This morning I popped into town, a couple of blocks away, to collect my ‘diamond encrusted watch’ from the repairers. This was really becoming rather an expensive watch, I do hope the diamonds are the genuine article! I took the opportunity of having a look at some books on the Birds of Australia and at last found the very one (a field book) which I thought Kylie might like for her future career in Bush Safari as well as helping us now to identify the incredible variety presented to us every day. I would have also liked a book on Aussie wild flowers but there was not one to be had. Perhaps there is an opening for me here??
We set off quite late for the mountains today and Queen Mary Falls. Our first stop was at Brown’s Falls,
a babbling brook beside a high ridge where we delighted in seeing our old friends the Fairy Wrens flitting about among the bushes. Here was a family – male, female and what we assumed were two fledged babies as they were exactly the same but smaller and brown all over.
We spied a similar bird just sitting quietly on a branch nearby and, on closer inspection realised it was something we hadn’t seen before. We immediately recognised him in the new book as being a Red-Browed Finch!
We motored on up the mountain to Daggs Falls. Wow, I could hear the roar as soon as I opened the car door. From the viewpoint, I was amazed at the sheer drop… the water came down vertically from an opening high on the mountain side far down into a ravine below. I took a movie just to recall the whole effect.
As we continued up the mountain road, the skies began to darken. Some rain had been forecast for today although it was still very warm. I caught sight of a red flash… Rosellas!! And commented on how difficult it was to get a good photo of these birds that I had painted for my 2012 calendar. We will get some at some point Kylie said casually. I noticed her excitement as we pulled in to a clearing at our next stop… in fact, she could hardly contain herself! Ash rushed off and came back with some bird seed and we were immediately surrounded (and sat upon) by more Rosellas and King Parrots than you could imagine! Wow what a treat to see these beautiful birds not only at close quarters but happily eating out of my hand. Their colours were just stunning – variations of blues through to greens with crimson heads and they were so gentle as they picked out one seed at a time to shell in the funny way parrots do.
As we were leaving a few drops of rain fell, we sheltered for a bit as it didn’t seem to be doing much but then it came on more heavily. It was 4.30 by now so we decided to head on back down the mountain. It was very dark in the area by now and gave quite an eerie feel to the gum trees in the forest as we descended back to the flat open fields. Kylie thought the rain shower might have been confined to the range but in fact the roads were wet pretty well all the way back to Warwick. However, somehow out of the dark stormy skies, Warwick managed to produce another of Queensland’s stunning sunsets. It almost looked like a double sunset with remnant trails of the stormy clouds in front of it.
Thai Green curry this evening, delicious Kylie!
There were more storms to come however. In the night I was woken by flashes of lightning followed by deep rumbles of thunder. Then I experienced first-hand what seriously heavy rain on an Australian hot tin roof sounded like!
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