Note: if you’ve seen the 2009 ReptilesDownUnder.com calendar, you might recognise some pictures here.

We left The Warrumbungles in the morning and drove up to Girraween National Park, just across the border in Queensland. Despite it being quite close to my home town of Brisbane, and despite it being well known for its high reptile diversity, I’d never visited Girraween. We drove into the park and stopped at the first creek crossing. We saw a couple of eastern water dragons (Physignathus lesueurii lesueurii) and a plethora of eastern water skinks (Eulamprus quoyii).

Eastern water skink (Eulamprus quoyii).

Eastern water skink (Eulamprus quoyii).

Eastern water skink (Eulamprus quoyii).

Eastern water skink (Eulamprus quoyii).

We parked the car and went for a walk. We disturbed a foraging sand goanna (Varanus gouldii), who posed long enough for us to get some photos before retreating into a rock crack.

Sand goanna (Varanus gouldii).

We were walking along a creek line (carefully watching where we stepped so as to avoid squishing the millions of eastern water skinks lining the waterway). I jumped onto an isolated rock that was surrounded by reeds and noticed a large red-bellied black snake (Pseudechis porphyriacus) curled up in the centre.

Red-bellied black snake (Pseudechis porphyriacus).

Red-bellied black snake (Pseudechis porphyriacus).

I took a couple of dodgy pics and was trying to figure out how to get some better shots when the snake realised he’d been seen and calmly slithered off into the surrounding reeds. We continued on. We didn’t have to walk far before we found a nice granite outcrop with some exfoliated slabs – perfect habitat for the species I really wanted to see (after missing out on it at The Warrumbungles), Cunningham’s skink (Egernia cunninghami). Luckily some Cunningham’s sknks thought it was perfect habitat, too. We found an adult and two juveniles basking in front of a crevice. I sat down in front of them for 20 or so minutes and let them get used to me so I could take some pics.

Cunningham’s skink (Egernia cunninghami).

Cunningham’s skink (Egernia cunninghami).

Cunningham’s skink (Egernia cunninghami).

Cunningham’s skink (Egernia cunninghami).

Cunningham’s skink (Egernia cunninghami).

Cunningham’s skink (Egernia cunninghami).

Also in this rocky area were some Eulamprus martini and Carlia foliorum.

Carlia foliorum

Eulamprus martini

On dusk we walked around hoping to find some geckos. We heard a rustling off to the side of the path and found a three-toed skink (Saiphos equalis) slithering through some moss. We found a little pond with a whole bunch of frogs calling, so we poked around there for a bit. We heard a few emerald-spotted tree frogs (Litoria peronii) calling, but didn’t manage to see any.

Three-toed skink (Saiphos equalis).

Ornate burrowing frog (Opisthodon ornatus).

Eastern sedgefrog (Litoria fallax).

Uperuleia laevigata.

Litoria dentata.

The geckos were out in force as well, and we were stoked to find one of the species we were after, the Wyberba leaf-tailed gecko (Saltuarius wyberba). Unfortunately we missed out on seeing a Granite Belt thick-tailed gecko (Underwoodisaurus sphyrurus), which just means I’ll have to go back there sometime and keep looking.

Lesueur’s velvet gecko (Oedura lesueurii).

Southern spotted gecko (Oedura tryoni).

Southern spotted gecko (Oedura tryoni).

A species of Gehyra. Gehyra variegata has been recorded from the park, so it’s probably that..

Granite leaf-tailed gecko (Saltuarius wyberba).

Granite leaf-tailed gecko (Saltuarius wyberba).

We also saw a number of interesting non-reptile entities, included here for your viewing pleasure.

Spider thing.

A spider of some description.

Sundew.

When we’d exploited Girraween as much as possible, we headed up to Brisbane and onto The Caves.

This entry was posted on Saturday January 17th, 2009 at 9:26 am and is filed under Animal photos, Australian Odyssey - Nov 2008, In the field. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.