From the wet to the Dry

Kwiambal National Park

As we went to bed the last night in Limeburner NP, we noticed this creature stuck to the outside of our tent

A cicada, about 1-1/2" long.


In the morning when we dismantled the tent we photographed it right side up.

The road to our next destination wound through farmland and cattle ranches.  The jacquarandas are blooming and it seems every homestead has a tree.  Sometimes they line both sides of the road with purple blossoms littering the pavement. But it's not easy to get a photograph on narrow highways with no shoulder and everyone behind you driving 100 kph speed limit.  This is the best I could do.

We wanted to stop at Mother of Ducks Lagoon because who could resist, it's the Mother of Ducks.  But when we arrived it was very dry and hardly any birdlife. Good pie store (bakery) in the town of Guyla though. 

As we neared Kwiambal National Park, we entered an area obviously affected with drought with rocky hardscrabble over grazed ranches.  But,

Emus!  Bird of the Day!

The road turned to washboard gravel as we entered Lemon Tree Flats campsite located on the Severn River. 

There were only two other people camped here and we had the whole park more or less to ourselves as the other campers never left their sites.

In fact, we've noticed a phenomenon here of older bachelors apparently camping alone, only to find their wives surfacing from their tents or caravans as they are ready to leave.

The next day we hiked to the Junction of the Severn and McIntire Rivers

with a stop off at a lookout over a canyon called the Dungeon.  We had a refreshing dip at the junction.  Lots of birds on the first half of the trip.  We saw the dollarbird,

Ŕ

Two new Honeyeaters (striped and yellow-faced) and a little friarbird, a sacred kingfisher and, the bird of the day, a Pacific Baza (crested hawk), all lifers.    Also lots of feral goats.

The hike back was along a shadeless dirt track while fighting off the ubiquitous australian flies that land on your face.  Back at camp, tempers got a little frayed with the heat, the flies, mosquitos, ticks crawling on us, magpies stealing food off our plates and the poor tick-infested starving wallabies begging as well.

Hanging with the wallabis before things got out of hand

Closeup shows ticks on ears

Not that I blame them, what little grass there is, is nibbled to the ground. We gave up and piled into the car, turned on the a/c and drove to the McIntire Falls Lookout.  We'd planned a swim in the inviting sounding plunge pool, but it looked pretty stagnant and slimy with the drought.  (The falls were dry.)  The thought of the steep hike back up defeated us so we jumped back in the car for 5 minutes of A/C and drove to Kookabitta Campground, actually nicer than ours with a big deep pool.

Oh look Leo, I think I see . . .

So of course I spotted a platypus, but it soon resolved into one of 2 Australian grebes,

Lifers!