Deja vu as once again we found ourselves piled into a large, rugged vehicle and headed west. This time, the destination was Bowra, another AWC sanctuary located approximately 850km west of Brisbane, near the town of Cunnamulla. The plan was to stay for a week and help with the general fauna surveys on the property; we were accompanied this time by Jesse, who provided his new vehicle, a sturdy, tough, rough on the edges, rough on the inside Defender, with its long-trip debut. The route we took would see us head south thru Millmerran and Goondiwindi before travelling westwards via St George (see map, below). In between, we would camp overnight at a local national park of Jesse’s choosing.
We left on the Friday afternoon [work commitments precluded an earlier embarkation], leaving behind a rainy, gloomy Brisbane. No sooner had we hit the Warrego Highway did the clouds clear, and by the time we approached Gatton the sun was fully in our eyes. We fairly sped through Toowoomba and via a dinner at Millmerran, were en route to Bendidee National Park, a little-known patch of forest in between the Cunningham and Gore Highways. Getting to it entailed a drive of about 15km on desolate Wyaga
Road, which always augurs well for wildlife spotting. The drive brought quick reward, as we soon found our first Brigalow Scaly-foot (Paradelma orientalis) (left), an uncommon species of legless lizard, and a small Dwyer’s Hooded Snake (Parasuta dwyeri)(below). We also noted myriad small mammals scurrying away in our headlights. We at first thought these were native species, like some sort of planigale, but attempts to secure one revealed what they were: House Mice (Mus musculus). By the time we reached Bendidee and our campsite, we had seen dozens of them on the road, and they would further torment us at our campsite. I was periodically awoken by one rustling underneath my tent near my head, but Jesse copped it worst: sleeping in an open swag he had to retreat to the car by 1am, driven there by mice crawling over him and stealing his hair. Like all the other outback denizens, the mice were evidently prospering in this boom period. The park was alive with the calls of Tawny Frogmouths, Masked Owls and Owlet-nightjars, distant Fallow Deer rutting and numerous insects and bats. Even sans mice, I would imagine I wouldn’t have had it any easier getting to bed.
One of the joys of such travel is ‘the morning reveal’, when one
wakes up and has the true nature of the place s/he arrived at the previous night revealed. In the cold light of morning, Bendidee revealed itself: a mixed dry sclerophyll/casuarina forest, the understorey and odd bare patches strewn with saltbushes and the tall eucalypts hung heavy with ripe mistletoes (right; top image). A quick sunrise birding sojourn brought all the regulation species: Rufous Whistler, Brown Quail, Yellow-faced Honeyeater, Noisy Friarbird, Willie Wagtail, Inland and Yellow-rumped Thornbills and Leaden Flycatcher. By 7:30 we were on the road again, getting brief glimpses of Black-striped (Macropus dorsalis) and Red-necked Wallabies (M. rufogriseus).This stretch of our journey was used to field-test an experiment Jeremy had devised, basically a road transect survey of raptors; by logging the birds of prey along each stretch of highway and data regarding their habitat quality, we would be able to make inferences on the impacts of land use on different species. This meant we all had our eyes peeled, and until St George the birds did not disappoint: in those four hours we logged Wedge-tailed Eagles, Whistling Kites, Black-shouldered Kites, Black Kites and plenty of Nankeen Kestrels. To say the final leg between St George and Cunnamulla was a disappointment, however, would be a gross understatement; maybe it was time of day, or just plain luck, but the entire 300km of the Balonne Highway yielded nary but a single Wedge-tail. In fact, there were barely any birds at all, save for a few Mallee Ringneck Parrots (Barnardius zonarius). It made for a rather boring afternoon, and we were glad to pull into Cunnamulla, where a quick pit stop yielded the first of innumerable White-plumed Honeyeaters (Lichenostomus penicillatus). From there it was just a quick trip to Bowra, which lay only 10km from town.
A quick passage about Bowra: A recent purchase by the AWC, Bowra was -and until the end of June, still will be- a cattle property, covering about 16kha, about a quarter the size of Scotia. The environment was also very different to Scotia’s: where the latter featured predominantly red sandy soils, mixed mallee and spinifex swales, the former is a mix of clayey grass plains and mixes of stony mulga, acacia, chenopod and Eremophila scrub; it’s remarkable to an outsider how even an area as synonymous with monotony as the outback can have such a range of dissimilar habitats. Unlike Scotia, which had no permanent water sources other than dams, Bowra had stretches of river running through it, creating small areas of riparian eucalypt-dominated habitat, in addition to several dams and piped bores. The fauna is characteristically semi-arid-zone, with its distinctive suite of reptiles and a range of common inland birds and mammals. Our arrival and obligatory introductions were followed by our briefing: there were to be none of the bird surveys we had at Scotia; our work was centred on constructing and using pitfall arrays, along with Elliot traps for small mammals, camera traps and Harp traps for bats. Our home for the next week was a wooden shearer's quarters, very cosy and well-equipped. As night fell and the temperature dropped, we went to bed, lulled to sleep by the sound of owls and frogs down by the nearby pond. Peace, before the hectic tumult of the coming week.
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