A late start today; we weren’t out of the campsite until 07:00. As we were getting ready to leave one of the local Pretty-face Wallabies sat beside our pitch complete with adorable joey in her pouch. How endearing is this?
The targets for the morning, both being close to Takarakka, my little slice of heaven, were Mickey Creek followed by The Rock Pool. Ours was the only car in the car park at the beginning of the 1.3km trail running beside Mickey Creek. [Quelle surprise.]
The water was flowing but there wasn’t much of it. There was a lot of mud beside the stream and, further up the banks, about 2m, detritus, evidence of the inch of rain that fell rapidly in a storm about a week ago and washed all before it. This creek must then have been a raging torrent. The boys are after an Austroaeshna species (that’s an Australian Hawker) but I’m happy to try taking pictures of any odonata that offer themselves up to my lens. They’ve seen an Austroaeshna a couple of times but thus far it has flown continuously and has eluded being captured on pixels. I’m content with the lower-hanging fruit that I am getting. I spent a awful lot of pixels on an Australian emperor (Hemicordulia australiae); the lighting was harsh and difficult but here’s some of the pixels.
There was some low-hanging fruit at our second stop, The Rock Pool, which was only about 1km distant. The Rock Pool itself is a swimming hole that would doubtless be crowded in the popular season. Happily now, we were the only ones there. [A song about mad dogs and Englishmen springs to mind.] Flowing into the pool and keeping it topped up was a rock-strewn creek. Phil had his wellies on and was impervious. Roy had short shoes on and got his feet soaked. There was nothing for it, I’d have to get my walking boots wet – fortunately the water never went over the tops. I had some fun cooling down my feet – once again we’re up in the mid-30s Centigrade – and stalking some dragonflies which did their level best not to be stalked. I wobbled on more rounded wet rocks until I had them stalked as best I could. Phil has a thing about Gomphids [i.e. club-tailed dragonflies]. We, by which I mean Phil, think this one is a Pale Hunter (Austrogomphus amphiclitus).
Once again we returned to the calm of Takarakka campsite for lunch and an afternoon of paperwork. This is the first place where we’ve really had much in the way of downtime and I’ve been able to get up to date, mas ó menos. Immediate refreshment took the form of one of the Connoisseur range of Australian native ingredient ice creams – they’re like Australian Magnums. I went for salted caramel with macadamia nut. Wattleseed and Hazelnut sounds interesting, too. I couldn’t resist washing my ice cream down with a cold Bundaberg ginger beer [apparently, that can be bought at Tesco – hmmm].
We move away from my slice of heaven tomorrow to begin ouor journey back to wards Brisbane but not before the boys have once again gone up Carnarvon Gorge to the Moss Garden. I’m going to leave them to it this time, I think.
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