Author: ockendencreek
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Some Birds in South West Victoria
This is a continuation of our coastal trip in early December 2025. We ventured from Warrnambool towards Port Fairy for lunch. On the way we stopped off at Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve for a short break. Tower Hill is the remains of an extinct volcano, now a lake filled crater. If you want to know…
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Sea Breezes in Warrnambool, Victoria.
The north east of Victoria is usually a pretty hot and dry place at this time of year. However there was a break of cooler weather around the 9-12th December, so we headed to the coast. We left the dry paddocks behind to find a bit of an oasis of green grass and cooler temperatures…
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Water Bowl Memories
Our backyard water bowls are a feature of our rather dry yard in summer with a range of visiting birds. Here is a mix of some recent attendees seeking a quiet place. Red-rumped Parrot visiting our large water bowl. The Red rump on this parrot is very apparent. We used to get good numbers of…
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Historic Bathurst, NSW
We did something quite unusual on New Year’s Day taking an 8hr road trip to Sydney, NSW to visit our family for a late Christmas catchup . The roads were reasonably quiet which was a great help. We stopped overnight in Cowra in southern NSW to break up the trip. It was a warm summer’s…
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Zig Zagging in the Blue Mountains, NSW
We visited our family in Sydney back in October on one special day we decided to go for a stream train ride. We had been talking about do this trip for some years and finally did it. A great family experience. Touring at the Zig Zag Railway near Lithgow. This BP 218 engine was built…
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Visiting Lake King, in the centre of Rutherglen township.
We visited this area with the Birdlife Australia-Murray Goulburn branch members as part of a weekend trip to Chiltern-Mt Pilot National Park. We were fortunate to visit this small lake beside the caravan park in the middle of Rutherglen. here is a link to the location; https://maps.app.goo.gl/X6k6y3WSDq1r8Gto8 We were pleasantly surprised to see Latham’s Snipe…
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Chiltern-Mt Pilot National Park is Wonderful in late Spring.
Hard going for this young eucalypt growing in a small crevice on this large granite outcrop at Mt Pilot. View from Mt Pilot, looking NW. There are large outcrops of granite across the Park. https://www.parks.vic.gov.au/places-to-see/parks/chiltern-mt-pilot-national-park These images were taken in mid October in North East Victoria, Australia. The Park is a well known birding hotspot.…
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Norfolk Island Trip Rap Up
Here is a snapshop of some images from our September 2025 visit. Our bird list was fairly limited. eBird records shows 132 species have been observed. We visited before the main migrating shorebirds, but we still saw lots of interesting new birds. The Island is an important stopover point on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway look…
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Masters of Disguise.
Tawny Frogmouths are certainly an unusual nocturnal bird species. They are reasonably common across Australia although they are very difficult to locate. They can even be found in the leafy suburbs of our major cities if you are lucky. Their plumage resembles the bark of trees which allows them to blend in and they will…
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The Joys of Train Travel
We have had a wonderful time experiencing slow touring between Wangaratta and Sydney, visiting family. It’s an 8hr journey, with a rather slow section between Cootamundra and Harden as the train meanders through the quiet countryside of southern NSW. We passed through a rural landscape that in parts could be English, with weeping willows along…
Walking Glenrowan and Beyond 