Then we received a request for  one-person weekend wildlife camp, and this lady was only in Australia for one week (from Hong Kong) and really wanting to see some wildlife. She was happy to accept the uncommon routing for the weekend.

Our first stop was, as usual, Daisy Hill STate Forest and Koala Centre.

While walking I encouraged her to feel the texture of the sandpaper fig leaves, and some very alert ants rushed defensively out of the nest they had made between two of the leaves.

Ants on the alert at Daisy Hill

A little further on, amongst the paperbark tea0trees, we saw these large caterpillars, which appear to be one of the hawk moth species.

Caterpillars at Daisy Hill

After visiting the koalas in the centre (sadly we didn’t find any wild ones on our walk that day) we headed towards Canungra, making a sudden stop at Tamborine as we saw these impressive black-necked storks striding across the paddock

Black-necked storks in paddock between Tamborine and Canungra, Queensland

After a good meal at the Outpost, Canungra we continued up the mountain to O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat, where Denis took our guest walking in the rainforest while I attended Mike’s lecture, which recounted his rainforest experiences from his first-ever camping at the age of twelve, in a gully which was  inundated with rain that night, through teenage adventures, a PhD in botany and taking his own children walking and climbing.  He was lamenting that universities nowadays don’t teach enough basic natural history or encourage their students to get out and experience the forests firsthand.

Dr Mike Olsen (left) and Peter O'Reilley, before Mike's talk for the Vince O'Reilley Memorial Lecture

I then took our guest (who had already been on the treetop walk and botanic garden) to see a satin bowerbird’s bower (and the artist himself showed up as well) and we found red-necked pademelons grazing in the campground.

On to Kooralbyn, and the usual eastern grey kangaroos, whiptail wallabies and red-necked wallabies still grazing despite the development of more and more residential area around them nowadays.  We also drove past the Kooralbyn Resort, which has apparently been recently bought and is to be ‘restored to its former glory’, having languished for several years after the previous owner became bankrupt (owing a massive $60 million)

Kooralbyn Resort February 2012

Maybe it will be looking different soon (and more inviting!).

The platypus didn’t appear at their usual haunts at home, although they had been seen frequently over the past week. After sunset we headed out spotlighting. First stop – the campground toilets. The green treefrogs didn’t disappoint us here: two of them looked down on us from the entry wall, and high in a gum tree nearby sat a barn owl.

On our way to the NSW border we came across a carpet python lying on the road, so after photographing him we gently encouraged him to move into the safety of the long grass nearby

Carpet python on Lions Road

We doubled up the tour with taking some observations of animals along the Lions Road section (on the NSW side of the border) of the proposed CSG pipeline.  We are concerned about the effects on the wildlife if this construction goes ahead, but without ‘before’ recordings we’ll have nothing to compare the ‘after’ situation with, so on behalf of Scenic Rim Wildlife I’m recording what animals are present now.

This night (Saturday 4th February) we saw a sugar glider, a great barred frog and a beautiful bandybandy and heard several other frogs (emerald spotted tree-frog, sedge frog and several others). The bandybandy was crossing the road that leads down to the Border Loop lookout, and this appears to be the route to be taken by the pipeline from the valley, to join Lions Road, which it will then follow.  Many thousands of animals have been falling into the trenches dug for similar pipelines out west, and if this construction (very unpopular amongst residents of the area) goes ahead, we want the company to ensure that they will at least erect temporary wildlife-proof fences until everything is covered over again.

When we started to move the bandybandy off the road he threw himself into the defensive loops they use to startle their predators, which made it very easy to gently slip a small branch underneath him and lift him to the safety of the forest floor.

Bandybandy crossing the CSG pipeline route at the Border Loop, off Lions Road

Bandybandy throwing himself defensively into coils

See http://wildlifetourism.org.au/discussions/threats-to-australian-wildlife/coal-seam-gas-and-australian-wildlife/ for further concerns about impacts of CSG extraction on wildlife.

After dinner that night, Darren set up the spotting scope to view the moon’s craters, and took our guest spotlighting on our own property, seeing bandicoots, wallabies, barn owls and a brushtail possum, and our guest settled down for her second-ever night of camping (and first time ever in Australia)

On Sunday morning, after looking through the wildlife ecology centre and the butterfly trail and exploring a scrubby gully on the Araucaria property, we headed to Everyday’s Cafe for lunch and on to Beenleigh to view the fruitbat colony and Eagleby Wetlands for the World Wetlands Day talks, which I attended while Darren led a walk looking at pelicans, black swans and other waterbirds.

[photos coming soon]

Dr Margaret Greenway told us how the Ramsar Convention was formed many years ago in Iran, and how Australia was one of the 18 countries involved (now there are over 100) in the international agreements for conservation of wetland habitat.  Eagleby is part of a larger wetland area connected with southern Moreton Bay.  Barry Fitzpatrick spoke on how the current legislation on development and the emphasis on finding threatened species and then ways of mitigating threats to these is  not sufficient to protect the remaining, unreserved wetlands in this driest of all continents.

Not our usual schedule for a wildlife weekend camp, but our guest agreed it was a very interesting and rewarding one.

A workshop rather than a conference, the emphasis will be on interactive discussion, with ultimate actions in mind (e.g. policy statements and guidelines for the Wildlife Tourism Australia website, beginning of new projects,  lobbying government etc. but a limited number of oral and poster papers will also be accepted.

Call for papers ends 24th February

The workshop will be held at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, Gold Coast

See http://wildlifetourism.org.au/wildlife-tourism-workshop-2012/registration/ for details

Entry to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, the venue for the Wildlife Tourism Workshop in May 2012

Male and female golden orb-weaver spiders

Pair of golden orb-weaver spiders at Eagleby Wetlands

At least I didn’t have to apologise to this male  - I was very careful not to make contact with the web.

A few years ago I was tying to get a photo of male and female together and inadvertently bumber the web slightly with my shoulder.  This alerted the female, and as she turned to find what had landed in her net she saw the mamle – and immediately started eating him.  So yes, I did actually apologise to him while I was taking a photo.

I have on other occasions watched the makes – which are always much smaller than the female, cautiously approaching her from behind, apparently with the hope of jumping on board and starting to mate at some moment when she is not likely to notice what is about to happen. I certainly saw the reason for their apprehension that day.

I was able to leave this pair with both spiders still alive and in the position they occupied when I first saw them – the condition I like to leave any animal we see on tour (except flying foxes, as then we are generally sitting and waiting at dusk for them to start flying out of their roosting trees – but without any prompting from us).

This is one of our biggest  spiders. The largest one I ever encountered was on Mount French (near Boonah, Scenic Rim, southeast Queensland) – from the tip of her forefeet to the tip of her hind foot she measured 23 centimetres. We have some big ones at home as well, but I’ve never seen one quite that big here. The pair in the photo were at Eaglby Wetlands, on the edge of Greater Brisbane’s suburbs. The largest fossil spider ever found was also that of a golden orb-weaver unearthed in China.

They are big, but not dangerous – well, not to humans, that is. They really don’t want to waste their venom on something they can’t eat, and will run away rather than attack – you’d really have to try rather hard to get bitten, and if you do you will probably feel nothing worse than the initial pain of the bite, and possibly a headache, slight dizziness and nausea.

I was at surprised to see golden orb-weavers when traveling in Kruger National Park, South Africa, a couple of years ago,  looking very much like the ones we see here at home, but the group does occur in many warm countries of  the world.

You won’t often see them in winter, but when spring comes you will start seeing their webs stretched out between trees, sometimes across pathways or narrow roads, and as summer comes on and blends into autumn you will see the females getting bigger and bigger as they swell with the eggs (which they will bury in the soil.

The ‘gold’ of the web is hinted at in the photo, but it is most obvious in the thicker strands they spin for support between trees, and best seen if you find the right angle for the sunlight to reflect from it. There are other orb-weavers that do not have the yellow pigment in the web. Why is it yellow? Maybe to attract insects, maybe to stop birds from blundering in and destroying the web (although these spiders have been known to occasionally eat small birds that have done so).

Lamington National Park birding trip

We had to gently explain to our beautiful guest that we do not feed the wildlife here

A  male regent bowerbird sitting on our picnic table and a dispute between a rosella and a bird of paradise were two of the memorable events at our first birding trip for 2012  to the O’Reilly’s section of  Lamington National Park.

Red-browed finches, crimson rosellas and king parrots awaited us when we first alighted from the tour vehicle, the finches seeking scraps from the parrot-feeding area.

Our walk through the forest to the treetopsproduced the usual three species of scrubwren (white-browed, yellow-throated and large-billed), brush turkey, eastern yellow robin  and logrunner. We could hear noisy pittas, black-faced monarchs and eastern whipbirds but failed to spot them.  We did also see lewin’s honeyeaters, brown thornbills, pied currawongs and satin bowerbirds.

In the botanic gardens section was either a female or an immature male paradise riflebird (the world’s only subtropical bird of paradise) having some kind of dispute with a crimson rosella in one of the trees.

rifledbird&rosella

The riflebird seemed to have the most formiddable ‘weapon’ but suddenly flew off to another group of trees.

Our picnic was keenly watched by several birds, and we were joined by the beautiful fellow in the picture above, but he finally got  the message that we weren’t feeding him.

A stroll down Wishing tree track to the little swinging bridge above the pretty gully of  treeferns revealed either a Bassian thrush or a russet-tailed thrush (we saw him to briefly to be sure), a red-legged pademelon (they don’t come out of the forest as often as the red-necked) and finally a glimpse of the monarch.

Bridge in ferny gully, Wishing Tree Track

Our birdlist for O’Reilly’s that day included  paradise riflebird, regent bowerbird, satin bowerbird, green catbird, eastern whipbird (heard), logrunner, yellow-throated scrubwren, white-browed scrubwren, largebilled scrubwren, brown thornbill, black-faced monarch, noisy pitta (heard), Lewin’s honeyeater, eastern spinebill, thrush (russet-tailed or Bassian), rufous fantail, red-browed finch, pied currawong, Australian magpie (in the open grassy area), Torresian crow (ditto), crimson rosella, king parrot, wonga pigeon, white-headed pigeon (heard), fan-tailed cuckoo (heard) and (of course) brush turkey.

We called at Eagleby Wetlands on our return trip to Brisbane, where we saw a pair of swans with young cygnets (they may look like ducklings but we agreed they were not ‘ugly’)

Swans and cygnets at Eagleby Wetlands January 2012

Other birds we saw that day at Eagleby included azure kingfisher sitting prominently on an exposed tea-tree branch above the water, greater egret, cattle egret, wood duck, hardhead duck, black duck, grey teal, purple swamphen, dusky moorhen, Eurasian coot, masked lapwing, little black cormorant, darter, rainbow lorikeet, crested pigeon, welcome swallow, noisy miner, magpielark and red-backed fairy-wren.

Dainty green treefrog

We’ve been hearing and seeing a few frogs lately, on warm wet evenings (although some of the evenings have been surprisingly cool for a Queensland summer).

Clicking froglets (Crinia signifera) have been very vocal, and we’ve heard a variety of others, including spotted and striped marsh frogs, tusked frogs, the green tree frog and the great barred frogs.

This little beauty is the dainty green treefrog, Litoria gracilenta, on a Dianella (native flax lily) next to the small pond near our wildlife ecology centre.

The crested shriketit was a surprise – only the second time we’ve seen it here in 30 years.

The pale-vented bush-hen moved in last month, but that was the first time we have seen or heard it here.

This morning before breakfast  I conducted one of my regular birding walks around Andrew Drynan Reserve (just around the corner from the Araucaria property, and the site we usually use for our camping guests). I wanted to do this before school holidays started, and as had I hoped, the reserve was free from campers this morning.

Pacific baza

Highlights for the morning included:

• a Pacific baza being mobbed by a couple of very vocal spangled drongos
• the calls of rose-crowned fruitdove from the forest (hadn’t seen them here since last summer)
• the calls of a noisy pitta from the forest (only the second time in several months)
• three eastern rosellas foraging on the grass of the campground (often see pale-headed, not so often the eastern

The baza used to be known as the crested hawk, which more immediately decribed it to those unfamiliar with the word ‘baza’.  The name change was to bring it into line with international naming, as there are other baza species in Asia, Africa and Madagascar. Unlike most hawks, they often forage amongst foliage, eating insects and small vertebrates.

Other birds seen or heard this morning included channel-billed cuckoo (very vocal!) masked lapwing, wonga pigeon, brush cuckoo, common koel, pheasant coucal, rainbow lorikeet, galah (flock of 15 in the camping area), laughing kookaburra,  Lewin’s honeyeater (eating fruit of the introduced lantana), noisy miner, olive-backed oriole, figbird, eastern whipbird, eastern yellow robin, Australian magpie, pied currawong and  Torresian crow

Andrew Drynan Reserve

Venue Currumbin WIldlife Sanctuary
Date Wednesday to Friday 16-18 May

My grandson Axel meeting the lorikeets at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary

The call for papers is now open for the national wildlife tourism workshop to be held at Currumbin WIldlife Sanctuary next year.

WTA has some great keynote speakers lined up, the venue houses the largest range of native animals in captivity in Queensland and is doing some great work with its new wildlife hospital, and the discussions are on important topics and leading to definite actions to follow on from the workshop.

For those coming from afar and wanting to stay on for the weekend, the beach is just a couple of minutes’ walk away, extensive rainforest tracks less than an hour ‘s drive from the venue, there are many lovely ecolodges and B&Bs in the mountains, whale-wacthing will have started and there are islands to visit, turtles to snorkel with, dolphins to kayak with ….

Visit http://wildlifetourism.org.au/wildlife-tourism-workshop-2012/ for details

Viewing meteors

The night sky at Currawinya is far from any towns, April is officially within our dry season, and we will be there on moonless nights, so our view of stars and other heavenly bodies should be brilliant.

On  the nights of 21st and 22nd April we may be treated to the Lyrids Meteor Showers, which are said to sometimes produce about 20 meteors per hour, with dust trails that last several seconds.

Unfortunately they are most likely to appear after midnight, but we can sleep in hammocks under the stars on those nights (or if you prefer a tent you could venture out at that hour).

Our hammocks are very comfy

Dawn on the Paroo River

Watching Major Mitchell cockatoos near St George

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.

Royal spoonbill feeding near bridge at St George, QIueensland

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.

Major Mitchell cockatoo near St George, Queensland

Spiny-cheeked honeyeater near St George, Queens;and

red kangaroos near Bollon

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.

Emus stroll through the town centre, Bollon, Queensland

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.

The road towards Currawinya National Park, Queensland

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

Throwing money for the Flying Doctor Service, Hungerford, outback QUeensland

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

"Backwards bicycle" at Hungerford

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.

pelicans flying over the lake, Currawinya Mational Park

red kangarooo, lake at Currawinya Natioal Park, outback Queensland

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

Approaching the Granites

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.

viewing a bearded dragon near the Granites, Currawinya National Park

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.

Full moon rising at Currawinya National Park, Queensland

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.

These white-browed woodswallows were a romantic-looking pair

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

a male emu with chicks at Bowra, outback Queensland

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

red-rumped parrots in St George, Queensland

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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