Myall Lakes

Not the ocean but very shallow Myall Lake, a brackish lake separated from the ocean by dunes.

We'd been in Australia for a week and we still hadn't seen the ocean. It was a five hour drive through cattle and sheep ranches and wineries from Wollemi National Park to Myall Lakes NP.

We stopped in the nearby town of Budelejah at the visitor centre where Leo was dive bombed by this guy:

A masked lapwing

See those yellow spikes on its wings?  They are for attacking intruders. And we thought we only had to worry about crocs, snakes and spiders! Leo escaped unscathed.

We camped metres away from the lake at the edge of the rainforest.  To the left of our car was a trail through the rainforest that led to the next campground and then up through dryer for st to a point overlooking the lake.  At dawn a Powerful Owl was gently hoo-hooing, while the Kookaburras and who knows what else were raising hell!

We saw lots of new birds along this trail.

We stop for Butterflies too.

In the afternoon we crossed the dunes

for our first look at the ocean.

The thing about the ocean is, it's always the same.  Stunningly beautiful, but no matter how far you walk it's the same sand and waves, it's really windy, there's no shade, its hard to walk in the loose sand and there's hardly any birds to be seen.  I mean, this picture could have been taken in Latvia! Or Spain. Or Oregon.  Or Massachusetts.

But not this one,

These epiphytes were blowing across the sand like tumbleweeds.

Bird of the day:

Blue-faced Honeyeater

Fun fact:  There are only 3 kinds of gulls in Australia (there are 25 in North America) , but there are 55 different honeyeaters, all very colourful and easily identified!  So far we have seen 6 of them.