Travelling around Australia has been very interesting because of the continual and gradual transitions in the wildlife. Not only do you notice the obvious changes in vegetation as you move from one climatic zone to another, but the animals also continually change as well.
One of the coolest changes I always notice is the birds singing before sunrise every morning. Every time you drive for 3-4 hours and camp somewhere new, you notice that there are always new birds in the area singing different tunes. Some of them are really beautiful and sing complicated arrangements that vary, but always seem to return to a common refrain. I think the birds singing in the morning were one of the first things that hit me when I first visited Australia in 1986. That first morning, you really knew you were somewhere completely different from home.
Other transitions you notice are with things like massive termite mounds that are all over the place up here. I started noticing them around Coral Bay, but they’ve been everywhere ever since.
The Kangaroos vary as well. There is a smaller version known as a wallaby that you find up here in the north, but they are also much more plentiful. I’ve seen hundreds of Kangaroos and wallabies from around the time I left Port Hedland.
One of my coolest experiences with wallabies was camping next to Mirima National Park in Western Australia (outside Kununurra) a few nights ago. Around 1:30 in the morning, I was awoken by something that sounded like they were munching on the grass next to my tent. Being in the new area, I wasn’t quite sure whether it was a lizard or what, but I was soon able to peek out of a crack in the screen of my tent that showed 3-4 little 2 ft high wallabies nibbling on the grass just outside of my tent, only a few feet away. They were there for about an hour. I thought it was pretty cool. I must have plunked my tent down right in their favourite grazing patch under a gum tree.
When I was in Karijini National Park, I didn’t get that kind of interaction with any wildlife, but I was warned to watch out for dingos. I was told they had a fetish for shoes and that I should be careful not to leave my shoes outside of the tent at night.
Well, I never saw any Dingos at Karijini, but I did see one for the first time today as I was driving from Timber Creek to Katherine here in the Northern Territory. I was driving through the Gregory National Park when one came running out of the tall grass to start chasing my car — just like a dog. I immediately slowed down to a stop to try and get its picture, but it ran off across the road.
Last night was especially interesting on the wildlife front. I was getting a bit sick of driving and arrived in Timber Creek, the only town between Kununurra, W.A. and Katherine, N.T. About the only thing to do in Timber Creek was take a wildlife cruise down the Victoria River 45 km towards the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf. It was supposed to be chock-full of crocs, with an estimated 500 in the 45 km of pure wilderness. I thought it sounded much more interesting than the numerous enclosed crocodile parks you stumble across, where you only see them in captivity and can watch them eat slabs of chicken.
The cruise was quite good, spanning about four hours at sunset — which made for nice picture taking. We ended up seeing lots of eagles, jumping fish, kangaroos, and about four crocodiles sunning themselves on the banks of the river. They eat mostly fish and kangaroos that come down to the river for an evening drink, we were told. The boat operator told us the kangaroos are very inquisitive and will get closer and closer to the crocs until it’s a bit too late for them to escape.
None of them was eaten while we were there because although the crocs were somewhat blase about us being there, the kangaroos would get scared of our boat and hop back into the bush.
