by Sean Dooley
So it was that I headed up to Wollongong for the third time in the year in late April. Most probably the season was too far advanced for me to pick up any of those summer birds I’d already missed, but as there was a boat trip going it was still worth a try. My plans had me away from the eastern seaboard for the entire spring–summer season later in the year so, anything I got I would be grateful for.
Cruising up the Hume yet again the car started to swerve all over the highway. A blowout! After I got the two tonnes of car under control, I eased it over to the shoulder of the freeway and inspected the damage. The left rear tyre lay in a steaming, shredded mess – luckily the blowout hadn’t occurred on one of the front tyres as that would have been far more difficult to control. Grumbling, in the fading light I changed my fourth tyre for the year. Then it came to putting the lacerated wheel up onto the mount that had only a month before claimed my fingernail. The finger throbbed every time I tried to lift the tyre and I could see the cadaver of the old nail staring up at me accusingly. Not being able to use my left hand efficiently I was having a hell of a time trying to hoick the tyre onto its mounting, and by the time it got dark I was so frustrated I ended up flinging the whole lot onto the side of the road. Not a great move, when I think about it, particularly when, a few days later, I replaced the tyre and also had to buy an entire new wheel.
On the previous Wollongong trip in February I didn’t have a flat or misplace my seasickness medication, but a dodgy vegetable pastie bought at the Dog on the Tuckerbox Roadhouse at Gundagai ensured I spent most of the night sitting on the dunny, so again I got no sleep the night before we went out to sea. What is it about Wollongong pelagics and me? The Wollongong curse had struck again.
It wasn’t just seabirds that occupied my time late autumn. I also tried to knock off as many tricky land birds as I could. I got Swift Parrot at Chiltern in May but dipped out on three attempts to pick up Regent Honeyeater there. I joined a National Parks Plains Wanderer census to pick up this most difficult to see quail-like species. An endangered bird of the inland grasslands, of which in Victoria there is only about one per cent left, the Plains Wanderer is not only rare but extremely cryptic. We managed to record twenty, including four chicks looking like little black balls of fluff on stilts, one rain-swept night out at the Terrick Terrick National Park about two hours north of Melbourne. It had not rained in the district for three months yet it bucketed down on us as we stood unprotected on the back of a ute scanning the grasslands with massive spotlights.
The things you’ll do to see a rare bird. Like stand out in the literally freezing dawn in an exposed heathland waiting for a Ground Parrot. This extremely rare and shy heath dweller doesn’t come out of the scrub for just anybody. Except David Attenborough. I’d heard from Brendan Neilly, the warden at the Barren Grounds Nature Reserve in the marvellous Illawarra district south of Wollongong, that an Attenborough film crew had recently shot footage of the birds coming in to drink at a roadside puddle at the same site. They didn’t show for me. Bloody David Attenborough.
Even though the sun had started to rise it actually seemed to get colder so I went for a bracing walk up and down the road. Suddenly a ball of green feathers burst out of the heath beside me. For about five seconds the Ground Parrot remained in view before tumbling back down into the impenetrable scrub. I later mentioned the brevity of the sighting to Brendan, who responded that I’d seen it for about four seconds longer than most.
My trip to the Illawarra really produced the goods when it came to hard-to-see species. I managed to have the normally shy Eastern Bristlebird, one of the Barren Grounds specialties, hop along the track towards me as I was filming it. It got so close I couldn’t focus the camera as it almost ran across my shoe. Following Brendan’s advice I also got onto Chestnut-rumped Heathwren. He suggested I look for recently burnt areas in the heath. I found a suitable site and began bashing my way through it, the charcoal sticks of fried bushes turning my blue jeans black within minutes. After an hour of this I had no luck and returned to the car to find a pair of heathwrens foraging on the track in front of my car.
I owe Brendan big time. He really was incredibly helpful. When I was younger I harboured thoughts of becoming a park ranger – until I learned that rather than being glamorous, much of your time is spent as a glorified janitor. And you have to deal with the general public. During my stay I was constantly amazed at Brendan’s cheerfulness and enthusiasm even when every single visiting birder asked the same questions – ‘Where are the bristlebirds?’ ‘Where can I see a Ground Parrot?’ and so on – often expressed as more of a demand than a question. He never seemed to tire of helping them. If it was me I’d soon have been screaming something like ‘Do you have to be spoonfed everything? Go find them yourselves, you bloody slackers!’ It’s a pity that he was soon to lose his job as his employer, Birds Australia, which runs the observatory at Barren Grounds, decided the operation was economically unviable and it was to be closed down.
Before I left Brendan gave me one last tip: where to find Rock Warbler, New South Wales’ only endemic species. A bird of the sandstone country that surrounds Sydney, Rock Warblers are not necessarily rare but as most of their habitat is inaccessible, they are not the easiest birds to see. Batting three from three, Brendan turned out to be spot on and along Bomaderry Creek on the outskirts of Nowra I spent half an hour watching a Rock Warbler feeding on the vertical cliff-face and boulders above the creek.
In the Sydney region, the more remote sandstone outcrops still harbour examples of Aboriginal art, recording the lives and spirituality of the original inhabitants of this land. Today a new generation of settlers is adding to the cultural record, reaching out across the ages in an act of spiritual solidarity and understanding. Where Rock Warblers would once have foraged amongst galleries resplendent with images of kangaroos and goannas these days at Bomaderry they feed amongst rocks emblazoned with: ‘Mandy is a slut!’ ‘Bong on Australia’ and ‘F*** You’. I love culture.
CHAPTER 15
9 June, Pirates Bay, Eaglehawk Neck, Tasmania:
428 species
Eaglehawk Neck, a short distance from Hobart, is a small isthmus only a few metres wide connecting the Tasman Peninsula to the rest of Tasmania. In convict times the Neck was guarded by armed soldiers and vicious dogs to prevent convicts from escaping the hellhole that was Port Arthur prison. Standing at the jetty in Pirates Bay I felt similarly trapped as I watched the waves slapping against the hull of the fishing boat Frustration while it bobbed at its mooring. The name precisely summed up my mood at that moment, for I couldn’t get off that piece of land either because of a huge weather cell the pelagic trip I had come specifically to Tasmania for had been cancelled.
I drove up to Tasman’s Arch, one of the most dramatic examples of this area’s spectacular cliff formations, and set up my telescope to gaze longingly out to sea. How times had changed – I was now aching to be out on the chop, being buffeted by the wind and waves. My frustration was compounded by the fact that between the coast and the Hippolyte Rocks dozens of albatrosses skimmed across the sea surface. If there were this many birds so close to shore it must have been an absolute ripper out at the shelf. To make matters even worse a couple of little tuna boats – half the size of the vessel we were to travel on – puttered out amongst the waves. The worst of the weather hadn’t hit and I was convinced we could have had at least a couple of hours at sea. God knows what I was missing out there.
The rest of my Tassie jaunt had been going particularly well. Tasmania has twelve endemic species and I had them all within three days of setting sail on the ferry from Melbourne. This allowed me time to check out a part of the world I had never really visited before. I meandered across the north of the island to the famous Cradle Mountain, noting along the way how utterly beautiful the place is and how brazenly the timber industry struts its stuff here. On the mainland you very rarely come across logging on roadsides; in Tassie the foresters don’t even attempt a nice facade, th
ey just clear-fell their coupes right to the edges of the road. As I made my way up into the island’s interior it seemed at nearly every turn a breathtaking vista bore the scar of clear-felled forest.
I had booked to stay for two nights in a cabin bordering Cradle Mountain National Park. As I was registering, the woman at the desk asked whether, having seen the area, I still wanted to stay two nights. Not the kind of ringing endorsement you’d normally expect from a tourist operator. It seemed bizarre because the area is quite stunning. Cradle Mountain is justifiably one of the country’s most famous wilderness areas. Above the thousand-metre mark, the entire area has the stark beauty typical of alpine landscapes. But before I could even get to the national park I had already seen all my target species. There were Black Currawongs everywhere and, despite the freezing conditions, in the Myrtle Beech grove behind the cabins I managed to get onto Scrubtit, Tasmanian Thornbill and a gorgeous male Pink Robin. At night I spotlit wombats and wallabies, but not the Tasmanian Devils and quolls for which the area is famous. Overnight the temperature sank to below freezing, making me wonder how on earth any of these creatures survive there.
As I had seen everything I’d come for there was no point in hanging around, so I decided not to stay a second night, probably vindicating the woman at the desk. I decided I needed as much time as I could to find Tasmania’s rarest endemic, the Forty-spotted Pardalote. Confined to just eight or nine small populations on islands and peninsulas around Hobart, this was the one bird I really didn’t want to miss, so I decided an extra day’s searching wouldn’t go astray.
Turns out I made a good decision. In heading down to Hobart, I kept ahead of an oncoming blizzard that may well have snowed me in on the mountain and prevented me from making it to the boat trip, not that it went ahead anyway. Driving across the top of Tasmania through the alpine desolation of the Great Lakes area, every time I got out of the car to take in another breathtaking view I was almost swept away by the icy gale. Entering Hobart all was still and I made my way after dusk to the Waterworks Reserve just out of town for some spotlighting.
Andrew Stafford had told me he had seen Masked Owl there and while not an endemic species, the Tasmanian race is reputedly the easiest of the species to see. Because foxes never gained a foothold on the island, Tasmania is a sensational place for native mammals. Several species that have become extinct on the mainland survive here in good numbers and while looking for the owl I almost had to kick Eastern Barred Bandicoots, Southern Brown Bandicoots and Southern Bettongs, a very cute type of wallaby, out of the way. At one point I heard the distinctive shriek of a Masked Owl and thought I was going to catch up with this species at last. But precisely one minute later the cold front hit with a sonic boom and any chance of hearing anything above the roar of the gale became negligible so I yet again dipped out on the wretched thing.
The gale continued the next day; surely not a good sign for finding the pardalote, which usually dwells in the canopy of very tall eucalypts. I drove out to the Peter Murrell Reserve on the southern outskirts of Hobart, not particularly hopeful of finding my quarry, but perhaps the wind was actually working in my favour for down low in a sapling out of the gale was an adult Forty-spotted Pardalote. I’d always thought the attraction of these birds was solely their rarity for they always seem rather plain when illustrated, but up close in the flesh they are actually very dainty, decked out in subtle pastel shades of green and yellow.
The storm continued with sufficient ferocity to dump snow on Mount Wellington and cancel the boat trip the next day, and I was faced with a dilemma. Apart from Masked Owl and all those seabirds I was missing out on I had seen everything I’d come for, but still had two more days before I was due to catch the ferry back to Melbourne. What to do?
The solution was to swap one small island for an even smaller one. I got on the phone and booked a seat on a light plane to King Island, in the middle of windswept Bass Strait, to go for a trio of some of the more ridiculous birds I was seeking – peacock, pheasant and turkey. All three were introduced to fox-free King Island as game birds and all three have flourished so well they have made their way onto the Australian list. I hung around Hobart for one more unsuccessful bid to spotlight Masked Owl then drove across the state overnight hoping I might see one conveniently perched on a roadside marker. I didn’t, but I did finally manage to spot a Tasmanian Devil as it attempted a kamikaze run at the wheels of my vehicle.
Early the next morning, in shocking conditions, I found myself taking off in a light plane from Devonport Airport. There was only one other passenger and I got the distinct impression the pilot would really have preferred to stay safely at home rather than risking his life for us. The conditions were atrocious. The little plane was tossed about the sky and visibility was near zero. After an hour of this buffeting a window appeared in the clouds and there was the green jewel of King Island sitting amidst an angry grey sea. As we made our approach to land, barely fifty metres above the runway the tiny plane was thrown almost at right angles by a gust of wind and all I could think was, ‘Great, I’m going to die all for a bloody turkey.’
Miraculously we landed unscathed and I noticed the airport terminal was teeming with pheasant shooters and their dogs. There is one weekend per year where it is open season on pheasants and I happened to have flown right into the middle of it in a quest for… pheasants. As if to mock the shooters’ very presence on the island, a male Common Pheasant flew onto the fringe of the airstrip and began to feed, blithely (or was that cockily?) unconcerned at the braying hunt dogs on the other side of the fence. Ticking off this bird so easily was a double bonus because it meant I wouldn’t be running the risk of being mistaken for a pheasant by a myopic shooter as I searched the scrub for them. In fact the shooters didn’t seem to have scared off anything much as within half an hour I came across parties of both Wild Turkey and Indian Peafowl grazing by the side of the road. It really was quite ridiculous counting these birds from India and southern America on my Australian list, but they are considered valid wild populations. I don’t make the rules, I just follow them, so onto the list they went and my list moved onto 431.
It also meant I could get out of the driving winds (which surprisingly didn’t seem to have blown any seabirds in) and sit in the warm pub talking to the locals. King Island is a fascinating place. Sitting at one end of one of the most treacherous stretches of water in the world, it has a miserable history of shipwrecks and hardship, yet it is now something of a haven from the stresses of the modern world. Although ninety per cent of the island has been cleared of vegetation it still retains a remarkably wild feel, but in this weather it is much nicer in the pub. I spent a very interesting and stimulating evening drinking with a couple of pheasant shooters. Despite a seemingly enormous gulf between us what emerged was how much we actually have in common – a love of the outdoors, an awareness of the environment and joy at being out amongst it. And we all love birds. It’s just that they love them and then kill them. It got so chummy that by the end of the night we were almost indulging in the great Aussie blokes’ ritual: ‘I love you, mate.’ ‘No, I love you.’ Almost.
The next day was much calmer for the flight back to Devonport, and the ferry crossing to Melbourne was similarly uneventful. As we steamed into Port Phillip Bay the next morning I took a stroll on deck to watch the sun rise. There were very few human passengers about but to my surprise we had picked up two hitchhikers in the form of prions, a delicate little dove-like seabird. There are six species of prion, three or four of which I’d hoped to see in Australian waters. They can be exceptionally difficult to identify from one another. Over the previous couple of months I felt like I’d been making real progress on my prion identification skills and had already ticked off the most common: Fairy and Slender-billed. I had seen the Antarctic but was holding off adding it to the list because I still felt I hadn’t had a good enough look. Generally, however, I was pretty cocky that I now knew what I was on about when it came to identifying prions
.
The two birds had come to rest on the deck because they were obviously exhausted. By the time we docked at Melbourne they still hadn’t budged and I decided I’d better take them into care. I grabbed a couple of empty cardboard chocolate boxes from the kiosk and caught the exhausted birds fairly easily, assuring curious passengers that I was taking them in for their own welfare. I failed to mention that it would give me the opportunity to indulge in some prion identification at very close quarters.
My cockiness soon faded as I realised that, though I might have been able to identify them at sea, I was totally bamboozled as to which species I was holding in my hands. I was pretty certain one was a Fairy Prion; but the other bird was almost ten per cent lighter, which suggested a Slender-billed, but the plumage didn’t seem quite right. I was sitting at the kitchen table weighing them on the kitchen scales when my housemate Indra came in sleepily for breakfast. Normally pretty tolerant of my eccentricities, the sight of a bedraggled seabird sitting on her kitchen scales set her off. Her reaction was nothing, however, compared to that of our new housemate, Nancy.
Nancy was a fast-talking Mancunian who seems preoccupied with that peculiarly English trait of washing pure white sheets and t-shirts several times a week in order to maintain their pristine whiteness. We hadn’t spent much time together since she moved in and hadn’t really made a connection. The sight of the prions didn’t really help matters. Her shrieks sent one of the birds into a panic and it disappeared behind the dishwasher. While I was trying to retrieve it from its hiding place the other bird proceeded to shit on Nancy’s fine white tablecloth, and I was ordered out of the house. ‘Fine by me,’ I thought, ‘I need some help identifying these things anyway,’ and I drove to Mike Carter’s.