After Blackdown I spent the night at Cape Palmerston national park a short distance south of Mackay. It was a funny story as I arrived quite late and drove for absolutely ages down a horrible track in search of a campsite. The sandy track kept going through big bog-holes, with nowhere to turn around and no campsite in sight. I thought I was going to get stuck at one stage, and my car got covered in stinky black mud. I eventually did turn around by driving into the bush between two trees, and when I got back to where I'd turned off, I found it was right next to a pleasant campsite just behind the beach! I ate dinner, set my tent and jumped into bed, listening to the surf just a hundred metres away and the wind buffetting the tent as I drifted off to sleep.
Since then I've spent my time with relatives - at a beautiful spot nestled up against the Clarke Ranges and Eungella national park near Calen, and a couple of days in Mackay. A few notes:
- Spent some time searching for the 'tinker animal' which I suspect is Taudactylus liemii, or Liem's Day Frog. The noise we hear is a musical 'tink tink tink' which is repeated only every five minutes or so in the daytime, making it very hard to locate. No luck finding the actual animal. They seem to be very sparse.
- Lots of swimming and snorkelling in the creek; beautiful water, rounded granite boulders, rainbowfish, blue-eyes, shrimp, turtles, gudgeons, catfish. I've seen a few Bullrout (freshwater stonefish) but managed to avoid stepping on any so far this trip.
- Big mobs of other frogs - Green Treefrogs in ridiculous numbers, Dainties, Red-eyes, rubella all going nuts in the dam. L. wilcoxii and Mixophyes fasciolatus in the creek.
- Spent a day out at the public side of Eungella; quite nice, beautiful rainforest, good walking. Didn't see any platypus but we weren't there at the right time for them.
- Eating lots of tropical fruit. Bananas in huge numbers of various varieties (it's a banana farm), lots of jackfruit (one of my favourites), mangoes, sapodillas (delicious), jabotacabas, papaya...
- Partying with hippies.
I'm going to head off again soon, continuing northwards. Seems like there's quite a lot of rain falling up here at the moment, could get a bit interesting...
And so it continues!
Since then I've spent my time with relatives - at a beautiful spot nestled up against the Clarke Ranges and Eungella national park near Calen, and a couple of days in Mackay. A few notes:
- Spent some time searching for the 'tinker animal' which I suspect is Taudactylus liemii, or Liem's Day Frog. The noise we hear is a musical 'tink tink tink' which is repeated only every five minutes or so in the daytime, making it very hard to locate. No luck finding the actual animal. They seem to be very sparse.
- Lots of swimming and snorkelling in the creek; beautiful water, rounded granite boulders, rainbowfish, blue-eyes, shrimp, turtles, gudgeons, catfish. I've seen a few Bullrout (freshwater stonefish) but managed to avoid stepping on any so far this trip.
- Big mobs of other frogs - Green Treefrogs in ridiculous numbers, Dainties, Red-eyes, rubella all going nuts in the dam. L. wilcoxii and Mixophyes fasciolatus in the creek.
- Spent a day out at the public side of Eungella; quite nice, beautiful rainforest, good walking. Didn't see any platypus but we weren't there at the right time for them.
- Eating lots of tropical fruit. Bananas in huge numbers of various varieties (it's a banana farm), lots of jackfruit (one of my favourites), mangoes, sapodillas (delicious), jabotacabas, papaya...
- Partying with hippies.
I'm going to head off again soon, continuing northwards. Seems like there's quite a lot of rain falling up here at the moment, could get a bit interesting...
And so it continues!
No comments:
Post a Comment