On the south coast of Australia is Emu Point, and this birdy plot of land is Bird Island, a name I find all over the world. These appear to be mostly gulls, White Pelicans, ibis and various assorted others. It was off-limits, thankfully, as the Aussies protect their natural resources fairly well.

Along the Stuart Highway from Adelaide to AliceSprings is about a thousand miles of arid land. Looking west in the early morning sun there was a small pod of Emus, perhaps the remnants of a family. Note the vigilant male on the left.

Liz and I took the ferry across a small gulf to Adelaide and the boat was quite a skiff! It even had Internet and the last article I sent was off this vessel. It was an extremely windy ride with a recent Antarctic front, but we survived without incident.

Below is a page with two shots of land just north of the Great Bight of Australia. If you look on a map at the continent you’ll see what looks like a chunk taken out of it at around 7 o’clock. That’s the bight and I can’t explain the spelling. It lies south of the famed Nullarbor Plain, which is the land you see.

This is famous Little Beach (and the road in) which houses perhaps the rarest bird on Earth, the Noisy Scrub-bird. It was declared extinct and re-discovered by a school teacher a couple of decades ago. Amazingly enough, while doing research on the bio fauna there, a lady scientist re-discovered a mammal (!) thought to be extinct! Needless to say, the area is heavily protected and now the scrub-bird has been introduced into another habitat, and has been multiplying.

This is the wonderful baobab tree, whose trunk absorbs and saves water for years. It started to fall while we were there but Liz ran out and propped it up.

This is a better perspective of the Nullarbor Plain, and at this point coming east, the trees have almost run out. A little later there were no trees at all, which kept up for a few hundred kilometers. This was caused by low rainfall and poor soil.

About halfway between Perth and Albany are two islands, seen here. The front one houses a nesting Eastern Osprey, recently split from the Osprey we have in North America. The back island is where the Little Penguins nest and it’s off-limits in this breeding season. I felt bad that I couldn’t show Liz one.

The terror of the Outback is called the Road Train, and it is three OR FOUR section of Mac trucks hooked together. Some are over 70 feet long! I’ll tell you, passing one of these at night, with wallabies everywhere, is unnerving. And those highways aren’t as wide as ours.

This is what Liz and called the “shoe tree,” as someone has decorated it with every kind of shoe imaginable. Looks like they wanted a shoe-topia. Not far away was a neighborhood that decorated the area with dolls. I guess everybody has a different slant on humor.

This is a typical scene along the Outback, a group of Wedge-tailed Eagles that have gorged themselves on a dead kangaroo. The second from right is a juvenile. These are closely-related to our Golden Eagle, despite the dihedral wings. We’ll get back to birds next week!