On the way from Cape Range to Karijini we drove though a lot of spinifex country and saw a number of dragons dashing off the road as we went by. We stopped and tracked one down to find it was a ring-tailed dragon (Ctenophorus caudicinctus).
Ring-tailed dragon (Ctenophorus caudicinctus).
We arrived late at night after an all-day driving session from Hamelin Pool. While driving through the park we found the snake species we were looking for - the Pilbara death adder (Acanthophis wellsi).
Pilbara death adder (Acanthophis wellsi).
Monkey Mia
Still in Shark Bay, we had to go and see the famous Monkey Mia dolphins.
Today we’re heading up to Shark Bay, the first stop on our two week adventure. I’m heading out with Dean Bradshaw and Farhan Bokhari. As we left Perth I noticed that the latest in hair fashion has only just arrived in Perth.
The latest in hair fashion has just arrived in Perth
I’ve spent the last couple of days on Rottnest Island. Information on the island abounds, so this will just be a brief pictorial overview of my time on the island. I’m heading off to Shark Bay early tomorrow morning.
Rottnest is famous for many things, but none more so than its quokkas (Setonix brachyurus)
Quokka (Setonix brachyurus)
This afternoon Alecia left for her seven-month-long trip to Africa. Before she left she wanted one last look at the gorgeous tiger snakes (Notechis scutatus) one can find here in Western Australia, so we all headed down to a nearby lake to try our luck. We saw two tiger snakes, but again didn’t manage to get any decent photos.
Western tiger snake (Notechis scutatus)
Alecia won’t be back in Australia until sometime in August, but hopefully she’ll be able to regale us with stories of close encounters with cobras and lions via the magic of the internet.
Today Alecia and I decided to get a healthy dose of zoological goodness, so we headed to the Perth Zoo.
It was an exceedingly hot day, but that unfortunately didn’t deter the crowds. We headed to the nocturnal house (as did a noisy group of teenagers) to see the ghost bats being fed. I’ve never seen most bats feed, let alone ghost bats. I think I’d always envisaged them catching their prey on the wing, but these captive ones are quite happy to land on the ground, grab a dead mouse in their mouth, take off, hang upside down from the roof and stuff the mouse into their mouth using their knobbily little wrists. I didn’t want to flash them, so I didn’t get any photos.
Other highlights of the day were seeing some radiated tortoises procreating (and informing the kid next to me that his belief that they had the hiccups was false - they were in fact having sex) and hand-feeding a lemur.
Radiated tortoises having sex, or at least trying to
A lemur
Today Dean Bradshaw, a friend of ours (and a fantastic photographer), picked us up and the three of us headed down to Dryandra Woodland, a small chunk of remnant wandoo forest surrounded by the vast expanses of Western Australia’s wheatbelt. Before we even entered the woodland, we found what we think is a dead tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii).
Roadkilled tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii)
