Australia: Southeast Queensland

2026/05/19: Transit to Lamington NP, Qld

It rained the entire day as we drove to O’Reilly’s, where we camp for 3 nights. We got in around 3 pm and the rain tapered off but it was foggy and the wind ramped up, so we did not do anything outdoors. Eileen saw a Whip-tailed Wallaby as we drove into the park, a lifer; I hope we can find another on the way out. An AI query may have solved the cell signal disconnecting constantly; disabling automatic selection of the carrier network dramatically improved performance today.

2026/05/20: O’Reilly’s and Lamington NP, Qld

We spent much of the day walking trails, but also had a gourmet lunch and fed Australian King Parrots and Crimson Rosellas, with Red-browed Firetails around our feet. We did well on forest floor species, seeing Russet-tailed Thrush (lifer), Australian Logrunner, and Eastern Whipbird. White-browed and Yellow-throated Scrubwrens and Eastern Yellow Robins were constant, adorable companions. Recorded bats for an hour; had Eastern Forest Bat and a second uncertain species. Finally, walked with high-intensity flashlights and a thermal imager for a couple of hours. Saw Eastern Ring-tailed Possum extremely well and got brief views of Long-nosed Bandicoot, a new species for us.

2026/05/21: Lamington NP, Qld

Hiked the Python Rock Trail in cold, windy weather. The view of Morans Falls at the lookout was impressive and there were many interesting plants on the trail, including a viny fern and an elegant palm with very long, narrow, flexuous leaves. We had practically no birds on the walk with the wind, but did add Albert’s Lyrebird to the trip list.

 2026/05/22:  Transit to Brisbane, Qld

We again had howling winds and intermittent rain this morning, and so left Lamington NP after a short walk on Duck Creek Road. We saw Red-necked Pademelon in the CG and a stunningly patterned Carpet Python along the road. We did some shopping, checked into our CG in Brisbane, and looked for birds and mammals briefly at Karawatha SP, before its gate closed.

2026/05/23: Brisbane, Qld

Visited three sites today: Sandy Camp Road Wetland, with excellent birding; 7th Brigade Park for Water Rat (no luck); and J. C. Slaughter Falls for nocturnal birds and Sugar Glider (great habitat but saw only a single flying fox). Driving and parking in Brisbane was bad enough, but the drive back to camp in the dark was truly awful. In the Wetland, we found a lifer, White-throated Gerygone, and enjoyed Variegated Fairywren, numerous Gray Fantails, Australasian Darter, and Blue-faced Honeyeater.

2026/05/24: Ipswich to Bunya Mountains NP, Qld

We loved the huge flying fox colony in Queens Park, Ipswich; Gray-headed FF somwhat outnumbered Black FF, the latter a lifer. The FFs were very vocal, chittering constantly, and a few were still flying around at 7:15 a. m. when we arrived, so it was quite a spectacle. Eileen attended mass, but the website time was wrong and this special mass for Pentecost was lengthy, involving a multi-cultural ceremony presented in many different languages. I used the time to get a blog post issued and  caught up on photos. This left us with only an hour to look for our first rock-wallaby, at a bad time of day, and we had no luck. Recorded bats in our CG at 3300ft  but no definitive recordings. There were some large, beautifully shaped Hoop Pines in the NP.

2026/05/25: Great Sandy NP and Inskip Point, Qld

Lots of driving and rain, the two things we seemingly can count on. We could not get to the prime grassland habitat in Great Sandy NP because recent rains had flooded the road, though we did take a nice hike there, finding Yellow-tufted Honeyeater, a lifer for us. We camped by the beach at Inskip Point, and walked through the Littoral Rainforest looking for the mythical Black-breasted Buttonquail (which, of course, we did not see, it being mythical). We had some nice first trip sightings of several raptors today:  Gray Goshawk, Brahminy Kite, and Whistling Kite.

2026/05/26: Tin CanBay and Tolderodden Cons. Area, Qld

An excellent day! We started at the Dolphin Center in Tin Can Bay for the daily feeding of wild Australian Humpback Dolphins. This turned out to be a wonderful activity, done in a highly professional manner, following scientific and responsible protocols. We saw four dolphins;  Eileen got to feed a fish to “Joe”.

The day as planned was too long, so we skipped a mangrove site. We reached our campsite at Tolderodden Conservation Area around 3:30 and I started scouting around for rock outcrops that might contain our target, Herbert’s Rock Wallaby. I quickly found two animals, despite the early hour! They seemed pretty wary. Walking back in an hour later, we flushed a macropod in tall grass and got great bino and scope views of Whip-tailed Wallaby, which I had missed a few days before — what a relief! A rock wallaby finally emerged at dusk and we had wonderful looks at this endearing animal! We finished the evening recording bats with great success: 4 spp, 3 lifers.

2026/05/27: Transit North

We again chose to skip our one scheduled birding spot for the day to get into camp at an acceptable time. But we did an unplanned stop at a lake with many waterfowl; most were Plumed Whistling Ducks but we also added Hardhead and Eurasian Coot to the trip list. Our remote campsite at Schneiders Inn was lovely; we had a wonderful chorus of Laughing Kookaburras while recording bats. Had 5 spp including one lifer, Chocolate Wattled Bat.

We had some excitement while driving through a town; the gas pedal malfunctioned, alternately providing no fuel or acting as if it were floored, causing the vehicle to speed up dangerously. It turned out to be a poorly fitting floor mat that jammed the pedal. The cruise control also acted up, going on strike for an hour. That would actually pose a huge problem on a trip with this much driving.

2026/05/28: Eungella NP, Qld, Aus

We spent the morning in camp, as it was lovely; I needed to catch up on analyzing bat recordings; and we had a short (3.5hr) drive today. Our camper battery bank was at 20% this morning, as low as it should be allowed to go, so I had the first opportunity to try out our lithium power station. In a few hours it discharged 50% of its capacity to raise the camper up to 75%. This prevents us from having to change plans and camp in a powered site tonight.

On the drive out, we closely approached a small flock of handsome Squatter Pigeons. Once in Eungella NP, we walked a bit on Diggings Road, prime breeding territory for the Eungella Honeyeater, which has an extraordinarily small world range. This habitat is Subtropical Rainforest and the trees towered above us, but we found nothing flowering, which might attract the honeyeater. Our campsite was right on the Broken River, where we got great views of Platypus, a fine end to the day! This was our 24th mammal species of the trip.

2026/05/29: Eungella NP to Lake Proserpine, Qld, Aus

We spent the morning trying three more places for Eungella Honeyeater, without success. This is not an easy bird in the breeding season, when they are vocal and in known locations; in fall, they disperse somewhat and are quiet. But we enjoyed the beautiful Subtropical Rainforests and rolling country in the Eungella Range. We arrived at Lake Proserpine in mid-afternoon to find that the CG in which we had a paid reservation had been rented out in entirety for a concert. They refunded our money and arranged a free (and quiet!) site half an hour away. We spent a couple of hours carefully scanning with our telescope a dam talus slope for another rock wallaby species, until it was seriously dark, but surprisingly saw nothing.

2026/05/30: Townsville to Jourama Falls, Qld, Aus

We birded for a couple hours in Townsville Common Environmental Park, a nice Tropical Freshwater Wetland, but actually had slightly better luck on songbirds than waterbirds. We had a good study of a pair of Leaden Flycatchers, a difficult ID, but we were able to see the key distinctions of both sexes. While recording bats at the beautiful CG at Jourama Falls, we heard a close Large-tailed Nightjar. We had three bat species, two of them lifers. Eastern Horseshoe Bat had a particularly distinctive audiospectrogram, unlike anything in the U. S., briefly rising, then a long, flat section at high frequency (68kHz), and finally a brief drop.

2026/05/31: Clusterf#@!, Qld

Today was a total loss. The road to Paluma was being repaired and given the roadwork, they deemed our camper too wide. The best alternative route was 200km longer. We took this route but when we arrived at our putative campground coordinates, we could not find our reserved site nor “the homestead” where we had to sign in. There had been no cell signal for 90 minutes, and we could find no people nor any helpful signs, so we retraced our route back to the coast. In total, I drove six hours to no avail. This is a risk in staying at HipCamp and similar “campgrounds” where someone is simply charging you to park on their property, often with no facilities such as bathrooms, showers, etc. We stayed in an excellent one earlier in the trip, and have more lined up, which we hope work out well; in quite a few places in Australia they are the only option.

2026/06/01: Djiru NP, Qld

Today helped make up for yesterday. We started down the road to Mission Beach, a good area for Southern Cassowary, one of my three most wanted birds in Australia. This would be a new family for us, one of four possible on the trip. We decided to have lunch in the Licuala Day Use Area, and had started to eat when we were interrupted by an unfamiliar bird song. While trying to track that down, Eileen spotted a cassowary quite a ways off but walking towards us! We stopped a fellow who was just driving off and told him, and he abandoned his vehicle, telling us he had been looking for one for two days. It eventually walked within ten feet of us! The bird returned some time later for a second pass, and we had a third sighting while hiking. What an amazing experience! The trails there had very informative signs describing the different types of plants (of which there were a wonderful assemblage) and how they survived in a forest with so little light.

We’ve now been on the road for four weeks and have managed fairly well in the last two weeks, though we have had quite a few excessively long days. We’ve averaged about 130 miles per day in the first four weeks; in the U. S. we try not to exceed 110 miles per day, which is what I estimate will be our overall average for this trip.

Merlin [the bird vocalization app from Cornell] has been very helpful in identifying many of the species we’ve heard, until today, our first day in the true tropics, where it was mystified.

Our bird list is 162 spp, with 19 lifers for Eileen and 16 for me. We’ve had 28 mammals, with 21 of them new. We’ve found and photographed 17 CHG Habitats out of 65, a good start.