Rakali

11^th May -30^th May

The drive through the New England region was quite lovely, even though it rained most of the time. The misty drizzle turned the skies silver grey, but highlighted the trees and provided a lovely show during our drive over the Great Dividing Range, (GDR) and we arrived safely at Port Macquarie in good time.

As usual, we had a few commitments while back in civilization, not least of which was to celebrate Mother’s day with mum, and her birthday a week later. After that we had a couple of weeks free and we decided to make the most of that time.

So where did we plan to go for our two-week holiday? Note I said “plan” and not just “go”. We had planned to go to Wyangala Dam, a lovely place which we have previously visited. But we got sidetracked when we stumbled across yet another camp that we had previously visited. Now, when I say stumbled upon, I mean, re-traced our steps, looked at past blog posts, racked our memory and finally called into the Walcha information center where we had our, “That’s the place!” revelation. Two weeks later we were still there.

Can you blame us?

So, what is so great about this place we “stumbled upon”? Apart for how pretty it is of course. Well first and foremost, there are platypus in the river. We knew that from our previous visit and were thrilled to see that they were still there.

I have to say, that apart from the fact that platypuses are weird, bizarre creatures, they are also very difficult to photograph. The are extremely shy, keep a very low profile in the water and travel long distances very quickly under the surface. On top of that, they seem to have the ability melt into the water without a ripple. Peter likens them to icebergs; you only see the smallest part above the surface. However, I did get a lot of photos and had to do an awful lot of culling.

We were able to identify three individuals for sure, but there could have been more. There were also a few of our feathered friends, including quite a large flock of these little beauties.

It was pretty cold while we were there, overnight temps were between 2 and 4 degrees C. But, there was plenty of firewood in the area so all was good. Besides, this gave Peter something to do, and me a chance to brush up my camp oven cooking skills.

This really was a very pretty place to wander around with the camera and it’s surprising what you can capture. There wasn’t a lot of life on/in the water but I did see one turtle…which turned out to be a frog. (Last image).

Now, Rakali. The title of this post. What is it? What does it mean? Well, Rakali is the indigenous name for Australia’s native river rat, and it was a pleasure to have seen them. Yet another creature that we had never heard of before, and they are very pretty. So much so that they were nearly hunted to extinction (in the good old days) for their soft pelt. Like the platypus, these little critters were pretty shy, but with time on my hands I was able to see quite a lot of them.

I’ve included the link below if you’d like to know more about one of our native animals.

Rakali

Now what else? There was so much to keep us busy while were were there. We were lucky enough to have a full moon and even more lucky to be in a position to get some interesting shots.

When we weren’t hunting platypuses, rakali, or toiling over a fire, we just kicked back and relaxed.

The weather was fantastic. Cold, yes, but with beautiful misty mornings followed by stunning sunny days. It was a terrific, relaxing fortnight and we will be back. In fact we’ll be back very soon.

See you out there somewhere

On tow and on the go!