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A cluster of islands in the Pacific, well worth a visit. Originally named the New Hebrides by Captian Cook, the country was ruled by a joint British and French admistration until 1980. But comical it was, as both admistrations had separate offices and duplicated departments! The French drove on the right-hand side of the road while the British drove on the left. What a joke! Very few things were ever achieved because the two administrations couldn’t agree on anything.  It’s a wonder that the locals put up with this rediculous nonsense for so long! But no longer – they have their independence now.

Flying foxes are trapped or shot and used as food since most areas are subsistence farming. Luckily two of the three species in the area appear to be reasonably secure and not at threat of extinction. The one below is Pteropus anetianus, the Vanuatu Flying Fox. The lower pic is a Coconut Crab.

Coconut crabs are also an endangered species but are now harvested for food through a conservation management program that monitors numbers and allocates a quota for consumption.  There is also a special crab sanctuary on Vanua Lava, one of the most northerly islands. Also on the island, resides a very rare and poorly known flying fox, Pteropus fundatus or Banks Flying Fox.  I think this island might be a good destination for a future visit!

If you are travelling along the central Queensland coast, then Cape Hillsborough is certainly worth a visit. There are some great opportunities for some beach landscape photos and there is also some interesting wildlife. The wallabies in these photos are Agile Wallabies, a very common species in the savannah grasslands across the semi-arid Australian tropics. Interestingly, there are not that many places where you can easily see them in the wild (yes, well they are not really wild but they are free to range – so wild in that sense!) .  This is one place to see them and another that I can think of, is the East Point Reserve, not far from the Darwin CBD in the Northern Territory.  I’m sure there must be other places  but Cape Hillsborough may well be the only place where they come out onto a beach. This all seemed a bit odd - why would they come out onto an exposed beach where they might risk predation etc?  I was told that they were usually on the beach between about 5 and 7am, so I decided to go and see for myself. Running a bit late as usual, I got there at about 7am and there they were! Then I discovered that they were eating bits of vegetation that had been washed up, including the seeds of some of the local mangroves. So there it was – they were feeding! In this area, predators such as dingoes are long gone and being in a national park, there are no other pets (dogs) allowed, so they probably feel quite safe.

Cape Hillsborough offers quite a few other attractions as well. There are a number of walking tracks that lead through the coastal forests and along the shoreline. As mentioned, most of the area is national park and there are some really nice camp sites near the beaches. Do beware of the sandflies!  Most (all?) of the campsites are run by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, and so you must pay a camping fee. Here is some information from the QPWS people.

If you want to go more up-market, there is a Cape Hillborough Nature Resort (with much better pics on their website than I managed to get!) .  The Resort has camping sites as well as cabins and some are right beside the beach (where the wallabies are to be seen).  This is where Cape Hillsborough is on Google Maps (just north of Mackay).

Out of the murky gloom came this pair of sharks and then the lead animal turned and headed straight towards me.  Determined to get a few photos, I kept my eye to the viewfinder and put all other thoughts out of my mind as they came in… racking the zoom to full wide-angle to try to get them in the picture – it was slightly unnerving. Then  just at the last moment, the leading shark swerved away. Well, I mean, it had too unless it wanted to crash into the perspex! Yes… did you really think I would be in the water with a pair of bull sharks?  This was at SeaWorld on the Queensland Gold Coast, Australia.

Ulva Island is small island nestled in a bay near Oban, Stewart Island, New Zealand. If you are in Oban, you can catch a water taxi across and spend a day there. Plenty of endemic birds for photographers and nature lovers! A picture is a thousand words…

Zoos and wildlife parks are great places to see lots of interesting birds and animals. Some are even photogenic! In Singapore, check out:

The Singapore Zoo and Jurong Bird Park. You can catch a bus to the Zoo and a train and then bus to the Bird Park.

The Zoo has an excellent range of species from South-East Asia but like all zoos, there are the perennial favorites – hippos etc.  Some are great for photography but often it’s a matter of timing and sheer luck to get varoius subjects in the right situations for a photo.  Nice Orang-Utan exhibit!

The Bird Park has many species from the local area – SE Asia, and also from Africa and South America. There is one very large walk-through aviary with a waterfall (!) and much to see in there. If you keep records with your images, then as you photograph varoius species in the Park it’s worth writing down their names from the id signage. I did it in a half-hearted sort of way and it took me a week of searching the www to work out what the rest of them were!

There are plenty of interesting places to stay in this part of  Australia! A little while ago I spent some time near Lake Eacham at Chambers Wildlife Rainforest Lodge. The Lodge consists of a number of small, separate bunkhouses in the rainforest and a larger reception and kitchen/eating area nearby. There are quite a few good subjects for wildlife photography in the immediate vicinity including Chameleon Geckoes along the rainforest walking tracks at night and Sugar Gliders and Striped Possums come to a feeding area that has been specially set up for the purpose. While I was there a Japanese film crew were busy setting up hides and filming some denizen of the local forest -  I never managed to  find out exactly what it was!
It is also a good place to base activities if you want to explore the local area and maybe see the flying foxes at the Tolga scrub (described in another posting).  Chambers Lodge has a website where you can check out the accommodation. It is located about here!!!

Perhaphs I should have called this little anecdote “the Kiwi” because that is essentially what it is about!  Understandably, it one of those birds that is high on the list to see/photograph in New Zealand, but there are some problems. You might expect that, since all three species are exceedingly rare.  Nevertheless I encountered more problems that I had anticipated, primarly because one is not allowed to use flash on them! I am not sure what scientific evidence there is to support this idea, since in all my years of photographing birds and other animals, I have never seen any of them react to a flash! ….and I have seen plenty of postcard shots of Kiwis taken with flash.

But in any case all of that aside – for the greater unwashed, heathen public like us, it seems to be the rule, and so you won’t be able to photograph them in a wildlife park or if you go with a guide to check out wild ones at night.  You might be able to pay a wildlife park some quantity of money to arrange a session but I didn’t go down that path!

I decided to play by the rules and go for some daylight shots of a wild Kiwi…in natural habitat!  So how does one do that? Well, I will save you some time and effort and tell you all about it here.

The best  place (the only place, so I am told) to see them in daylight is Stewart Island, at the extreme south of the South Island.  The main settlement there is Oban and while there might be some Kiwis that hang around the town area, I certainly didn’t see any sign of them. So that was trip number one to the Island with no Kiwis! For trip two, I decided on a more radical approach! I booked a seat on a light aircraft and flew from Invercargill on the mainland, direct to Mason Bay on the far side of the Island. We landed on the beach and with not much effort, we walked up to the DoC Hut behind the beach (you see it as you circle to land, so no prizes for finding it).  The Hut is reasonably sparten with two main sections, a ‘living room’ with wood heater, and a few bedrooms in the other section – bunks with plastic covered mattresses.  You need to take your own sleeping bag etc and food, stove and of course, I had some camera gear…together with clothes and other essentials the pack weighed just over 20kg!!!  A slight overkill, but you never what you may see, hey? Geting there was day one.

Day two – I dragged out a 300mm lens, small tripod and NO flash (!!!) and went for a walk along the track that leads inland. In times past it was a road, and so it is quite well formed as it pushes through a great deal of very dense shrubbery about 8 to 10m tall. I walked about 500m and stopped to take in the scenery…. “so this might be good Kiwi habitat…..?” I thought. At that moment, a Kiwi walked out of the undergrowth and came snorting up to my shoes,  inspected them carefully and then started shuffling along the path. (Their nostrils open near the end of the beak and so they detect their food by smell… snorting in the process!). I spent a heart-pounding three minutes trying to get far enough away to fit the bird in the picture with the 300mm lens. Success! So there we go. Easy really! I saw a bird in the same place the next day as well. No flash that day either!

The walking track actually leads up to an old farm house that DoC appear to have taken over as storage. While I was there I met some deer hunters and we discussed Kiwis at length. They showed me an area immediately behind the old farm house – a large area of dense hummock grasses where once an airstrip had been built. A few drums still mark the edges of it. In this area, they see Kiwis quite often. I lurked around there for two days but never saw any in that area. Plenty of diggings etc, so they do feed in the area, so it’s worth staking out.  I did however hear them calling!

So to answer a  question that might have just crossed your mind; yes they shoot deer in this area, in relative proximity to the walking track where ‘trampers’ (known as hikers or walkers to non-NZ folk) wander past! It seems to be quite safe, although the guys I met stressed that if you walk around the old airstrip, you should wear a high visibility veste. You can buy them at all the outdoors stores.  I really like the NZ’s approach to safety! In Australia the various parks authorities would have a heart attack if they had that situation in their parks! In NZ, you are expected to use your brain and take your own initiative to do things safely. Good on them!

So having taken my pictures, I decided to set out to do the southern walking track. Not a good idea with 20+kg on your back. I will say no more! Don’t try it with 20kg or even if you have minimal gear or doubt your fittness…just don’t do it! I am not sure about the northern tracks, but on the whole, I believe they are easier. The smart thing to do is to fly back out.

While you are there, you should also get a water taxi out to Ulva Island. It’s a great place to see/photograph a variety of endemic NZ birds. You should keep at least a full day aside for that!  The Water Taxi that I used….Stewart Island Water Taxis (Ian)

The airline that flys to Mason Bay from Invercargill: Stewart Island Flights

You should register to use the DoC (Department of Conservation) Huts: DoC.

Places to stay at Oban – they range from ridiculously expensive to very reasonable! You might start with the DoC brochures that can be sent to you via snail mail (email them at the above link). The internet advertised accommodation tends to be in the higher price range if you want some luxury.

One of the best guides for Tassie is this book, written by those who know all about the best wildlife hotspots!

The Bunya Mountains are located to the north-west of  Toowoomba in South-east Queensland. The range is a small, isolated  western outlier of the Great Dividing Range that runs along the east coast of Australia.  Species that are easily seen: Red-necked Wallabies (Macropus rufogriseus), Satin bowerbirds ( Ptilonorhynchus violaceus), males attend their bowers immediately adjacent to the camping area and along the walking tracks – Late September to November or sometimes to late December), Scrub Turkeys (Alectura lathami, build large incubation mounds with leaf litter near the walking tracks and campground), King Parrots (Alisterus scapularis) and Crimson Rosellas (Platycercus elegans) are hand fed near the Kiosk.  Predatory birds such as Pied Currawongs (Strepera graculina) and Torresian Crows (Corvus orru) hang around the campground area, menacing other birds and trying to steal food from visitors (don’t encourage them!) and there is usually a pair of Laughing Kookaburras (Dacelo novaeguinea) that look as if they need a good wash.  At night you will probably see the large battle-scarred Short-eared Brushtail Possums (Trichosurus caninus) around the camping area and buildings. They occasionally climb into the large rubbish (trash) bins and forget to go home, curling up in the corner to sleep. If it’s their unlucky day, they will get emptied into the compactor and taken to the waste dump at Kingaroy (usually unharmed!).  You may also see a very reddish version of the Common Ringtail Possum (Pseudocheirus peregrinus).  There are many other species in the area and there is quite an impressive bird list for the area.  I once met a group of bird enthusiasts while at the park, and some of the members were doing quite well around the campground with 300mm lenses or thereabouts, and some fill flash. The shot of the Superb Fairy Wren that I use on my home page was taken in exactly this manner at the Bunya Mountains.

As you have gathered by now, the national park has a campground and bookings can be made over the www. here: QPWS. There are also private houses to rent and some lodges that hold larger groups. Enquiries can be made here: BM Accommodation.

And, this is a locality map!!  A relatively easy drive from Brisbane!

UPDATE:  I just recently re-visited this area and shock-horror – the little tea house has closed down! Now there is a somewhat sterile-looking cafe  near the top of the range that dispenses food and beverages with not a bird in sight! I’m sure if you walk around the area you will still see some wildlife, but that really great little bird observation area is gone! ….
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Just to the north of Townsville, you will find a turnoff that takes you to the top of the range and there you will find the small village of Paluma. This is a great little stop where you can photograph some of the local bird species while sitting at the tables with tea or coffee! Be careful driving up the range as the road is narrow and winding. When you get to the top, the tea house is well marked on the left-hand side of the road. The birds that you should see there include Macleay’s Honeyeater (shown here), Victoria’s Riflebird and sometimes you might see white-cheeked honeyeaters. There are many more birds than that, of course and I think the local bird list stands at about 256.  Paluma Range Tea House.