Bowra Station – Prologue – A Rough Beginning!

Finally I am ready to start posting some of the photos and stories from my Bowra Station trip. This first prologue will deal with the hardship I had to endure making my way to the south western end of Queensland. Being alone in the car, I took very few photos during the trip, instead I will spice up the story with a few of the photos I managed to take after arriving at Bowra Station late evening after a long day behind the wheel.

My trip had a very chaotic beginning, but thanks to some fantastic people at Bowra and the quality of the place itself, it ended up being some of the best days I have spent in Australia – Bowra is a wildlife and photography heaven.

Australian Green Tree Frog Litoria caerulea

My initial plan was to leave Sydney Thursday night after work, make it to Capertee Valley and sleep there, allowing for an early Friday morning start heading up towards Bourke, where I planned to use Friday evening and a bit of Saturday morning in Gundabooka National Park before pushing into Queensland for the main attraction of the trip: Bowra Station.

Some type of Emperor Moth(?), Saturniidae.

I got to Capertee and had a great sleep, but Friday morning before leaving, I wanted a quick photo of the campsite and realized that my camera battery had been drained from being stored upside down in my backpack – My guess is that trying to squeeze as much camera gear into the pack as possible I had placed the camera so that one of the buttons on the back, probably the live-view button, had been continuously activated causing severe battery drain. What to do? I could take a chance and drive further outback and hope to buy a (charged?) battery in a camera store on the way or, since I had managed to get road ready at an impressive 5.15am, I could drive straight back to work, do a full day in the laboratory, head home, charge the battery, pack the charger(!) and start the drive west again early Saturday morning. I choose the latter. Luckily work was very understanding and I could move my day off from Friday to Tuesday, the entire shenanigans only costing me a drive to Capertee Valley and a bit of packing pride :-)

Tiger Moth, Arctiidae, Amata sp.

One of the reasons for including Gundabooka National Park on the agenda was that the place had received a good lot of rain recently, which had brought along the chance of seeing a rare and spectacular display of outback wildflowers, plus the wildlife that comes along. Once again my plans were not to be! I had a great early escape from Sydney Saturday morning and was covering good ground. Next to no traffic and the Magna was firing on all cylinders, I got to Nyngan and had still plenty of photography related podcasts to listen to – great drive! As I approached Cobar I realized that I was in trouble – the skies were dark and the land was wetter than I have ever seen the outback. My fears were confirmed at the petrol station in Cobar, the weather forecast predicted lots of rain over the next few days and the police had put out a warning urging people to stay on the bitumen and avoid dirt roads. I decided to drive north towards Bourke – I would be passing the Gundabooka National Park entrance and could take a look and see how bad it looked. As I left Cobar the rain started bucketing down.

I did not even consider driving into Gundabooka! Between Cobar and Bourke I was literally driving through the rain on a piece of tarmac just slightly raised above the two rivers flowing in the trenches next to the road. There was no way I was taking the Magna off-road! Last time I had been in Gundabooka it had been one of the driest places I have ever visited, this time it was turning into an ocean in front of my eyes.
[Notice that the events I am writing about took place in early October, the rains I am talking about have nothing to do with the present flooding in Queensland.]
Where to sleep? I decided to use a bit of logic! :-) Bowra Station is famous for being incredibly dry – it (nearly) never rains and life is only sustained because of spring water on the property, hence creating the unique habitat attracting the rare wildlife I wanted to see. Here I was ca. 400km south nearly drowning in rain .. I decided to continue north!

Finally I had a bit of luck! As I made my way further north the rain became patchy and after entering Queensland I even had glimpses of a setting sun. Arriving at Cunnamulla it was quickly getting dark, those outback towns look significantly more welcoming during the daytime and after that many kilometers behind the wheel it seemed natural to give the last 16km of dirt road a go. I had an excellent description of the way in and I promised myself to turn around if the road was too wet.

It had hardly rained at Bowra and after 20 min on a dirt road as good as some of the bitumen the Magna had been negotiating earlier during the day I was finally there. After nearly 13 hours of solitude in the Magna I was taken aback by the warmest most fantastic welcome I have even been given during any of my endeavors. Before I knew what was happening, the Bowra Station caretakers had managed to sort me a full plate of dinner, a glass of wine and some fantastic company :-)

As mentioned above, I managed to squeeze in 30 min of photography before going to sleep. I was absolutely hammered, but the sounds of a trillion frogs outside the homestead was simply too tempting and I went for a little walk with the Sigma 150mm macro attached, all of the pictures in this blog post are from that first night at Bowra.

A Roommate Lost And A New One Found :-)

I had been a bit afraid of how I would cope with suddenly living alone again. There were obviously quite a few advantages associated with not having a roommate. Like, it would surprise me if the disappearing ice-cream problem would persist and also, my expectations were that it would be significantly easier to negotiate pillow ownership with an opponent less :-)

So there I was with all the pillows and a bucket of ice-cream while feeling slightly lonely, when a movement revealed that a new little visitor had moved in; a freezing tiny lizard was trying to warm in the sun on the cold floor of my sun-room. Reptiles desperately need heat to be able to move and this little fellow looked in trouble, it was so cold that it could barely move and it looked hungry .. and it was not the ice-cream it was after :-)

I quickly arranged a tiny puddle of water and a selection of food crumbs in the sunny windowsill, lifted the cold little lizard up there and got hold of my camera and macro lens. It was incredible easy getting the close-ups of the lizard, it barely moved .. for about 2 min! :-) After that its movements became faster and I decided to observe from a distance.

I somehow had imagined that it would just stand there and let the sun slowly heat its body, instead the lizard immediately flattened itself onto the warm windowsill as soon as I had placed it there to maximize heat transfer. What a smart feller! :-) The crumbs disappeared and the little fellow took off up along the sliding window - great little happening on an otherwise boring August day :-)

Denmark - Part 2 - Garden Macro Photography

What a difference 6 month makes :-) The picture above is from our usual walk around Balling - take a look here to see how all that greenness was white last winter when we did one of our danish winter bushwalks.

Nature truly puts on a show during the summer months back home in Denmark! Long sunny days and water galore keeps the plants happy and flowering, which attracts an incredible variety of insects, which again supply birds and other wildlife with a good protein source. The shortness of summer makes it feel like all that life is buzzing around at turbo speed - having to sort out all the tasks of an entire life in a matter of a few summer months.


Bird are wary back home, it is much harder getting good bird photos in DK than down here in Australia. Birds will take off early when you try to sneak in on them and deep dark thick foliage makes it nearly impossible to pick birds hiding in trees and bushes. However, lots of other stuff is happening just outside the door, so armed with my macro lens I used quite a few hours in the garden.


Bumblebees, hornets and insects with half body-length tails - Good stuff! :-) The long tailed insect is a female Pimplinae indet. and I can reveal that the "tail" is not used for stinging! Indeed it is an elongated ovipositor used by the female to lay its egg in hard to reach places. I must admit that I never really used the time to intensely study and learn to name all the small stuff that lived around me when I grew up in DK, but boy it is truly a magnificent world to look into - I finally see the idea in having a garden .. and a macro lens to look at it through ;-)


Apart from fulfilling your wildest dreams as a macro "studio" a Danish summer garden also doubles as an excellent location for your food consumption needs. Danes are very good at maximizing the time outside in the daylight during summer, it is like fueling the body with energy before the arrival of the darkness of winter. Only the transmission of (important?) sports events on the television can lure the Danish back into their dark burrows :-D

Lamington National Park - Creatures of The Night

Another stunning sunset and we were getting ready for a well deserved rest. A long day in the boots followed by an excellent dinner - there was no doubt that we could fall asleep .. if it had not been for all the excitement going on outside the apartment.


An army of moths and other insects were lured onto the rain forest terrace by the shine from the lights inside the apartment. Having had the macro lens on the camera most of the day using it as a fast semi-tele lens it was only appropriate to finally get it a bit of proper close-up action.


I (nearly) always try to name at least a few of the critters that make it all the way to a blog post - lets just be honest - it is a tough one this time :-) However, as always you realize how fantastic the internet truly is and a bit of looking around reveals that Australian moths apparently have a good solid fan base out there in cyberspace :-) The beautiful white and black spotted creature above could very well be from the Ethmiidae family - Ethmia clytodoxa maybe?


All good! Great finish to an eventful day. I have made a little Picasa album for those of you who consider starting a career in moth identification. Any help naming these critters is very welcome.

Lamington NP 2010 Insects

Short-billed Black-Cockatoos in The Hills East of Perth

Short-billed (White-tailed) Black-Cockatoo aka Carnaby's Black-Cockatoo is one of the endemic birds of Western Australia. It is not as difficult to find as its very similar Long-billed cousin (aka Baudin's Black-Cockatoo) and every time I have seen them, there has been a good size flock of them. This early morning in the hills east of Perth I was particular lucky spotting in total more than 50 cockatoos foraging the tree tops in small groups, giving very little attention to the shutter pressing, big smiling Dane running around down on the ground - What a great bird!


Conditions were absolutely fantastic, cold crisp morning air and since the birds did not mind me, I was free to walk around under the trees getting the best angle for the photos. Great start to a big day.

It is a peaceful place up in the hills away from all the shenanigans of the city, so peaceful that even the birds are more relaxed. I have seen Common Bronzewing many times, but usually I find them very difficult to approach without scaring them away. The male above, however, allowed me in close - who is watching who?

I have to include a kangaroo once and a while - at least for my international readers :-D and to remind myself of how different it is down under. I have lived down here for nearly 5 years and once and a while it is good to remember some of the things that stunned you when you arrived. I can reveal that Moreton bay fig and Australian White Ibis are on the list for a fresh off the plane Dane walking the Sydney parks.


After some excellent birding I decided to change to the macro lens and take a closer look. I am quite happy with the insect in flight shot above - if just the bee had turned around! ;-)

All good, great morning - temperature had started rising and it was looking like another warm day in WA, we were heading further inland for one of the most quirky ticks around: Mute Swan in Northam.

Kingfisher Park - Nightly Frog Bonanza

During my time here in Australia I have seen very few frogs! I have seen many more snakes than frogs .. or at least that was the case until we went on our nightly Kingfisher Park adventure. You could argue that constant rain for a few weeks should give optimal conditions for the small jumpy wet-loving creatures .. and it is a argument the frogs seemed to agree with.

Once again it was absolutely fantastic having "local" guides along, knowledge of where to look and what to listen for comes in exceptional handy when on the hunt for some night pictures. It surprised me how much of the shenanigans we found up high in trees and bushes - guess the naming, i.e. xxx Tree frog, should have been a give away ;-) and the logic probably follows an argument like, if everything is wet you can just as well get away from the predator patrolled ground and have a blast in the top of a palm tree.

As is evident from the amount of pictures - and I promise you that there are more - I had quite a few willing(?) models to practice with and I am actually very happy with the outcome of the exercise. I changed the settings of the camera slightly compared to first time I tried this type of semi-macro night shooting down in Kosciuszko National Park.

The procedure is now to force a faster flash sync speed, I use manual mode and a shutter speed somewhere between 1/160s and 1/250s to ensure that I get no motion blur, the D300 should be able to handle as fast as 1/320s, but for still sitting frogs with the 150mm it should not be needed. If you are trying this yourself, then remember to check how fast you can go and still sync your flash, google is your friend .. or give in and read the manual :-D The closer you get the more light the flash will give you! That is seriously good news, since the closer you get the shallower is your dept of field. This means that if you get in close with the flash you have enough light to close down that aperture and get more of the subject into focus. Shooting at around f/4.0 - f/4.5 I could keep an ISO setting of around 640 and still have enough light for that photon hungry sensor, not bad at all. It all sounds like I knew what I was doing, but do not worry it was all a strike of luck! :-D I was just lucky getting a usable combination of settings early on.

I am in no way a frog expert and while taking the photos I was already grueling over the trouble I would have to go through, trying to find a list of names matching what was displayed. Luckily the Kingfisher Park blog has helped me out by listing most of what we saw. With no certainty at all I will suggest that it looks like a Northern Dwarf Tree Frog in photo 3 and 4. First picture could be a Dainty Green Tree Frog and the last two pictures could be the Jungguy Frog. That leaves only the second picture ... Desert Tree Frog maybe? As always, any suggestions are welcome.

Royal Botanic Gardens - Macro Photography

I have hinted(!) in the last couple of blog posts that I am pretty happy about my macro lens, sorry if it is getting a bit much, but it is just soooooo fun shooting these close-ups! No matter where you go there is always stuff to take pictures of.

A rainy day down town Sydney with clouds all over the shop and still you can happily shoot away having near perfect light for all the small stuff.

The butterfly above was a good challenge, it simply would not sit still! Somehow it knew that it was being followed and in the end I had to give up on getting a "frozen" capture. The best I could get was the one above where a bit of wing blur actually works out alright.


Great flowers - very impressive shapes and colors! Since it is a botanic garden not all of the species are native, which makes the task of naming them significantly harder. Luckily I found a bit of help on the internet - the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens site actually have a "Blooming calendar" displaying pictures of what will be flowering every month during the year - great service!

With help from the blooming calender it looks like the white flower above is a Tabernaemontana cerifera native to New Caledonia ... that would have taken a long time to find out without a bit of help ;-)