Kanga, Roo, and small relatives

With my brain reprogrammed by the bright Australian spring sunshine, I felt ready to tackle driving a hire car - but the brain has a mind of its own, and it turned out that as far as my brain was concerned Australia was furrin', and in furrin' you drive on the right. I did manage to avoid going the wrong way or hitting anything, but considering how easy driving a right-hand drive car in UK is for me, driving a right-hand drive car in Australia is surprisingly difficult.

The lady in Budget wanted to know was I going to drive off the tarmac? - Yes, the entrance roads to national parks are unsurfaced. - If so, I would be uninsured for damage sustained on those roads.
The lady in Budget wanted to know was I going to drive at night out of town? - Yes, I was going on a night tour at a wildlife sanctuary and needed to get back to Perth afterwards. - If so, I would be uninsured if I hit a kangaroo. I asked how the Australians managed in their own cars. "We don't drive at night."

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From the ocean, the coastal plain stretches inland for about 50 km, where it reaches the abrupt scarp of the Darling Range running north-south. The scarp was formed by a fault, but is not the fault itself: the scarp has eroded back 15 km to the east from the original fault line. The hilly country and uncompromising geology including granites and gneisses has protected the area from clearance for agriculture. The forests growing on the range now comprise various national parks and protected areas. Today I was visiting Walyunga National Park, an area where the Avon river flowing in from the north has cut a steep sided valley parallel with the scarp slope a little more to the west.

As I arrived at Walyunga I was reminded of the problems faced in conserving Australian wildlife. Homesick settlers brought reminders of Britain with them and released them without thought of the devastation that they would wreak on the native fauna. Cats, foxes and rabbits have eaten the smaller marsupials - or eaten their food. The Australian conservation agencies now have their hands full attempting to redress the balance.

My second reminder that this wasn't Europe was when I got to the gate to pay - I was planning to ask about the walking routes in the park, but there was noone there to ask - payment works on a trust system with specially designed envelopes for the entrance fee that allow you to fill in your details and remove a completed ticket for the park and leaves a carbon copy of your details on the envelope.

 In the car park I caught up with the relief warden. He knew only the basics of the route, but quizzed me on my preparation. Had I got water with me? A hat? Food? Suitable walking shoes? Did I know that it was quite a long way, with some steep climbs? I passed muster.

The walk started in the next car park. Down the slope and over the foot bridge, I turned the corner and the path started climbing. I was just thinking that I would stop and take a photo when a kangaroo came out of the bush 10 meters or so ahead of me, turned up the path and effortlessly motored up the hill. It wasn't even trying. I wondered why our ancestors thought putting one foot in front of the other and giving up tails was such a great idea ...

I admit to arboreal prejudice: Eucalyptus are those sad trees with peeling bark and drooping branches, that are grown in serried ranks in various parts of the world to provide quick growing poor quality timber. Worse still, their dead leaves supress any kind of undergrowth, and having left the herbivorous insects that normally munch on them behind in their native habitat, they are almost devoid of insect life: as a result they support little in the way of birds and other larger beasts. I now have to admit that I was wrong: Eucalyptus are beautiful:

Like any other trees that have grown by themselves, they are scattered through the landscape, and even trees of the same species come in diverse shapes and sizes. The white barks of the common species in this woodland are eerily beautiful.

I had a problem, though. I didn't have names for anything. Until I could find out their proper names, I had to create mental reminders. There was the bird that sounds like a 1970's production of the BBC radiophonic workshop, and the trunk of this tree looks like one leg of a pair of baggy old-fashioned stripey pyjamas:

This plant got the mental sobriquet of "burnt pineapple":

A bit later I found some with knee-length skirts and flower spikes:

In the evening, I would learn that the burning is done to manage fire risk, and that the skirt hem reaches the ground if not burnt; that their more usual name is, not surprisingly, grass tree - or Xanthorrea preissii; and most impressive of all, that they grow at the rate of about a centimeter a year - so the 3-4 meter high plants that I saw occasionally are 300-400 years old.

The path I was walking on was broad and easy to follow. The problem came at junctions. At one point I realised that I was redescending into the river valley, when I should have been staying high on the ridge, and had to backtrack a kilometer to the last junction. After a while, I began to worry that I was still not on the right path, and that I would end up not being able to loop back. I decided that if it wasn't clear by 1pm that the path did this, I would turn around and retrace my steps. At 10 to 1 I finally joined up with the Echidna path - the one I was looking for. After that, there were markers at regular intervals:

Good things come in bunches and a few minutes after finding my way again, I heard a rustle in the bushes. I'd heard these before, and scoured the bush for some small fleeing creature. This time I did the same and realised that it's a rather larger beast that's making the noise:

It's a western grey kangaroo, and its friends weren't quite so keen to be photographed:

The route of the path is well-designed, with the early part climbing up and down sun-exposed hillsides, but curling back down to a relaxed shady walk along the river.

There are some birds new to me on the river, including Pacific black duck:

and Australian wood duck:

- as well as the ubiquitous galah:

Alongside the path are lawn-like grassy slopes. After a while I came across the lawn-maker and lawn-mower:

Despite having a joey in her pouch, she seemed much less fearful than the others I saw - perhaps because there are more walkers on this path, or because the grazing is particularly succulent - and let me get quite close without seeming unduly disturbed. In the end it was her that stayed, and me that left to visit another reserve. My destination was a reserve called Karakamia - pronounced Cracker-my-a (my as in 'belonging to me'). This is a relatively small area, of about two and a half square kilometers, that has been protected with a predator-proof fence, and subjected to intensive poison-baiting. There are still regular checks, but no signs of foxes or cats have been found inside the reserve for over a year.

There are 294 species of mammals living in Australia, and apart from the bats, the species introduced by man - from the dingo 40,000 years ago, onwards -, and the duck billed platypus and echidna, they are all marsupials. They range in size from the red kangaroo down to rabbit and mouse-sized species, and it is the smaller ones that have been particularly hard-hit, largely through fox and cat predation, and have now been excluded from large areas of mainland Australia. Krakamaia is one of the few sanctuaries where they can thrive. Indeed some of the species breed sufficiently well that individuals bred at Krakamia are used to repopulate other areas.

Many of these small mammals are nocturnal, and the two hour tour starts as night falls, and is led by a guide armed with a powerful spotlight. We saw five species of marsupial: western grey kangaroo, tammar wallaby, woylies, brush-tailed possums and bandicoots. The tammar wallabies are only a little larger than quokkas (up to about 60 cm):

The real speciality of Krakamia is the woylie:

The Krakamia population is by far and away the healthiest in Australia. Although they produce one offspring at a time, they can produce one every ten weeks in good conditions, and this means that many individuals can be released elsewhere. The worrying development is that, while the Krakamia population is still doing well, nearly all of the wild populations have crashed in the last few years. It seems that there may be two diseases involved, and all releases from Krakamia have stopped (there's no sign of disease there, and the released animals don't seem to be the source of the problem. This last photo of a mother woylie with a youngster at foot is a terribly poignant reminder of just how near the brink many of these species are.

Go west - to Rottnest

A couple of years ago I discovered that being outside all day in bright sunshine was the quick way to reset my biological clock and get over jetlag fast, so my first morning in Australia found me on the ferry from Perth travelling 19 km down the Swan River to Fremantle, and then out to the island of Rottnest 18 km off the coast. The river winds its way in great sweeps towards the sea past sandbanks with eponymous black swans, and acres of marinas, one complete with three-storey boat store:



The city of Fremantle grew as a port at the mouth of the river and now most of the cargo is containerised:



Out to sea, Rottnest island is 11 by 4.5 km, and formed of soft limestone. In places there are cliffs along the coast, but much of the island is covered by rolling sand dunes.

'Rottnest' is a corruption of 'Rattenest' -meaning rats' nest -, the name given to the island by Willem to Vlamingh. His 'rats' were actually quokkas, native marsupials which look like a cross between a wallaby and a hamster. The lack of predators on the island has allowed them to survive there when they have been more or less extirpated from the mainland, and also means that they are relativley tolerant of camera waving tourists:

Privately owned vehicles aren't allowed onto the island, so the best way of getting about is to hire a bicycle from the ferry company. The bikes are issued on the pier as visitors get off the boat:



Once I'd found a quokka, my next port of call on my bicycle tour was one of the island lakes, in search of a small dapper wading bird, the red-capped plover. The vegetation told me that it was suitable habitat with brackish water, but the smell was the give away that it would be the perfect spot:

Brackish lagoons are an acquired taste, sometimes displaying a stark beauty:

The birds are banded stilts - tubbier and more gregarious than the black-winged stilt found in Europe, and often feeding while swimming rather than strutting along on their long legs. And that's a red-capped plover between the water's edge and the vegetation at the left-hand edge of the photo.

After the smelly joys of the lagoon it was time to retrace my steps to the village and board a smaller boat for a tour around the island.

The tour guide teased us by asking whether we wanted to go searching for his suggested quarry, but the answer to his question was of course yes. We headed off north from the island and after only 10 minutes saw the tell tale signs. Another five minutes and we were in among them:

We saw at least three or four together, and the closest we got was the one that swam under the boat and flicked its tail out of the water as it dived once it was on the other side. The humpback whales are passing south on their way to their summer feeding grounds in the antarctic - following the 30 m isobath down the coast of Australia, with such regularity that the locals call it Humpback Highway. In winter they return north for the females to calve in relatively warm water. There were other sea mammals to be seen as well: New Zealand fur seals that are breeding in increasing numbers ...

... and on a sandy beach, an Australian sea-lion that deigned to raise its head:

 

In one of the rocky bays, a pair of ospreys were setting up home for the breeding season. Nest sites are reused over decades, outliving the individual birds that use them, with the nests reaching an impressive size over the years:

If you travelled due west from the island, the next landfall would be the east coast of Africa, and if that continent had drifted a few hundred kilometers further north before crashing into Europe, you'd miss South Africa altogether and continue to South America. It's not surprising that even in relatively calm weather the seas at the western end of the island are spectacular:

On the calmer side of the island I was astonished that we could see the skyscapers along the river front at Perth - 25 to 30 kilometers away ...

... the same iconic view that greeted us as we returned from the island in the ferry.

I arrive

Well here I am in the first corner – Perth. I sat watching the scenery go past in the shuttle bus from the airport in a slightly dazed and sleep-deprived way. Lots of eucalyptus trees, but so far not a single billabong or jolly swagman. The birds all seem to be larger and more brightly coloured than in western Europe – a Willie Wagtail waving its tail vigorously from side to side as it rushed around in bursts, giving the binocular-less impression of a dark coloured squirrel undulating across the lawn; a pair of cockatoos with rather smart but subtle colouration – pale grey above and pink below – that turned out, on consulting the book, to be galahs; a fast flying flock of streaks of red – some kind of parakeet too quick to identify; and a coot – yes? – yes, the same species that we have at home in western Europe.

By a kind of symmetry with the journey to Schiphol, the shuttle bus got stuck in a traffic jam. By the time I got to the hotel it was almost dark, and as I’m off early in the morning on a trip out to an island, and the ferry terminal isn’t too far from the hotel, I thought I’d do a recce and check that I know where to go in the morning. The pier turns out to be just behind the modern bell tower that’s a recent addition to Perth architecture. It’s all lit up at night, so I didn’t come back to the hotel photo-less.

The tower apparently houses a 16-bell peal, plus two extra chromatic notes. Twelve of the bells came from St Martin-in-the-Fields, to mark the 1988 Australian bicentenary, and the other 6 bells were made specially. I'm not sure where the bells go in relation to the lights.

On my way ...

Standing on the pavement outside my house waiting for the shared taxi to pick me up, I was greeted by the first foggy autumnal day of the year.

The fog played havoc with the rush hour traffic, and the taxi arrived 40 minutes late at the airport. Fortunately, I'd allowed plenty of time so even after clearing passport control I had an hour to spare and decided to go and see the Dutch cows. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has a small annex - a room suspended in space with access by a staircase - at Schiphol (Amsterdam airport). The two longer walls each have space for about 8 paintings. There are paintings from the Gouden Eeuw - the 'Golden Century' (17th century) - along one wall, and facing them at the moment are the Dutch cows:

The rather ghost-like reflection is Willem III wearing a dress - although to be fair to him, he was rather young at the time.

I've known about the art gallery for some time but was surprised to find that it has a new neighbour:

The notice for visitors says:

"Welcome to the Airport library at Schiphol. We invite you to watch, read, listen to, download and enjoy Dutch culture.

Please leave the books in the library area so other visitors can also enjoy them.

Feel free to sit and relax here. On the upper floor is a sleeping area for your convenience."

I didn't have time to try out the sleeping facilities as my plane was waiting:

Twelve hours later we were disgorged into Kuala Lumpur airport, rather empty at the early hour. At first sight, it could easily be mistaken for somewhere in the west:

However, at the hub of the four radiating piers, there's a massive structure of glass and girders. The wooden balcony gives an idea of scale, as you can easily walk underneath it. The inside of this structure turns out to contain ...

... a tropical rain forest, that you can walk around in:

The forest is open to the sky above, so it contains whatever beasts have voted with their feet or wings. I saw a butterfly flit past fleetingly, and a young man and I had a pleasant conversation about a largish bright yellow bird, with a black face mask, and a beak that would look quite scary if your were an insect; even a large one. We decided that it was probably some kind of oriole. I can't think why he should have chosen me to talk to about it - unless it was because I was stood looking upwards through bionculars. Unlike the birds, the trees have presumably been brought in already partly grown. All the same, they have reached quite an impressive height.

It's difficult to rank Schiphol and Kuala Lumpur airports because the distractions they provide to break the tedium of modern air travel are very different, but they're certainly both worth a visit if you're ever passing through with a little time to spare.

What time is it?

The first ever time zone was put in place by British rail companies on December 1st 1847 as a solution to the chaos created by each village or town running on solar time, with its town clock showing midday when the sun was at its zenith. Not surprisingly, given its east-west extent, Australia has three time zones, with east coast cities being two hours ahead of Perth on the west coast (at least as I write this). More bizarrely, the middle time zone comprising Northern Territory and South Australia is not centrally placed timewise, but an hour and a half ahead of Perth, and half an hour behind Cairns. This set me wondering which of the places that I'm going to visit are closest to their solar time.

My home town is (as I write this) an hour and 37 minues ahead of solar time, and Kuala Lumpur's nearly as far out, being an hour and 7 minutes ahead. All the places in Australia that I'm going to visit are currently closer to solar time: Perth (17 minutes ahead), Darwin (35 minutes ahead), Alice Springs (22 minutes ahead), Cairns (13 minues ahead) and Melbourne (20 minutes ahead, but will be an hour and 20 minutes ahead by the time I get there because of daylight savings time [DST, or 'summer time']). Only the south-eastern Australian states have DST (the unhatched ones on the map above), so my domestic flights in Australia will involve time changes of +1.5, 0, + 0.5 and +1 hours, respectively.

One oddity is that because DST involves the clocks going forward in spring in both hemispheres, the clocks go in opposite directions in the two hemispheres in March and in October. If I was coming home a week or so later, the time change would be 6 hours on the outer trip and 10 on the way back - half from crossing the continent, and half from the accumulated effects of opposite DST changes.

And I thought it was wet here

I've just been booking hotels. The internet has become a two-edged sword: the upedge is that you can book almost anything from anywhere in the world. The downedge is that you now have to, because if you wait til you get there - wherever the there is that you're planning to make here - everything will already be booked chock-a-block.

So I was trawling the internet and booking hotels - and looking at a town called Ballarat in Victoria that, despite having a population (according to Wikipedia) of less than 100,000, is the third largest in the state. Anyway, I digress. I googled Ballarat Victoria, planning to look at hotel links, and the News section caught my eye. This was the first link. Some places have had 200 mm (that's 8 inches in old money) of rain in one day.

Perhaps I'll wait a bit before I book a hotel in Ballarat.

Eat your heart out, Jacques Cousteau

The prospect of snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef in a few weeks time finally got the better of me, and I am now the proud owner of a Canon D10 underwater camera. Of course I had to try it out, so here's some photos taken in washing up bowls - uh, pools - in my garden. I managed to find some tropical-looking fishes:

and a rather small crocodile (although this one isn't strictly an underwater photo):

I even managed an over-under photo, but I shan't be trying this with the real thing: