Meeting The Locals

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About 40 kilometres out of Darwin is a place called Berry Springs which boasts two attractive tourist features. The main one is the Northern Territory Wildlife Park – our destination for today, Saturday 16th July. The other feature is a natural warm water spring which also has two huge swimming holes with connecting “drifts” and many people have recommended it to us. The two features are next door to each other and by sheer coincidence (by mistake actually) we drove into the Spring area thinking it was the Wildlife Park. It’s a well appointed family park which is free to enter so we took the time to see if it would be worth a visit on another day. It looked fantastic and we were determined to make a separate visit complete with our swimming gear but today we went on to the Wildlife Park. We remember it fondly from last time when we rated it very highly – second only to a magnificent park in Alice Springs which we won’t visit on this trip. The special focus of the park is flora and fauna found in the Northern Territory. Today we had come prepared to spend most of the day here and it soon became apparent that we would have our work cut out to see all of the various wildlife habitats and exhibits they have in the park. The total area is vast and a free “hop on hop off” shuttle bus cum train runs regularly linking the different features. They put on several displays throughout the day and the first one was due to start shortly at the end of a 5 minute shuttle bus trip.

So we made for The Oolloo Sandbar area where we were treated to a magnificent presentation mainly featuring whiprays. These freshwater stingrays were only identified as a separate species about 20 years ago. They have a much larger cousin that lives in south east Asia - the biggest of the seven rays at the wildlife park is no more than two meters across. They feed by shuffling along the sand in shallow waters and smothering their pray and sucking up fish and water together expelling the water through two huge “nostrils”. They look quite threatening and their long tails can be used to protect themselves in times of danger as there is a single serrated stinging spine at the end. We were shown an example of the spine and advised to always take care not to stand on the tail - but here they were no danger and snuggled around the feet of the demonstrator. A few members of the crowd were invited to feed them and it was strange to see most of them pull away at the last moment despite the assurance of the demonstrator that they were in no danger. Neither of us felt brave enough to go and stand in the water with the rays but I wished afterwards that I had summoned up the courage.

Other exhibits at the Oolloo Sandbar included huge barramundi fish and the amusing archer fish which shoot beads of water at insects to obtain their food. This was demonstrated by some people in the crowd holding small grubs out over the water for the fish to shoot at. They were amazingly accurate and most entertaining. The other interesting presence there was a jabiru bird which strayed into the sandbar in the hope of getting an easy feed. It was a beautiful striking looking bird and clearly in good condition but it was not going to get a cheap feed today. A little after the whipray display there was to be a Birds of Prey demonstration at an area called The Flight Deck. This area is only open at times of the display but many, many people had made their way there – most, like us, on the shuttle train.

So at 11am on the dot out came one of the keepers with a beautiful black breasted buzzard. We were treated to the amazing spectacle of the buzzard picking up a stone in his beak and hurling it at a huge emu egg. A few ‘hits’ later and his efforts were rewarded with a crack in the egg which he was able prise open with his beak to have his lunch! An osprey was another bird to give a beautiful flying display which culminated in it picking up a fish from the small nearby lake although this didn’t entirely go to plan. The osprey was disturbed by the presence overhead of a truly wild wedge tailed eagle that was observing proceedings from above. Eventually, when the eagle lost interest in what was going on below, the osprey splashed into the water to retrieve it’s reward and promptly took refuge in the nearest large tree to devour it’s fish. Other smaller displays were given by red-tailed black cockatoos, sulphur crested white cockatoos and some rainbow lorikeets.

With no timed displays readily available immediately after this it gave us time to wander to some of the normal exhibits and first we made for the Nocturnal House. This was a brilliantly constructed display of a huge variety of creatures it would be near impossible to spot in the wild. It ranged through Ghost Bats, Echidnas, Quolls, snakes and numerous others but, understandably, we weren’t allowed to use flash photography and none of the settings I tried on the camera worked very well. Our walk through the darkness was disturbed by a huge tour-group of somewhat rowdy young foreign tourists who persisted in being noisy despite the many signs asking for quiet. The worst offender seemed to be the tour guide!! We waited for them to “pass through” so that we could enjoy the exhibits at our leisure but this meant our stay was much longer than planned. There was a woodland walk attached to the Nocturnal House which was beautifully laid out and in delightful contrast to the darkness we had just experienced. Unfortunately the rowdy tour group could still be heard even though, by now, they were some distance away.

Our return back past the Nocturnal House was timed brilliantly to catch the passing train to the next three displays which were fairly close together – the Monsoon Forest Walk, the Wetlands Walk and the Aquarium. Each of these was absolutely fascinating and the Monsoon Forest Walk in particular was brilliantly thought out and constructed. One small section, simply activated by us walking through, gave a wonderful perception of what the Wet Season in NT would be like with thunder, lightening and teaming rain which could easily last for weeks and lead to the expansive flooding that NT is custom to each year. Sometimes, of course, additional devastation might be caused by cyclones and, in the past, Darwin has been completely obliterated by severe cyclones and has had to be re-built, virtually from scratch. This display captured all the potential drama of a situation like that and, although we didn’t get wet, it left us in no doubt as to how uncomfortable life in the tropics in the wet season could become. There was also a large “walk-through” aviary with a huge variety of birds of varying sizes and colours – it was an excellent display.

The Wetlands Walk portrayed the calmness and beauty of woodland with permanently lying water and contained many birds and animals living in a perfectly natural environment. At the Billabong we saw pelicans with chicks that were only a few days old and still fluffy white balls of feathers. Turtles were in the water and a very sleepy fresh water crocodile blended in so cleverly with the trunk of a tree that we almost missed it. The Wetlands Walk brought us naturally through to the Aquarium – a feature we have grown to love throughout our tour of Aus and NZ. This must be our fifth or sixth aquarium and we never tire of the fascinating displays of fish and water creatures both large and small. There was a fantastic display of colourful coral and tropical fish but the highlight here was a really huge salt water crocodile called Graham!

Time was quickly going on so, as it was well past lunch-time, we caught another conveniently timed shuttle back to the Main Station passing, for the second time, the Oolloo Sandbar and the Dingo enclosure. We were lucky to see dingoes each time we passed by and would see them again later. They were strikingly tan coloured and were clearly very fit and healthy. It would be rare to see them like this in the wild as inter-breeding with feral dogs has diminished their natural genes. Back at the Main Station we retrieved our sandwiches from the car and ate them in the outdoor section of the main cafeteria. It was good to have a sit down for a while as we had been on the go for the best part of four hours.

There was still one area we really wanted to see so, suitably refreshed, we caught the next shuttle to depart and stayed on it for nearly the whole of the four kilometre circuit, spotting the dingoes once again. Our destination was an area called Paperbark Walk but the feature we really wanted to see was called Goose Lagoon. Paperbark simply referred to the type of trees that dominated this particular feature and it was a very pleasant walk though to Goose Lagoon. We were surprised that it seemed to be the least popular area as we didn’t see another soul throughout our time there – only when we got back to the shuttle stop. The lagoon was absolutely beautiful with an extensive display of what seemed like water lilies. There was a well constructed bird-hide there with excellent signage as to what one might see. It wasn’t the right time of year for masses of birds but what we saw we enjoyed and, with the place to ourselves, the peace and tranquillity was lovely – we sat and appreciated the view for some time.

We had no idea what time the next shuttle would pass by so we strolled casually back to the stop and waited idly. Within minutes a train came by – our lucky day – and we were soon back at the Main Station where we treated ourselves to an ice-cream. I was astonished to see a lady ranger wandering round with a huge snake wrapped around her shoulders. She offered it to someone to hold but they were a bit apprehensive. She passed it to another ranger who, again, tried to encourage people to hold it. Graham encouraged me to have a go so the ranger wrapped it around my shoulders while Graham took photos. It was a very large python and could have done a lot of damage – it felt very powerful when it moved and its skin was scaly and cold. Fortunately ‘Rustle’ was very friendly and although I felt a little uncomfortable I was secretly thrilled that I had been ‘brave enough’ to let it wrap itself around me. Graham was content just to stroke it.

We left the park at about 4:00pm having arrived at about 10:00am so we certainly had our money’s worth. The journey back to the caravan took about 40 minutes and there was still time for a cooling dip in the pool. The temperature had not dropped below 30 degrees all day and the humidity was still high so the soak was very refreshing. Tomorrow was to be another visit to Berry Springs so after supper we relaxed for a while and then turned in early.

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Photos

An archer fish
these fish shoot droplets of water at their prey which are often insects

These birds are very clever
and have learnt the art of breaking large emu eggs with stones

Red tailed black cockatoo
Fairly common in northern Australia but endangered in the south

The centre was thrilled that the pelicans have chicks
born just a few days earlier - it's a rare event in captivity