20th November 2019

We have had our first bushwalk. Well, not quite, but nearly! We went to the Royal National Park, which is a vast, rolling expanse of bush as far as the eye can see, and is full of koalas, and all those nasty snakes. But the koalas are very shy, so we didn’t see any, and we carefully avoided rocks, or scuffing through undergrowth as we didn’t want any close encounters with venomous reptiles!

However, our plans to bushwalk were thwarted by the bushfire threat. The fires are still very bad here, and all the National Park walking trails were closed. We were allowed to walk along the road, and found a lovely picnic spot by a river called Wattle Forest (wattle is a native Australian tree with yellow flowers in Spring). There we were pestered by an exceedingly friendly duck who clearly thought we were a good source of food. He clearly couldn’t read the signs everywhere telling the birds not to take nasty food from humans!

On the way back to the car, we heard the white cockatoos making an awful racket in the trees, which got louder and louder. As we stood, more and more cockatoos flew across and joined the cacophony. We though they were squabbling over territory – but then I spotted something up the tree. At first, we thought it was a snake, as it had a long stripy tail that curled round the tree, but as it became more visible, we realised it was a large lizard, about a metre or more in length. The cockatoos did not want him there and they shrieked at him and buzzed him until he ran down the tree and scurried off into the undergrowth.

We tried to photograph him but he was too well camouflaged! So below are some photos of the river, the cockatoos shrieking at the lizard, and one cockatoo who was watching us very closely.

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