In late July, we flew from SFO via Sydney to Brisbane, AU.  There we birded in the Lockyer Valley with a knowledgeable guide, Bill Jolly, before joining another Cheesemans' Ecology Safari on their first trip to the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu (airport only), New Caledonia and Lifou, one of the Loyalty Islands, plus the Fiji Islands.  Following this tour, we returned to Brisbane and flew north to Cairns where we rented a 4-WD Britz Camping Van and proceeded to explore NE Queensland.  After spending time in the Atherton Tablelands and the rainforests near the coast, we drove the "rough", corrugated, gravel Peninsula Development Road; fording rivers and streams, dodging Road Trains and avoiding kangaroos and other wildlife, all the way to the northernmost point of Australia, which is on the Cape York Peninsula.  This feat, accomplished by fewer than 300 vehicles each year, made for a REAL adventure!  We hope you enjoy both parts of our trip.

                                    Australian continent

Nearing Brisbane on our Qantas flight from Sydney, we were glad to know we'd soon be off airplanes for awhile.

                       A Black-necked Stork on 7-Mile Pond in the Lockyer Valley.

Red-capped Plover on the mud-flats at 7-Mile Pond, too.

                        A pair of Galahs in flight over an onion field in the Lockyer Valley.

A pair of King Parrots comes to a feeder at Bill Jolly's Abberton.

                            Moving on to O'Rielly's Guesthouse in Lamington National Park,
                            one of many Crimson Rosellas near the feeding station.

An Eastern Spinebill poses near O'Reilly's while foraging.

                          A Logrunner scratches under leaf litter in Lamington National Park.

A Red-necked Pademelon, a very small wallaby, grazes on the grass at dusk near O'Reilly's.

A male Satin Bowerbird observes his bower (See below)  These males have a complex set of courtship rituals. They decorate their bowers with blue objects and combine a suite of vocalizations and movements into a behavioural display directed at females.
In the first stage of courtship a male is not present at the bower but his many decorations are. During the second stage, a female returns to a subset of the original bowers she sampled. During this stage, both bower decorations and the male, who intensely courts the female, are present.  The female then builds nests at several bowers.  In the final stage, the female makes several visits to where she constructed nests and chooses a single male with which to mate.

                          A female Satin Bowerbird, who also has a liquid-blue colored eye.

A male Regent Bowerbird poses on a fence at O'Reilly's before we depart Brisbane and a flight to Honiara on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, a nation of ~524,000 residents and fewer than 10,000 tourists a year.

Map of the Solomon Islands, located NE of Australia.

Leaving Honiara from Henderson Field, where Rich's Father had landed his plane during WWII, we flew a Twin Otter to Seghe Airport's grass landing strip on New Georgia Island in the Western Province.

No trolleys to take our luggage to the boats in the cove to the right of the "Terminal"?

We arrived at Uepi Island, a true tropical paradise on the Morovo Lagoon, the largest lagoon in the world with a double barrier reef system.  It is owned/managed by an Australian couple and their sons aided by staff from nearby villages.

Open-air dining room at Uepi Island Resort.

After lunch, we watched Wesley feed the Blacktip and Whitetip Reef Sharks left-over tuna scraps from the dock where we would later enter to snorkel the nearby reef.

A Parrotfish nibbles on the coral near Ueipi Island.

         Many of the tropical fish were in huge schools.

It's brightly coloured green fleshy mantle containing millions of tiny single-celled plants, this true giant clam, Tridacna gigas, is the largest two shelled mollusc in the world.  It can grow to >1 meter, weigh 250-300 kgs and live for more than 50 years.  All start life as males, but when they mature, the become true hermaphrodites.

       "Feather-dusters" stick there colourful heads out of holes in the coral.

A 1-meter long Solomon Island Monitor heads up a coconut palm.

An uncommon resident throughout most of the Solomons, a Blyth's Hornbill perches in a tree.   This one had been fed fruit by villagers.  The exquisite bill is often used as an adornment in native jewelry.

These are some of the children in the village where we saw the Blyth's Hornbills.  Shy at first, they were curious and soon attempted to practice their English.

                     A side-view of its marvelous hornbill.

Two women manuever their canoe and make-shift sail on the Morovo Lagoon.

A King Ebony Nguzunguzu, pronounced new-zoo-new-zoo, which we brought back.  These originated in the Western Solomons and are now a national symbol.  They were lashed to the prow of war canoes just above the water line.  Huge headhunting war canoes were built with planks sewn together with creepers and caulked with 'putty nut'.  Each carried 30 or more warriors and a warring fleet numbered 50 - 60 canoes.  Nguzunguzu war gods watched out for enemies, reefs and sand bars, calmed the seas and kept away evil water spirits.  They may hold heads, skulls or birds in their hands.  Skulls were believed to contain the life force, so head-hunting transferred power from the victims to the warriors.  Birds represented navigators, like the frigate bird which are used to spot bonito schools.  Nguzunguzu birds are now refered to as "birds of peace" as boats with this on it were usually not headhunting.

Though we took a 45-minute semi-open boat ride through a rainstorm to Seghe for our flight onward to Gizo Island, the landing field had 6 - 8 " of water on it and we were told there wouldn't be any plane that day.  We returned 45-minutes to Uepi and dried out.  Fortunately, the following day was better and this Solomon Air Twin Otter flew us to Gizo, where it is shown being refueled with a hand-pump.

An arrangement of tropical flowers greeted us at Gizo Hotel.

The Market in Gizo was near the wharf and our hotel.

The traditional food crops of Solomons are root crops, mainly taro and yams.  These and others were sold in the market daily as they do not keep well, especially without any refrigeration.

Freshly-caught tropical fish were also 'For Sale'.

Having seen these Eclectus Parrots in the wild, many of us were tempted to release these birds from their cage at the Gizo Hotel.

A Brahminy Kite peers down from its perch on "Bird Island".

A native's canoe lies on the beach of Kennedy Island where JFK swam to after his PT109 was sliced apart by a Japanese destroyer.  Note the "jizz" of an Osprey in the treeline on the right of the island.

             A small conference building has been placed on the island along with toilets.

On Kolombangara Island, members of our group visited with Ruth and complimented her on her beautiful orchid 'hedgerow'.

Rich enjoyed visiting with young children at Irere where we made a donation to the local school to buy books.

Jumping ahead many decades in terms of development, we next flew to Noumea, the capitol of New Caledonia, a French possession since 1853 with a population of ~214,000 and 143,000 tourists a year.  This was the view from our hotel room.

Map of New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands (Iles Loyaute)

Birding on Signal Island, a short boat ride from Noumea, we saw many Sea Kraits.  They live in two worlds: in the sea, where they feed on eels, using several adaptations for swimming which terrestrial snakes lack, and on land, where they go to digest their food, slough their skin as this one is doing, mate and lay eggs.  This poisonous snake is one of the largest species of sea snakes.

                  A Silver Gull poses on Signal Island, Ilot Signal in French.

We flew to Lifou, one of the Loyalty Islands and a part of New Caledonia, where we all birded and relaxed.  This is a 'modern' thatched home in We as it has it's own satellite dish.

Our resort was located on this pure white sand beach off the Baie de Chateaubriand.

This 3" female spider was walking on a nearly invisible web.

Besides Twin Otters, we flew an Air Caledonie ATR42-320 back to Noumea after our 2 days on Lifou.

One day we visited the Parc Territorial de la Riviere Bleu where we saw 9 Kagu.The national bird of New Caledonia, it has been brought back from the brink of extinction in protected areas like the park.  But it continues to be endangered as it is flightless and vulnerable to predation by dogs.

This Kagu has raised it shaggy crest.  Their call is like the barking of a small dog and they hiss when alarmed.

The many different Pitcher Plants were also fascinating in the Blue River National Park, also.

This mask, which we added to our collection, was carved in the village of Chambre.

Next we flew from Noumea to Nadi, pronounced NAN-dee, Fiji on their largest island, Viti Levu.  Because we arrived after dark, it was great to awaken to Fiji Parrotfinches on the ground at the seaside resort, First Landing.  Fiji's population, which spreads over 330 islands, is ~780,000.  It is an amalgam of indigenous Fijians (50%), Indians (46%), and with the remainder being part-Europeans (half-castes), Rotumans, Chinese, and other Pacific Islanders.

                                 Map of many of the Fiji Islands

The youngster rode up yelling "Bula! Bula!", which means Hello, as we neared his village of Abaca, pronounced ambartha.  It had 14 houses with 86 residents, who considered themselves to be one large family. 

Other children, many with their homemade push toys, soon gathered, also.

A bure, the traditional Fijian home, sat amongst other houses in Abaca.  It functions as a community center.  There is no electricty so villagers use kerosene lamps.  Water is carried by hand from communal faucets.

Jungle Myna were common near Abaca.

Dean on the edge of a sugar cane field.  Here cane is harvested by hand, usually utilising Fijian Indians, who lease the land from the native Fijians.  Indians are not allowed to own land, a fact which promotes unrest.

A worker hauls a small load of cut cane to be added to other cuttings before hauling it to the local mill.

Trucks loaded with cane cuttings line up at the sugar cane mill in Lautoka.

We wandered through the handicraft market in Lautoka, noting most of the shop owners were Indian.

We bought a hand-carved bird platter and a traditional turtle dish with lid.

Produce stands, on the other hand, were more often staffed by native Fijians.  They delighted in making tight-fitting piles of their vegetables and fruit.

Taro root is a staple throughout the South Pacific islands.  The leaves are eaten, also.

Casava, a relatively new root crop as it was introduced in the 19th century from Mexico and Brazil, has become popular, also.  However, it is not as nutritous as taro.

          Bags of bulk spices were a colorful addition to this part of the marketplace.

Dennis and Rich relax after a traditional lunch in chairs with unique long side-arms.

On our last night on Viti Levu, villagers from Viesevie came to our resort and performed traditional dances and songs.

Then we flew to Taveuni, the "Garden Resort" Isle, were we walked/birded in the rainforest at the higher elevations of the islands.

                   Orchids were plentiful in the rainforest on Taveuni.

A White-collared Kingfisher sits patiently near a small stream.

The International Date Line (180th latitude) ran through Taveuni near our resort.  Rich tried to decided if it was Today or Yesterday for him.

Dean snorkeled over these colorful corals off the coast of Taveuni while Rich birded some more there.

A single water lily bloomed in a sag pond near our seaside resort.  The first part of our journey was coming to an end.

We flew from Nadi back to Brisbane and up to Cairns, where we rented a 4-WD Britz Camping Van.  Before departing Cairns for the Atherton Tablelands, we birded at Centenary Lakes where we saw this Masked Lapwing.

We also saw a Straw-necked Ibis displaying his name-sake.

This fish was curious or perhaps used to being fed.

A birder from Japan showed us this female Papuan Frogmouth from the boardwalk through the mangrove at Centenary Lakes.  This is the largest frogmouth species.

In the Atherton Tablelands near Lake Tinaroo, we located a cooperative Buff-banded Rail.

We easily located one of our 'target' bird species, Sarus Cranes, which were feeding on disced sugar cane fields.  Here a pair comes in for a landing.

We also spotted several Brush Stone-curlews, an endangered specie, in orchards near the road.

Then we drove to Cassowary House near Kuranda.  It is owned by Sue and Phil Gregory.  Phil was our guide to Japan in February 2003.  He was in the US but his, who was also an exceptional chef, helped us see many birds, including this Red-necked Crake. 

A Spotted-Catbird visits the feeder while we enjoy breakfast on the back deck at the Cassowary House.

An Emerald Dove perches near the fruit feeder, too.

And a male Victoria's Riflebird, which Rich had previously videotaped displaying, flies in to see what is being offered at the feeding station.

A Spangled Drongo visits the sugar water feeder.

Am adult Red-combed Jacana walks on water with its long-toed feet at Mareeba Wetlands.

A banded Gouldian Finch eats millet at a rescue breeding program at the Mareeba Wetlands Center.

A ride on the Mossman River with Peter, the Mangrove Man, produced views of many species including Little Kingfisher on a mangrove root.

We also saw a pair of Satin Flycatchers; this is the female.

A Figbigd, which had been gobbling native figs in a tree in the Mossman River.

Sugar cane being harvested mechanically near Mossman where there was a mill, too.

We left the 'sealed' road near Laura and began driving the "corrugated" gravel Peninsula Development Road to the tip of Cape York, the northernmost post of the Australian continent, slowing for dips and "bull dust bowls" and dodging Road Trains.

We stayed near Hann River Roadhouse where we saw this Laughing Kookabura.

The foreman at Kalinga Station invited us onto the 300 square-mile ranch to see Brolgas near a wetland.

We saw many Sulphur-crested Cockatoos and the less common Red-tailed Black Cockatoos at Kalinga Station, too.

We had lunch on Chili Beach in Iron Range National Park, where we found many beautiful avian species.  This is our 'rig', which fortunately never had any serious mechanical breakdown.

However, we DID get hung-up or rather high-centered near the rear axle when we scraped across rock due to the severe erosion of the exit from Pascoe River on Frenchmans Road.  Shifting into 4-Low and buiding up the roadway with large rocks allowed us to climb up the 45 degree bank and continue onward.

Many of the termite mounds along the sand track were IMMENSE.

We stayed at Moreton Telegraph Station and discovered the wife of the station manager was fostering a 5 month-old Wallaroo, whose mother had been killed on the road and he was thrown from her poach and discovered by the driver, who brought it here nearly 3 months ago.  Note the cloth pouch she had fashioned.

We had lunch at Twin Falls, which was near to Indian Head Falls below.

*

As we'd read about the dangers of attempting to ford the fast/deep Jardine River, we gladly paid the $AU88 to the Lingoo Aboriginal Council to take us across and later back on their ferry.  This gave us the right to drive/camp on their Lands, also.

FINALLY, we walked the final 2 km and arrived at the tip of the Aussie continent, looking out to some islands in the Torres Strait, where Papua, New Guinea lay on the opposite side.

On our journey back to Cairns we camped near the Musgrave Telegraph Station, which had been constructed in 1887.

Squatter Pigeons crossed the gravel road ahead of us.

With an extra morning to spare, we returned to Cassowary House in hopes of seeing it's namesake.  We saw Australian Brush-turkeys in the trees.

Finally, our patience was rewarded: an incredible female Southern Cassowary appeared.  Weing up to 150 pounds, Rich was aware this is the only avian species which has killed man (they kick and have a long 4" nail on the inner toe), this caused him to keep a respectful distance.

It was a fitting end to an amazing ADVENTURE.  We saw 317 species of birds.

A beautiful blue Ulysses Butterfly seemed to wave good-bye as we headed back to Cairns.  There we turned in our Britz and flew to Sydney where we were again guests of Sue, Billy and their girls, who are pictured on our Family and Friends page.

The Sydney Harbor Bridge on a stormy day.

Rich with Sydney's signature building, the Opera House, in the background.  We enjoyed a couple of days in Sydney with our friends, the McCalls, before flying back to SFO September 7.