After first visiting Australia over 30 years ago (New South Wales, Victoria, and the Australian Capital Territory, then a couple years later far north Queensland), and finally returning in 2022 (Top end, red center, Tasmania), we made another trip to yet another “new” area for us – Western Australia. This trip was entirely about the birds, taking two back-to-back tours offered by Inala Nature Tours.
To skip the narrative and go straight to the photos – including Buddy Bison! – click here. Click any photo below to view a larger version.
We flew into Perth via Auckland (just a bit disgruntled when Air New Zealand downgraded us to economy on the longest flight leg when they switched aircraft, but they actually did right by us with an empty seat in between us, and paid us enough to not complain). We had a couple of free days before the tours started, allowing us one day to visit the very nice Kings Park and Botanic Garden in central Perth, as well as the Western Australia Museum; the second day we took a wine tasting tour in the Swan Valley.
We were then off on the first tour, Coral Coast and Northern Wheatbelt, with guide Frank O’Connor, a local expert who was described to us as the “go-to guy in WA for 30 years”. And we had him all to ourselves, as nobody else signed up for the tour and it became a private tour. From Perth we took an inland route to Dalwallinu then to Mount Magnet, continuing on to Geraldton and Kalbarri National Park (see map).
Vast fields of wheat and canola (rapeseed), salt lakes, lots of scrubby habitat…but in places very few birds. The landscape was somewhat degraded due to drought and fires (both prescribed and natural). Even in places where the conditions looked pretty good, the birds weren’t always there. We got a bit used to Frank saying, “25 years ago you could see x, y, z here”, which is a sad commentary on how things have changed. :-\ The birding picked up as we visited The Granites a few miles north of Mount Magnet, and also in Kalbarri NP and Geraldton.
We also saw a lot of “road trains” – think big rigs in the US but instead of one or two containers, three or four. They work well when there’s a lot of space and straight roads, even if not always too fun trying to pass one.
Early on, Frank’s phone fell off the car – we didn’t see when he set it on the hood and we then drove off – we spent some time looking for it and found it, smashed. (Might have actually been us that ran it over.) Robert luckily had the same app on his phone that Frank used, so he was quite busy playing the bird calls, documenting sightings in e-bird, and watching all at the same time.
Another pretty funny (to us) thing…the display in the Toyota Land Cruiser kept disappearing, not only the center console (where the gps and other info should have been), but also the driver’s display of speed, distance, etc. It took us 6 days to figure out that Frank throwing his hat onto the space above the dashboard was covering up a sensor. Two retired people each with 30 years of IT work history and we never checked that…oops. (In fairness to us, that same sensor in our old RAV4 only controls whether the headlights come on automatically, not the entire dashboard display.)
We returned to Perth along the Indian Ocean Road, and stopped at a couple of nice lakes to pick up some usual wetland suspects before returning to the hotel and meeting our next guide, Nick Hart.
The second tour, focusing on southwestern endemics and including four other participants (Denmark, Australia, and US), left the next morning heading south to Cheynes Beach.
Our accommodations at Cheynes Beach were in a quite nice caravan park, and we enjoyed seeing kangaroo, quail, and cute spotted scrubwrens right outside our door. We spent a couple nights there, looking for a few extremely range-limited endemics (like, one strip of beach on the map), and also visiting the Stirling Range Retreat.
From Cheynes Beach we continued on to Jerramungup and the Fitzgerald River NP, and also made a stop in Wagin for a group photograph with the Giant Ram statue. 🙂 We had a day in Dryandra State Forest, where among the sought after birds, we actually saw a mammal – a Numbat, after driving around for awhile and nearly giving up. In Dryandra that same evening we returned to the Barna Mia Sanctuary, for a guided nocturnal walk in their enclosure to see some (captive, habituated) very rare Australian marsupials.
We returned to Perth the next day, stopping at some lakes en route, everyone up for a last gasp of birding before having to call it a day. As our guide Nick said,
Despite the sometimes-difficult weather, our hard work was rewarded with us finding all the possible southwest WA endemics and special birds during the trip. The trip was wonderful overall between the great birds, animals, scenery, and company.
We wrapped up the trip with another couple of days to ourselves in Perth, spending one out in Fremantle where we visited the Maritime and Shipwreck Museums. The Maritime Museum had the Australia II yacht that won the America’s Cup in 1983, quite a sight. Our last morning, with lots of time to kill before going to the airport, we visited the Last Crumb Cake bakery out in Bassendean; the owner is related to Liza’s cousin Pam Deichmeister. If you go to Perth, check it out. 🙂
Again, to see trip photos, including birds and wildlife, and Buddy Bison!, click here.
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