MY WILDLIFE ADVENTURES DOWN UNDER
By Joan Ibbs
My adventures started in September 1999 when I moved to Toowoomba Garden City on the Great Dividing Range , Queensland with my husband .
Within days of arriving a large lizard strolled across the back garden and disappeared through a hole in the fence . One morning I was lucky enough to see hundreds of yellow butterflies dancing in the sunlight , I think they had just hatched . Our bird table was visited by many varieties of beautiful coloured birds , Sulphur Crested Cockatoos , Galahs , Common Rosellas and Cockatiels .
We also had Tree Frogs in our garden , they are very secretive and only appear at dusk . Our labrador puppy Jodi found one and proceeded to swallow it because she thought I was going to take it away . I had never heard a frog scream , this one was particularly loud , and after about 10 minutes Jodi ’ s supper and the frog still screaming surfaced on the lawn . I washed it with cool water as it climbed the house wall still screaming . Jodi suffered no ill effects except the loss of her supper .
There are so many picnic areas in Queensland that we always took a picnic basket full of goodies and lunch was always cold chicken salad . The Kookaburras would wait beside you until the chicken bone was ready , they would pounce upon it and beat it savagely , and when satisfied it wouldn ’ t fight back they flew away to demolish their prize .
The Bunya Mountains National Park was one of my favourite wildlife places . Wallabies to feed , Bush Turkeys waiting to forage your leftover barbecue , little Water Dragons in the stream and large Pythons waiting for lunch .
Mount French National Park was another place we visited . We drove to the top and had our usual picnic , then decided to explore . Walking along the path was a rather large Monitor Lizard ; it climbed a tree with the help of its huge claws . From the photographs we took we estimated it to be at least 9ft long . The smaller creatures you never saw , but you could hear them scuttling away in the undergrowth .
Monitor Lizard
We took a boat trip to see Whales at Hervey Bay , with the engines stopped , we waited . Suddenly a huge Southern Right Whale surfaced next to our boat , turned to look at us and dived to appear on the other side of the boat , this happened quite a few times , such marvelous creatures . We headed back to the harbour . I thanked a member of the crew for a marvelous journey and she said “ it doesn ’ t get any better than that ”.
16 Kookaburra
Another adventure was to Bundaberg to watch the Leatherback Turtles come ashore