| Birding
On My Own - Australia and New Zealand 2002 Emmalee Tarry |
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The Barkley HighwayPoetry in the Desert Land of the Southern Cross Australian Bustard Camooweal to Mount Isa Life at the Water Holes Marine Fossils |
 Southern Cross windmill along the Barkley Highway |
Poetry in the Desert
To drive from Darwin to Queensland you first must backtrack south on the Stuart Highway to Tennant Creek and take the Barkley Highway east to the coast. My objective now is to get to the northern part of Queensland by the first of September. Queensland is the best birding in Australia and September marks the starts of the migration of northern breeding shorebirds (waders) to Australia.
When I checked in at the campground in Tennant Creek I was given an announcement for a poetry reading. I haven't been to poetry reading since I was in graduate school at Indiana University in 1962.
| Tennant Creek
Caravan Park presents Local poet Jimmy Hooker. Appearing here at 6:30 pm tonight $2 per head - Site 22 Bring a cup and a deck chair and have a cup of billy tea with Jimmy, while Jimmy recites his poetry and bush yarns. Jimmy also brings along some bush tucker for people to see and try if so inclined. |
Six people showed up at the campfire with cups and chairs. Tea was already brewing in a can on the fire. Jimmy is a happy and energetic man who despite never learning to read is a gifted poet and story teller. He began by demonstrating how the aborigines melted a fragrant wax from a bush fruit. He had a dutch oven (iron pot with legs and lid used to cook on campfires) and showed us how a small man like himself could sit on the lid. Then he recited a long story poem about a camp cook who wanted to discourage one of the men from sitting on his pots.
Another poem was about the Bilby a small rabbit sized marsupial with very long ears that lives in this area and whose existence in the wild is threatened because the extensive of the railroad from Alice Spring to Darwin will cut right through its prime territory. Remember the Bilby was one of the endangered mammals at Yookamura.
One of Jimmy's poems was about the Australian Bustard which he referred to as the Kori Bustard. At one time the Australian Bustard was thought to be conspecific with the Kori Bustard of Africa, but it is now recognized as a separate species. This reminded me that I have not yet seen a bustard. I surely expected to see this bird along the highway.
Tucker is an Australian word for food. A poem familiar to every Australia is about a Dog on the Tucker Box. The word bush refers to anything away from man made activities. If you go for a walk in the desert or woods that is out in the bush. So bush tucker is food obtained from natural fruit and seeds in the bush. The aborigines lived as hunter gatherers moving frequently to subsist on whatever they could glean from the land. Europeans knew how to do it better and transformed the land into pastures and farms kicking the aborigines off the land. Australia is a land of undependable rain fall. Great floods are followed by long droughts. Rainfall in parts of Australia is less predictable than in the Sahara Desert. Now parts of the country are experiencing the worst drought in one hundred years. Farmers have quit planting rice. Cattle are thin and bony. Dust storms and fires are revenging the landscape. Perhaps the aborigines had a better idea after all.
Jimmy explained each example of bush tucker and then passed around samples for us to taste. If you are in Tennant Creek do seek out Jimmy Hooker at camp site 22 in the caravan park.
Land of the Southern Cross
The Barkley Highway is a paved two lane highway that connects the Stuart Highway in the Northern Territory to the coast of Queensland. After the road enters Queensland maintenance deteriorates and I got very tired of the bumpy road. My first day from Tenant Creek to Camoonweal was all in the Northern Territory. As on the Stuart Highway I was the only vehicle in sight in either direction most of the time.
The only water along long stretches of the Barkley Highway is pumped from wells by the landmark windmills made by a company called Southern Cross. Every rest stop along the way had one of these windmills and under each water faucet some kind person maintains a cut off gallon plastic bucket to catch the drips for the animals. I wondered how many small mammals and birds are sustained by this water.
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There are road trains on the Barkley Highway hauling petrol
and supplies to the interior. You knew a rest stop was coming up when you saw
the landmark windmill in the distance. I stopped frequently at these picnic areas to look for birds. I saw Richard's Pippet, Galah, Crows, Magpie Lark. There were quite a few flowering trees and in one of them I had Black-faced Woodswallow and Zebra Finch. |
| Australian Bustard Some time after lunch on the first day I came around a curve and stared right at a large bird standing on the shoulder of the road. I stopped and managed this photograph of the Australian Bustard. No wonder Jimmy Hooker wrote about it in his poem. The bird stared at me and then slowly walked across the road and disappeared into the bush. Looking back from where it disappeared I saw three birds about 100 yards back in the bush. Later I saw two solitary bustards some distance from the road for a total of five for the trip. |
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