Dazz & Leanne's travelling adventures: Iron Range National Park

I was more excited about visiting Iron Range National Park than the tip of Cape York! When we started researching the birds to see on this trip we discovered that most of them are found in the Iron Range. Our first stop on the way in was a billabong just before the Wenlock River.

Apparently there's a 5m croc that goes between this billabong and the next one... needless to say we didn't go down to the water for a look!

White-throated Honeyeater

Whistling Kites fighting

Yellow Honeyeater

The Wenlock River

An interesting creek bed and rock formation along the side of the road.

The Pascoe River

Mount Tozer

We spent two nights at Cooks Hut Campground in the rainforest and were then booked in to Chilli Beach for two nights. We enjoyed the rainforest so much, and still had so many birds to try to see, that we booked another four nights for after Chilli Beach. I'll put all the Cooks Hut photos at the end, and start with the Chilli Beach ones.

Chilli Beach is usually windy at this time of year, but I picked a site online that seemed like it might be a little bit sheltered, and it was.

There were fairly regular showers that came across, but in between there was some lovely blue sky.

We had been told that there was a large fig tree in the campground that was full of birds, and the reports were correct. It was a constant hive of activity.

Double-eyed Fig-Parrots (male & female)

Olive-backed Oriole

Yellow Oriole

Palm Cockatoo

Rainbow Bee-eater

Rose-crowned Fruit Dove (adult & juvenile)

Grey-tailed Tattler

Lesser Frigatebird (male)

Lesser Frigatebird (juvenile)

Siberian Sand-Plover (breeding & non-breeding)

Brown Tree Snake

I was feeling a little bit lazy, and a number of people had told us how good the cafe was in Portland Roads, so we decided to have an early wedding anniversary celebration and go out for lunch. The barramundi was beautiful!

The downside of our lovely sheltered spot on the beach was the lack of solar, and the national park's website said no generators. Now that we have a decent battery system in the car we're able to manage power a bit better, so we had been running the 240V in the van out of the car. On the way back to Chilli Beach from Portland Roads we pulled into a little area on the side of the road and lay back in our deck chairs while the generator recharged the battery.

We went out to Lockhart River twice during our time at Cooks Hut to buy milk (which was quite reasonably priced considering the remote location!). The rock formations on the beach were really interesting.

White-bellied Sea Eagle (juvenile)

Radjah Shelducks

Clearwing Swallowtail

Frilled-necked Lizard (juvenile) - we think...

Our favourite part of our time in the area was at Cooks Hut campground. On both stays we met great people with mutual interests in birds, photography and other wildlife. We quickly developed a mini community, sharing information and learning from each other (we did most of the learning!).

Kym (in the middle) managed to spot the elusive Yellow-billed Kingfisher and was trying to explain where in the thick brush Izzy and I needed to look, but it flew out and past us before we caught a glimpse. We had all been following the noise up and down the road and were disappointed not to see it clearly and get photos!

We got great photos of some of the birds that are unique to the area, and really poor photos of others. It's hard to get good sharp photos of fast moving birds that are high up in trees or in low-light rainforests...

Frill-necked Monarch

White-faced Robin

White-eared Monarch

Australian Brush Turkey Race purpureicollis

Eclectus Parrot (female)

Red-cheeked Parrot (male)

Red-cheeked Parrot (immature male)

Tawny-breasted Honeyeater

Grey-headed Whistler

Shining Bronze-Cuckoo

Tropical Scrubwren

Magnificent Riflebird (female) - We heard plenty of riflebirds, and saw glimpses of the males as they flew over the road, but this is the best we could do for a photo.

Little Shrike-thrush

Spectacled Monarch

Varied Triller

Australasian Figbird

Silvereye

Yellow-spotted Honeyeater

Rufous Fantail

Shining Flycatcher (male)

Mistletoebird

Brown Cuckoo-Dove

Forest Kingfisher

On our first night in the campground we met a guy who was into reptiles and we went out spotlighting, looking for Green Pythons. We didn't find any the first night, but we did see some frogs and a Scrub Python. We then saw more scrub pythons during our second stay. Scrub pythons are the longest snakes in Australia.

Wood Frog

White-lipped Tree Frog

Our new friends found some green pythons next night and directed us to where they saw them, and on our return to Cooks Hut we saw a few over a number of nights. They are stunning little creatures!

Night hunting

I only had to go to the toilet to find this gecko!

On our first night at Cooks Hut, when we came back from looking for pythons, we heard something in the tree behind our caravan. It was a cuscus... an animal I had only just heard of when I was reading about the Iron Range National Park. By the time Dazz grabbed his camera it had disappeared into the canopy and we couldn't find it again. Not to worry, we thought, we can see it tomorrow night. Well, of course, we didn't, or for the first three nights back at Cooks Hut for our second visit. A wildlife tour group even came most nights to look for it and didn't see it. On our final afternoon we came back from walking the road looking for birds and sat down under the awning of the van. It was around 6pm and not quite dark when we heard a bird on the other side of the camp so I got up to have a look to see what it was. We then noticed the little boys from the family that had arrived that afternoon looking up in the tree - but that was not where the bird noise was coming from. Then we noticed the rustling in the tree and realised it was the cuscus! They had no idea what it was and grabbed their binoculars. They were all very excited to see it, as were we, and even more excited to get some great photos in spite of the low light.

Australian Spotted Cuscus (female)