WA Part 3

After leaving dryandra it was just a short leisurely drive down to stirling ranges national park. Whilst visiting the park we stayed at the lovely stirling range retreat which is a very good place to stay if you are interested in wildlife as it has reasonably good ground where the owners have put in a lot of work returning to a natural state and trying to attract wildlife and it seems to have worked well as a lot of the new birds that I encountered were within the retreat grounds. The ranges themselves are very nice with a lot of walks going up the various peaks and in a place as phenomenally flat as Australia it is just nice to see a hill or two every now and then.


Western yellow robin.

Elegant Parrot one of the first things I saw as we entered the retreat.
Grey currawong, they do exist.


There were also plenty of monitors about.

WA part 2

The next day after Rottnest we left Perth much to my relief and drove to Dryandra. Dryanda is a lovely dry woodland with some rather special bird species and some fantastic accommodation run by the lions. We stayed in the mallee hen cottage and it was great with wildlife including Carnaby's black-cockatoo by the dozen in the small dam 20 meters from the cottage. I also managed to see the brown-headed honeyeater from the veranda which was nice. The only real downside being that I slipped over after just getting there and smashed the filter on my camera and have not been able to get it off. Luckily it was possible to pull all of the glass out of the filter and carry on taking photos.








A friendly visitor to the hut.

WA part 1

After the wedding we had an afternoon to kill so went to Cottesloe beach which was fairly mediocre so I won't mention it here. However, the next day we had all to ourselves so we went out to Northam to see the mute swan. I was told it was an industrial wasteland but we found a lovely little park near the river were we could have some lunch and watch the wild life. The weather was terribly hot and I did feel sorry for all the people competing in a running race along the river. On the way back we stopped at the Bakers Hill pie shop which was rather good and then at Sawyers Valley where there were some markets where we managed to find a nice wodden bowl. The mute swan. The next day we went out to Rottnest. The trip takes about half an hour and Adelle only just made it there with throwing up on the way there. That meant our first destination on the island was the pharmacy to get some sea sickness tablets for the return journey. However i did manage to see both banded lapwings and quokkas on the few hundred meter walk there. The island itself is pretty barren and I managed to see no new birds there but did bump in to Allan and Gemma again and had a good snorkle as the coral and fish are very good.

Allan and Gemmas Wedding

A few weeks back we went to Allan and Gemma's wedding in kings park. It was a great wedding in the park on a lovely sunny day. In fact it was way two sunny and my camera struggled to get a white dress and black suit in the same photo without a lot of weird aberrations appearing. Here is a particularly bad photo which I uploaded by accident. The gardens are well worth a look and I managed to see both Carnaby's Black-Cockatoo and the Red-Tailed Black-Cockatoo there.

Fagan Park

Back in February we visited Fagan Park for a we wander. It is not that great but it is close and a good place for little kids.