Blue Mountains National Park – Part 1

The Blue Mountains National Park is a World Heritage Area encompassing one million hectares (2,471,054 acres) just 90 minutes west of Sydney.  It is an exceptionally beautiful area of deep valleys, vast tablelands, and dramatic sandstone escarpments covered in thick eucalypt forest.

Kedumba Walls

It is home to many rare and ancient species, both plant and animal, and a range of habitats from dry and dusty woodlands to wet and fecund rainforests.   Though these birds are not rare, they are certainly exotic and beautiful to a couple of Minnesotans.

Sulfur Crested Cockatoo

This New Holland Honeyeater seemed to be posing for me or at least was interested in the sound of my camera shutter, resulting in some neat shots.

A pair of Crimson Rosellas came to feed in the backyard of the 

house where we are staying.  What a beautiful parrot.

Finely dispersed droplets of Eucalyptus oil from all the trees combined with small particles of dust act as a sort of prism and create a distinctive blue haze across the area, hence the name, Blue Mountains.

We’ve seen a few other interesting animals (or at least their nests).

Dave and a large termite mound

Eastern Water Skink

Boulengers Skink

Swordgrass Brown Butterfly

Oakvale Wildlife Park

Oakvale Wildlife Park is a family-owned accredited farm committed to helping visitors learn about native Australian wildlife and how they can protect it.  They have a koala breeding program and also participate in another program, Devil Ark, which is working to save the Tasmanian Devil whose population has crashed since 1996 when the first signs of a fatal facial cancer was found in devils.

Besides these good works, they have a wonderful array of Australian animals on display.  The koala photos in the last blog were all taken at Oakvale.

Rainbow Lorikeet

Quokka

Centralian Carpet Python

Cassowary

Juvenile Male Superb Fairywren whose blue feathers are just coming in.  

This is a wild bird that I snapped as it was flying around the wildlife park.

Swamp Wallaby

Frill-necked Lizard

Purple Swamp Hen, also a wild bird

Wild Dusky Moorhen chick

Kangaroo with a large joey in her pouch

Young wombat, about one year old

Royal Spoonbill

Poor mom is STILL nursing her very large joey while also carry a second one 

in her pouch (the bulge between her legs is the young joey hidden in her pouch)

Bush Stone Curlew

Perentie

Tasmanian Devil

Devils are very aggressive

Emu

Emu

Curious Emu

Koala Madness

This is the shortest blog post I've ever written because after this sentence, it's nothing but koalas!

Kayaking on the Myall River

Kayaking is a wonderful way to see a river.  In a flat-bottomed boat you can paddle into shallow areas and sneak under overhanging trees.  And because you’re right down at the water line you often get glimpses of fish and other wildlife living below.

The Myall River which feeds Nelson Bay, is about 85 kilometres (53 miles) north of Newcastle. The Myall is tidal and therefore a bit different from our usual lake and river trips in Minnesota.  Paddling upriver against the tide, which was going out, was quite a bit of work though we knew the return trip downriver would be much easier.

We paddled up a shallow side-water through gray mangrove trees.

But couldn’t stay long as the tide was going out and the water level was dropping rapidly.  The water was incredibly clear in the mangroves and we could easily see the oysters that attach themselves to the river bottom.

Note the mangrove snorkel at the top of the picture.  Mangroves use these 

to get oxygen when the rest of their root system is underwater.

We saw a variety of birdlife from our kayaks, including two sea eagles, two species of cormorants (called shags in Australia), and pelicans.

This area of the river is known to attract dolphins which come in to feed on fish getting pulled downriver as the tide goes out.  Sure enough, we saw one dolphin on the way upriver and two on our way back.  One of them came up for air just a couple of metres away from my boat.  Very exciting!

It is, however, very difficult to photograph dolphins from a kayak being pulled downstream by the tide. They don’t surface for long and you never know where they will pop up.  So this is the best I could do.

Hiking at Glenrock Park

The spotted gum is a gorgeous eucalypt tree with beautiful pale green spotted bark and graceful, twisting branches reaching high up into the sky.  It grows in large groves on the hillside at Glenrock State Conservation Area, just a few kilometres up the coast from Newcastle Beach where we live. The spotted gum woods are a really special place for me.  The light and colour under the trees creates mixed shades of green and when the sun shines through the trees, the place almost glows.  My photos do not do it justice but they’ll give you a small sense of how magical this place is.

We walked down through the trees to Dudley Beach, past a hang gliding launch point at the edge of a cliff.  By the time we got to the beach three gliders were floating over our heads.  The sun and waves were just beautiful that day and there was also a relatively rare phenomenon in the sky – iridescent clouds. I was lucky to capture both the rainbow clouds and the hang glider in this shot.

Dudley beach is not only lovely, 

it is also home to some cool petrified wood imbedded in ancient lava beds.  These fossilized tree stumps date back to the Permian era, around 250 million years ago, before the age of dinosaurs.

On the hike back up to the top of the park we had a great view of Glenrock Beach, just up the coast from Dudley Beach.