Rainforest and Bronzebacks (Part 5)
Someone suggested I should include a rough map for reference with my blog posts. Obviously with the herp community I can’t make it specific, but I thought might be good to give you all a visual reference for the distances we cover.
Whyalla to Narrabri (6th-8th)
Day 14
A short trip down the road early the next morning soon had us back in the beautiful city of Port Augusta. I was feeling like a local with our third drive through the town in almost as many days, but the servo cashier wasn’t as understanding and didn’t let us use the truckstop showers, upsetting times indeed. Continuing eastwards and probably still rather smelly, we worked our way back towards the southern Flinders Ranges. Arriving at our first spot for the day, there was as many rocks as one could possibly want to flip searching for Flinders Ranges Worm Lizards (A. pseudopulchella). The slinky geckos didn’t agree with our rock choices though, and despite exploring around for over an hour, no lizard was found.
Slinking back down to the samphire flats, we decided to give the Saltbush Slender Bluetongue (C. venustus) another crack. The usual spoils proved empty but after Nick wandered off I decided to dig deeper into another nearby one. Success! A little grey noodle shot down into the loose debris and I soon had her in hand, with an original tail to boot. It was definitely one of the highlight species for the SA portion of the trip and I was grinning from ear to ear trying to photograph it as it wriggled around.
Cyclodomorphus venustus
With a largely successful morning keeping us in good spirits, we headed to a nearby beach to catch up with a friend of Nick’s and hopefully continue the herping luck. We weren’t disappointed poking around a local dump area, with a large number of species, a few being rarer finds, turning up. These included a Western Blue-tongue (T. occipitalis), a Mallee Worm-lizard (A. inaurita), along with several Robust Mulch Sliders (L. terdigitata), Southern Sliders (L. dorsalis), Shrubland Morethias (M. obscura), Myall Sliders (L. edwardsae) and a few other species. Due to a sequence of comical and unfortunate events, almost none were photographed, the only species I emerged with photos of was a rough Robust Mulch Slider and a Peron’s Earless Skink (H. peronii). Despite our photographic misfortune I was still in a great mood with the afternoon finds, it’s rare you find everything you’d hoped for plus more at the one spot. Saying our goodbyes, we continued east for our final camp in SA.
Lerista terdigitata
Hemiergis peronii
Arriving in the Murray mallee on dusk, we set off with our rakes for a five minute poke around before dinner. I was quietly hoping for a Butler’s Delma (D. butleri) but didn’t rate our chances, with only a short amount of time and their typically more uncommon occurrences. Fortunately, whatever herp related deity you’d like to give credit to decided to bless my rake and I quickly uncovered a large female amongst the spinifex. Marvelling at the random turns of luck we’d had that day, we quickly photographed her before disappearing into the night with our head torches. It didn’t take long to find several Jewelled Geckos (S. elderi) clambering amongst their spinifex homes and we settled in for another round of Triodia based frustration photos. Exhausted from another long day, we settled in for an early night.
Delma butleri
Strophurus elderi
Day 15
It was only travelling back eastwards the next day that we realised we’d failed to see a live snake in SA, despite spending an almost solid five days herping the state. Quite surprising considering the relatively good conditions and number of lizards we’d managed to come across. Ruminating on our apparently snake repellant presence (we were four days without a shower at this point so maybe not that surprising), we continued on our way back into NSW, returning to the lackluster township of Broken Hill. Luckily for us and anyone that could come within smelling distance, a caravan park displayed some lovely hospitality and kindly allowed us the use of their showers. Markedly less smelly, fed, watered and refreshed, we headed northwards towards Mutawintji National Park.
I’m still not quite sure how we squandered so many hours of the day, but it was late afternoon by the time we arrived in the park. Our plans of investigating the local endangered population of White’s Skinks (L. whitii) were dashed by the main gorge being closed to visitors so instead we hit some closer ridge lines on the tail of the endemic dragon. The Barrier Range Dragon (C. mirrityana) is endemic to the Barrier Range and a close relative of some of the other rock Ctenophorus we’d just seen in SA. Unlike last time I’d visited, it took an age to find one but we did eventually stumble upon a striking male. He wasn’t too keen on photos and dashed into a nearby crevice, taking with him our last hopes of photographing a diurnal reptile that afternoon. Nick did have greater luck at nabbing one of the sadly abundant local goats, who proceeded to loudly appraise us of its displeasure. Leaving the goat and its friends to their business, we retreated to one of the tourist centres to wait for night.
The ever present wind and unseasonably cold temperatures continued to frustrate us (and in particular me) as we waited for the last light to disappear. It was a brisk 16 degrees by the time we concluded geckos could be out and I was not hopeful as we began walking a dirt track with our led lensers. Just as we’d concluded we’d have no luck, a runty Border Beaked Gecko (R. angusta) with a regenerated tail was spotted amongst the sand. Running back to the car and returning with our cameras we came across a few more Border Beaked Geckos and eventually one with an original tail. Soon after, Nick emitted one of the stranger noises I’ve heard him make and I looked over to see him staring at a small snake crossing the road at his feet. Despite not seeing a snake in SA, he’d managed to find one of NSW’s more rarely recorded species in some truly terrible conditions, a Narrow-banded Shovel-nosed Snake (B. fasciolatus). What made it even better was that it was my 350th Australian reptile, carrying me across the line for what had been my year's goal. Not bad. Returning back to the car we even managed to find our other gecko target and third Nephrurus for the trip, a Smooth Knob-tailed Gecko (N. levis). A pretty good haul for a spotlight I’d thought would yield very little. Grinning, satisfied, content and happy (insert more joyful words as you can think of them) with what had been a brilliant two weeks, we made our way slowly back to Broken Hill to spend the night.
R. angusta
B. fasciolatus
Nephrurus levis
Day 16
While very little happened this day other than a sleepy drive back to Narrabri (we did find an eerie dog graveyard at Cobar which wasn’t particularly pleasant), Nick did convince me to chase one final herp on our way home. The reptile was naturally an egernid skink, so that afternoon saw us pull to a stop amongst some outcrops in the Warrumbungles National Park. A quick search payed off with a singular example of the nominate subspecies of the Black Rock Skink (E. saxatilis) found running around the sandstone. A Jacky Dragon (A. muricatus), White’s Skink (L. whitii) and a few other skink species rounded out our five minute search and we continued on to Narrabri.
Egernia saxatilis
Nick headed home the next day with the usual tearful farewells, but as always, the inklings of our next planned trip were already well on their way to a fully fledged plan. Until next time.
