Final Perth Post - A Farewell With A Walk And A Sunset

The sneaky long weekend escape to Perth was coming to an end, what a great holiday! Before getting airborne our fast walking hosts invited us onto another great walk along the river.

The target of our march was Tranby House, Peninsula Farm, a historic farm cottage established by the Hardey family, who had departed England and arriving in the little township of Perth 1830 to start a new life. The house was named after the ship - the Tranby - that had brought them halfway around the world. It seems the lure of water views existed even in those days or floods were more severe(?), the Hardey family had to rebuild their farm twice loosing the first two attempts to the river. The 3rd house finished in 1839 and is the one still standing there today.

Wildlife along the river included many of the expected water loving species. The constant flow of people along the river and a natural boundary between the path and the wetter habitat has over time taught the feathered inhabitants that they can safely continue doing their birding things without needing to take notice of the human shenanigans going on just few meters further ashore.

Surrounded by cyclists, runners, walkers and screaming kids I managed to get my closest close-up ever of a Egret, the photo above is taken at a puny 230mm not even using half of the zooming powers of the Bigma :-D

A welcome change to a typical Sydney walk was that the usual army of New Holland Honeyeaters were replaced with White-cheeked Honeyeaters instead, a great bird that is not super common in the Eastern states. Despite of having multiple specimens darting around I did not manage to lure one out into the light, so you will have to do with the shadow shot below.

What a absolutely fantastic holiday! :-D Perth and surroundings had really delivered and sitting in the plane trying to clock up a few hours of sleep before having to go to work the only worry was "how am I ever going to get all this onto the blog" ;-).

Perth WA - Another Sneaky Long Weekend Escape

Back in Perth WA! The land of good walks, great nature and fantastic food :-) When first you get into the sneaky long weekend mood it is hard not to be tempted by the possibility of spending a long weekend around Perth in the western end of Australia. Only just having arrived back from far north Queensland we were off again, managing to clock up 5 days around Perth for the price of only 2 days of annual leave - that is a truly good value investment!

We took advantage of some family relations and managed to get ourselves signed up for a good solid walk. Aiming for Point Walter we were brought through some of the more picturesque parts of Perth. The fast walking and fast talking locals guides managed to tell an amazing collection of Perth stories while keeping a speed that made yours truly happy that I should just concentrate on listening. Maybe all the driving up in far north Queensland had made me lazy?

It all got very exciting at Point Walter! Despite of a high tide we decided to explore the sand spit reaching out into the river. Boots off and into the wild :-) What a great addition to the trip, being the first party to cross the water and get onto the sandy spit after the high tide, meant that we had excellent views of a good collection of WA waders and seabirds.


The bird above was a bit of excitement. First impression was that it had a shape and size similar to a Pacific Golden Plover, but nothing golden about it at all - rather grey instead. So if anyone out there can confirm that it looks like a Grey Plover, I will be very happy :-) There should be another photo in the Picasa album.



Funny how it is always the exciting bird that is shy? Black swan, Pied Oystercatcher and even Red-capped Plover were happily posing in front of the lens. Good stuff, the sand spit at Point walter is definitely worth a trip. My guess is that best time for a visit is just around high tide when the majority of the spit is isolated by the rising water.

The area along the river is in general a quite nice place! :-) You do not get the feeling of having all those other Perthians - 1,659,000 - crowding around you. Good place for watching a bit of real estate as well, unfortunately others seem to have taken an interest, so a water views will cost you $$$ ;-) Nothing beats a good walk - except maybe a good walk follow by good food. As is evident from the picture below we had nothing to complain about - a cauldron of deliciousness and we were fueled with energy for the days to come.

Herdsman Lake - Birding in Perth

Herdsman Lake is one of those fantastic isolated pockets of nature that continues to be prime quality real wild habitat even though it is entirely surrounded by city. I have been there once before and remembered it as a truly breathtaking place - partly due to the swampy nature of the place, so with a bit of Jutlandian negotiation skills I managed to convince the rest of the holidaying gang that an hour in a smelly swamp was the pinnacle of what Perth could offer on a lazy Sunday afternoon - from my point of view, we were not disappointed :-)

When it comes to waterbirds not many places do better than Herdsman Lake! Entering the boardwalks it is quickly forgotten that Perth is just on the other side of the trees and it seems the birds have reached a similar state of relaxation. As an example, the picture of the Blue-billed Duck above has not been cropped, indeed I had to zoom out to get the entire bird in the frame, since it was so relaxed about the Dane jumping around trying to get the sun in the right place.

Great Crested Grebe above and Yellow-billed Spoonbill below are birds that I have seen every single time I have been to Herdsman Lake - twice that is :-) It is actually the only place in Australia that I have seen the YBS.

Once again time was running out and we had to consider leaving to attend our last Perth dinner for this time. However the Lake had another little surprise in stall for us.

When we arrived at the lake a group of people was leaving and had alerted us to the presence of a Tiger Snake in the reeds next to one of the viewing platforms. As you can imagine this information had spurred us on at rapid speed trying to get photographic evidence of this species of snake that I had not seen before. Despite using quite a bit of time at the spot they had pointed out we did not see the Tiger. On the way back, however, we were successful! :-)

I know the picture is not best ever ... one could argue that having the head of the snake in the shot would be nice :-) But I am sure the readers will understand that none of us felt like trying to manipulate our newly found little friend into a more photogenic position.
The internet is full of pages trying to list the most venomous/deadly/dangerous snakes in the world. It is not straight forward, since a very venomous snake might be placid or due to its habitat very unlikely to get into contact with humans. In fact, the most deadly venomous creature in Australia is the European Honey bee! Still though talking potent venom, the Tiger Snake is up there with the best of them - if you were a mouse, the Tiger Snake would be the 4th worst snake to be bitten by - see the list of LD50 values here. Australia is doing pretty well on that list! ;-)

Driving back we witnessed another Australia speciality - a bush fire in some park/bush land in the middle of Perth! Firefighters were at the scene before there was any change of the fire developing, but still a reminder of, how different a part of the world this is.

This post will be the last from our Perth trip - I promise you there are still more pictures, but it is wise to save some stories for the next trip. One last incident is worth mentioning though, as we were driving towards the airport late Sunday night a Barn Owl flew across the road in front of the car. That brought the total number of new birds seen during the trip up to a respectable eleven, including a couple of very restricted species - not bad at all :-)