer, and are then also actively courting or tending nests. The lyrebird goes against this trend, and we usually hear them from mid-autumn through winter, occasionally lucky enough to catch a glimpse (we generally have a bit more luck with the latrter on our bird-wacthing day-tours during this season)

Afterwards, choose to do some more platypus-watching and potlighting or just relax at Cougal Park, the campground or the Wildlife Information Centre.

DAY 3

Choose to sleep in a little or rise early to look for birds and wallabies. Stop along the way to see freshwater turtles (in warm months) the caldera and centre of the old volcano that formed this part of the ranges, and the rainforest information centre in Murwillimbah (the name of the town in local Indigenous language means place of many possums).

After lunch we walk through coastal banksia woodland to a wide sandy beach fringed only by the sea, woodland and rocky headland. From this headland we usually see dolpins and marine birds, , and occasionally stingrays, turtles or (in winter) whales.

On to Fleay’s Wildlife Park, started by zoologist David Fleay, now owned by National Parks primarily for the breeding of and research into rare and threatened species Here we see crocodiles, brolgas, platypus swimming underwater, barking owls, koalas, wombats and much more, including endangered species such as mahogany gliders and bilbies, some of whose progeny are already being released back into the wild and others that are targeted for release in the future. Only twice in all our years of running ahs the plytypus failed to make a shwing – usually she see either one or two closing their eyes in typical platypus fashion and scurrying around the bottom of the large aquarium feeling for electrical impulses by their prey species.

Then we continue back to Brisbane ready for our grande finale - the flight of thousands of large and noisy fruitbats heading out from their roost trees to seek fruit and nectar throughout the Brisbane area and beyond.

By now you will probably have seen a number of animals that even many Australians have never heard of, and learned a lot about what makes Australia so different from other regions, as well as accumulating  memories of wonderful forests and coastline,