birding-aus

From the travelling wombat show

To: Birding-Aus <>
Subject: From the travelling wombat show
From: John Gamblin <>
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2000 17:36:52 -0700 (PDT)
G'day All,
Thought that due to some bird news enclosed in this
forwarded email it may interest some?

Sid and Sharon Genaux <> wrote:
Subject: Australia's Savannahlands
Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2000 07:52:37 GMT

Hi Everyone,
We are in Normanton, about 60 kilometers up the Norman
River from the Gulf of Carpentaria.  We crossed from
the Pacific Coast of Queensland to the Gulf through
grassland and cattle country which calls itself the
Savannah of Australia. It is a great contrast to the
rain forests and lush green of the eastern coast.

We drove from Julatten to Inot the first night out. 
The caravan park there was absolutely wonderful.  Inot
is the site of some hot springs and they are located
right at the caravan park. When you stay at the park,
the pools and spas are free as part of your lot
rental. 
Sid was in heaven. He is the world's worst wimp about
cold water so he loved this place. There were a series
of pools and spas of varying temperatures--seven of
them in all. He spent all evening from 5:00 p.m. to
after 9:00 p.m. soaking in them. It's surprising that
he would leave the park to head west the next morning.

Our next stop was at Georgetown, which is a great
birding area. We went to a few dams to look at water
birds and finches. At one of them, we had a little
longer stay than we planned when the car wouldn't
start. We had left the caravan park just before dawn
and Sid forgot to turn the headlights off on the car. 
A nice couple in a motor home came along and helped
us. 
Luckily, we carry a set of jumper cables with us. 
There were a lot of cattle around at the dam, and at
this time of year the calves are being born. The
cattle are Brahmins or Brahmin crosses because they
handle
the heat well, can live on native grasses, and are
resistant to ticks. Since we see Brahmins mostly as
rodeo bulls, we were a bit nervous about walking
through the herds, but they were very docile. The
poddys (young calves) are really cute. They have big
eyes and enormous droopy ears. 

They look like it will take a long time for them to
grow into their ears.

Another thing we saw at Georgetown reminded us of Hank
and Ollie and all our golfers. The golf greens are a
bit different in this dry, grassy country. The grasses
are coarse and brown and the "greens" are really
"blacks"! They are made of sand covered with oil!

They can't spare the water and work to try to grow the
kind of velvety greens we take for granted in the
States. From Georgetown, we traveled to Karumba on the
Gulf of Carpentaria. We stayed there for two days. It
is a wonderful place. All along the road from
Normanton to Karumba, there are occasional pools and
lots of fields. In them, we saw Brolgas and Sarus
Cranes all along the way. What impressive birds they
are as they stalk arrogantly alongs. They seem to
concentrate in family groups of two parents and a
juvenile, but there may be several groups in one
paddock (field). They walk
in among the cattle, searching for insects to eat. If
you are very lucky, you will see a pair of them
courting. The mating ritual begins with a wonderful
dance with ballet-like leaps and bows. We haven't seen
it yet, but hope that we will. On Karumba Point, where
our caravan park was located, is a restaurant/pub
called the Sunset Inn. We had dinner there last night
and it deserves its name. The restaurant has no walls
on the front or the west side, so you can sit and
watch the sunset as you eat. The sunsets at Karumba
are justly famous as some of the most beautiful in
Australia.

We didn't see the most spectacular one--they are
usually in November or December, we were told--but it
was still lovely. The sun set as a bright scarlet ball
and then the afterglow shaded from salmon through
orange to burgundy. The food at the restaurant was
wonderful, too. Sid had grilled barramundi, arguably
one of the best tasting fish in the world, and Sharon
had a plate with six large prawns, six bugs (sort of
like small lobsters), and a mudcrab. This is a great
place for good seafood.  

This morning, before we left Karumba, we took a
birdwatcher's cruise with The Ferryman on the lower
Norman River. It was a lot of fun and we saw quite a
few birds although Russell, the ferryman, said it was
really quiet. We especially enjoyed the Eastern
Curlews. 

It is an amazing looking shorebird with a long
downcurved bill about as long as its whole body! We
saw quite a few of them and couldn't understand how
they could fly without tipping forward! We saw another
quite
small bird in the mangroves called a White-throated
Whistler which is very handsome. He is grey, brown,
and black with a snow white throat and has a pretty
song.  We didn't see any crocodiles. Russell said that
it has
been unusually cool this winter, and the crocs are
further upriver where the water is shallower and
warmer. We came down to Normanton this afternoon to
have a maintenance day--laundry and getting money from
the ATM. We also were hoping to find internet access. 
>From here, we will go to Burke and Wills Roadhouse
tomorrow and into Lawn Hill National Park the next
day. We are booked in there for 3 nights. We don't
know when we will get to be online again but we will
get in touch when we can.

Thanks for your e-mails everyone.

We are glad you folks are enjoying our stories about
this wonderful land.

Hugs,
Sid and Sharon

=====

Hastings,
Where thee Western Port Waders will soon regularily meet.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Kick off your party with Yahoo! Invites.
http://invites.yahoo.com/

Birding-Aus is on the Web at
www.shc.melb.catholic.edu.au/home/birding/index.html
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message
"unsubscribe birding-aus" (no quotes, no Subject line)
to 

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
  • From the travelling wombat show, John Gamblin <=
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU