Hi Tim,
Your report listing all the great birds that you saw brought back fond and
unfond memories of Iron Range and Musgrave. I have unfinished business
there, having seen only half of the endemics that your group saw.
We went there in June 2004, as a detour from a Cape York trip. The river
crossings were exciting: the Wenlock River was deep, and the Pascoe River
crossing involved driving through water for 200 m with a sharp bend in the
middle, not really knowing where the roadway was. We camped for 3 nights
at Cooks Hut - a great spot, but strangely it rained every evening at 5 pm.
I remember following a magnificent riflebird call through thick rainforest
for 15 minutes in order to see it. A similar chase for trumpet manucode
ended in glimpses only. We saw the endemic parrots in flight, but not at
rest. The unfond memory is of sandflies - I discovered at Iron Range and
Chili Beach that my body reacts very badly to these insidious creatures.
We ran out of time (and decent food) to do Artemis Station and
golden-shouldered parrot. Having recently seen a flock of hooded parrots at
close range near Katherine, NT, I am now keen to do the Quinella:
hooded/golden-shouldered.
We, too, stayed in an expensive tin shed somewhere up there. We also made
sure that we didn't take alcohol into the Aboriginal Lands. We later read
in a newspaper that a group of young Victorians on a fishing holiday at
Gove, were caught with 2 cartons of VB and fined $2000 (They might have been
let off had it been XXXX.)
Best wishes,
Carl
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