triplog

Seems we’re not the only ones nesting around here - just after we moved in, a couple of fantails (I think) set up a nest just outside our living room window. We started to stress for the little guys, as the nest was only about 4 foot off ground level and next to a fence - easy pickings for a hungry cat. Still, all’s well that ends well, after a week or two the chicks both made tentative movements out of the nest. That’s them in the last shot above, huddled together on a low branch; so by that stage they were at least flying short distances.

Oh, and we’ve had a bandicoot hanging around the house every evening too:

Last week we spent in luxury - we rented a holiday house at Cow Bay in the Daintree with Matt, Bec, and Lesley and, Matts sister and her partner flew up for a few days too. The house was massive, an open-plan all timber construction surrounded by lush vegetation and wildlife. It also had a pool table and swimming pool, and about a million cosy nooks, chairs or hammocks to just relax and read in.

Last weekend we headed out of Townsville and up into Paluma Range National Park, camping first at Crystal Creek, then at Lake Paluma. The ranger there told us about a family of platypus (platypii?) on the other side of the lake, so at dusk we canoed over - and managed to see them. They’re very shy little creatures, we had to be completely silent and just drift the canoe - the footage above was shot on the second night we went out to see them.

After our stay at the Daly Waters pub, we headed onto a dirt road again - the Savannah Highway, which runs from the NT through to the Queensland east coast in Cairns. We finally crossed the border on Sunday (the 7th of September), passing from the Northern Territory into true cane toad country and the land of Four X.

The cane toad - when we were heading through the Kimberley and the top end of WA, there seemed to be a lot of concern about the impending cane toad invasion. Now that we’re in the NT, you can see how unstoppable they are - whereas the parks in the west of the Northern Territory such as Keep River National Park had traps in place to try and stem the flow, here in Kakadu it’s too late - the toad is well and truly here.