Wow. We awoke this morning to the magnificent melody of two Lyre birds from our tent in Washpool National Park. It sounded like way more than one species, let alone just two birds. Apparently these birds will, within the space of only a few minutes, sing continuously to their hearts’ content using not only their own song but imitating the song of other birds too. It was incredible to listen to - magical really. We’ve honestly never heard anything like it and wish we’d been able to record it.
The melodious Lyre Bird
After we’d packed the tent away, we decided to check out a tiny little section of the World Heritage Walk which spans between Washpool and Gibraltar Range National Parks and takes a whopping five days to complete. After an hour uphill in one direction we turned back as there was another walk we wanted to go on that we‘d actually be able to complete: The Washpool Walk, an 8.5km walk which takes in the park‘s main forest types.
Washpool National Park is home to the world’s largest stand of coachwood trees. We saw many of these in addition to Red Cedars, the King of all trees. This is the most sought after of all trees due to its use for cabinets, panelling and staircases - they’ve been recorded as growing up to 60m! The ones we saw were no higher than 48m but were over 1000 years old - very impressive.We were really enjoying the walk and learning about the different tree and rainforest types on the educational posters until… the attack of the leeches! Being city-types, we were both absolute babies about this and couldn’t enjoy the rest of the walk due to having both been bitten at least once and continually finding leeches all over our shoes and trousers! We continued the second half of our walk in somewhat of a rush due to our fear and dislike of these gruesome creatures. Wimps!
De-leeching session!
Huge Lizard
The end of the walk
After a total of 13.5 km, we were pretty tired - not bad for a day’s work! With this in mind, the decision to drive the short distance to Gibraltar National Park was an easy one. Mulligan’s Hut campground had exceptionally clean and modern toilet facilities (a treat after the smelly composting one at Washpool) and even cold showers - excellent news! As soon as we arrived however, a huge thunderstorm began and we barely had enough time to get the tent up and a little bit of tarp shelter before the rain lashed down. We enjoyed our tomato soup under our makeshift shelter with the sound of pounding rain overhead.
Quote from Christophe around the campfire later in the evening: “Today’s been like being back in Singapore Zoo! But for free!”. What he was referring to were the huge number of animals, birds and general nature we have seen today. Beginning with the melodies of the Lyre birds, our day progressed with sightings of the mega-lizard and the attack of the leeches which in turn was followed by… a visit from a number of wallabies! Yet again, we were initially babies about this and as the first wallaby approached our picnic table completely unperturbed by the presence of mere humans, Christophe advised me to pick up my chair, put it in front of myself as a shield and back up calmly to the car while he bravely acted like a man, clearing up anything of value that it might try to steal or break.
Spot the Wallaby!
We realise now, only a few hours later, that this was completely unnecessary as these animals are completely harmless unless they feel threatened (by, let’s say, someone poking a chair leg in their face and acting hostile!). I’m sure if any of our Aussy neighbours saw us, they would have had a good laugh. We saw a good number more bird specimans such as a blue eyed (??? something!) which was amazingly able to hang from a tree trunk sideways while its body remained vertical and forward-looking. Our final visitor today came just as we had lit our nightly campfire, a beautiful owl. She stayed with us until we went to bed and we were fascinated by her enormous eyes and the way she so majestically turned her head. A great end to a great day filled with nature.
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