Claire especially wanted to see some waterfalls, any crystal shop we passed and to do some hiking (although the English view of hiking is a nice walk along well defined tracks. My previous excursion on the Three Greys trip meant my knee was not in a good state for any vigorous, challenging hikes but that meant I was not a hindrance to Superzoom Claire as she powered through hikes left, right and centre. Despite lots of chit-chatting on the phone and via social media, it wasn't until Claire came to Sale a few days before the off that we crystallised the plans around her revised bucket list of Lake Mungo, the Great Barrier Reef, Lawn Hill, Litchfield NP and Kakadu, Uluru, Coober Pedy and the Flinders Ranges. About 12,000 kms. Six weeks. I had to be back for lambing.
Although visiting several key birding areas in Australia, I assured Claire that it wouldn't be a birding trip. At all. However, I did stipulate that we had to do the western Victorian Red-tailed Black-Cockatoo count (on Day 2 of the trip), check out a Sandstone Shrike-thrush at Lawn Hill and look for Yellow-breasted Mannikins which had been reported very recently in Katherine. Owning the vehicle we were going in was a substantial bargaining chip!
After camping in Coleraine, spending a day doing 60km at 10kph for 8 RTBCs (we were one of the few teams to see them -- numbers well down this year) we checked out the Silo Art Trail running from Rupanyup to Patchewollock in north-western Victoria. It is a pretty impressive feat to produce 2-dimensional art of a 3-dimensional surface at any scale, let alone wheat silo scale!
Red-rumped Parrots Psephotus haematonotus
Seen at Coleraine. The male is colourful, the female less so.
Silo Art Trail
Rupanyup
Sheep Hills
Rosebery
Brim
From there we headed north, through Mildura, to Lake Mungo National Park.
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