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Thursday, 15 November 2012

Camping with the boys at Redbank Waterhole, Owen Springs Station

Last weekend I took my two boys to Redbank Waterhole on Owen springs Station. It is a gentle drive south of Alice Springs about 70 kms down the Stuart Highway, and then 6 or so kms across some rough and ready tracks.
As we pulled into the camping area, we were a little dismayed to find quite a few groups already there, but we managed to get a nice spot for ourselves, across the "river" from the majority of the other campers. We started unpacking the car as the sun was setting, and had a lot of laughter at dad's effort to put up the tent with the wrong tent poles etc. but at least we had a space that was covered for the boys to sleep in.
The evening was spent by the fire, eating the egg and bacon pie and toasting marshmallows by the fire. Eventually the boys settled down and we all slept until the pre-dawn hours.
We were disappointed that the budgerigars didn't arrive in the numbers we were hoping for. The rain over the previous week had dispersed them, but there was still lots of birdlife.
The highlights are shown below, and although we only stayed for a few hours and returned home by lunch, the boys seemed to really enjoy themselves and were keen to go camping again soon. Couldn't ask for much more than that as a dad.

A pair of Little Eagles did a dance for us



Australian Hobby



Whistling Kite





Great Egret


Straw-necked Ibis

Zebra Finches in tree hollow



Enjoy your Bird-watching!

2 comments:

  1. great times it sounds; your boys will have happy memories in years to come; well done! Loved the dancing little eagles and the Australian Hobby. Marvelled at the weeny Zebras breeding in that big tree-hole; I thought they'd want something more confined than that. Lovely bird-life. Heard a mention on ABC local radio yesterday about bats that attack budgerigars ...I'm not sure if they'd called it the 'budgerigar-bat' I must go looking online as I missed the actual programme unfortunately. Thanks for sharing your lovely bird photos..

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