Topi trip 3
Booti -booti NP
This was the Tuesday. Our main target for the day was to walk in the Booti booti National Park, just outside
Pacific Palms. As the name suggests there were a lot of palms (and also the Pacific) there. The aim of the Park as to preserve an area of coastal rainforest. The walk started with a fair amount of verticality but did, as promised, deliver rainforest with lots of palms, epiphytes and vines. Needless to say there were also some weeds, including bitou bush and lantana, but there was some evidence of efforts to control them.
On the first stretch of the walk there was only limited birdlife, with a brush turkey being the outstanding addition to my trip and year lists. After a pause for some fruit (schlepped in
my backpack) we did the return leg, along the shore of Wallis Lake. This added quite a few bird species to the list with the best being very close views of a pair of sea-eagles. From the amount of vocalisation I would expect that they had procreation on their mind. Close behind the sea-eagles for "bird of the day" was a pair of Forest Ravens. They weren't on my list for the degree-square so are rather unusual here: however a couple of scruffy crows cannot be put ahead of magnificent raptors!
This leg was largely flat until with a kilometre to go it became necessary to scale Booti Hill (also known as Mont Booti) before descending to the start.
At the mid-point we had visited a National Parks office where the very helpful young woman asked if we had seen any whales. When we said not, she said the best place to go, to see them from land, was the Seal Rocks lighthouse. So after a very pleasant arvo tea (pleasant inter alia because the guys with nitro -powered model dune -buggies hadn't fired up until we were back in the car) we took ourselves off there.
This was the Tuesday. Our main target for the day was to walk in the Booti booti National Park, just outside
Pacific Palms. As the name suggests there were a lot of palms (and also the Pacific) there. The aim of the Park as to preserve an area of coastal rainforest. The walk started with a fair amount of verticality but did, as promised, deliver rainforest with lots of palms, epiphytes and vines. Needless to say there were also some weeds, including bitou bush and lantana, but there was some evidence of efforts to control them.On the first stretch of the walk there was only limited birdlife, with a brush turkey being the outstanding addition to my trip and year lists. After a pause for some fruit (schlepped in
my backpack) we did the return leg, along the shore of Wallis Lake. This added quite a few bird species to the list with the best being very close views of a pair of sea-eagles. From the amount of vocalisation I would expect that they had procreation on their mind. Close behind the sea-eagles for "bird of the day" was a pair of Forest Ravens. They weren't on my list for the degree-square so are rather unusual here: however a couple of scruffy crows cannot be put ahead of magnificent raptors!This leg was largely flat until with a kilometre to go it became necessary to scale Booti Hill (also known as Mont Booti) before descending to the start.
At the mid-point we had visited a National Parks office where the very helpful young woman asked if we had seen any whales. When we said not, she said the best place to go, to see them from land, was the Seal Rocks lighthouse. So after a very pleasant arvo tea (pleasant inter alia because the guys with nitro -powered model dune -buggies hadn't fired up until we were back in the car) we took ourselves off there.
Comments