An Australian Birding Year

By R. Bruce Richardson and R Bruce Richardson

A highly personal account of a phenomenal, once-in-a-lifetime adventure that saw Bruce and his wife, Lynn, embark on a year of travel and birding across the entire continent in a camper van. Their aim was to see Australia, but also to keep a list of the birds that they saw together. That list began with two Gang-gang Cockatoos flying over their son's yard in Torquay, Victoria and ended a year later watching a lovely little Speckled Warbler on a chilly morning back in Victoria with 638 other species seen in between. Kenn Kaufman said, "The story is superb, and the descriptions of birds, places and people are all original and engaging, and I love the asides and the wise and imaginative comments that Bruce works in o

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Beaufoy Publishing
• Release date: Apr 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781913679149

Book preview

Author

Prologue

I need to write this book about the year of travel and birding, and I need to write it for me. It was a phenomenal, once-in-a-lifetime adventure, and I know that I still don’t fully realise it. I know what we did, but I fear that in time, life will just roll over it, as it does, and the year will be reduced to spotty memories, a list of birds and tons of photos on my hard drive.

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

Those words were spoken by Roy Batty, a replicant, played by Rutger Hauer in the classic film, Blade Runner.

Well, I’ve seen things you people might not believe. I’ve seen the moons of Jupiter and rings of Saturn while bush camping in the wilds of the Kimberley of Western Australia, Chestnut Rails walking about in full sunlight on the mud banks of Buffalo Creek in Darwin. I cannot let those memories get lost in time like tears in the rain. It is time to write.

Therefore, I am going to attempt to capture the essence of that year of travelling and birding the entire continent of Australia, much in the way that many birders feel they need to experience the essence of the bird rather than just tick it off a list. I need to try and write the essence of that year.

Some called it living the dream and it was for me, although at times there were certainly touches of nightmare. Comfort zones were pushed beyond the max, and stresses were put on ourselves and on our relationship. Would I do it again? Yes. I would leave tomorrow if I could. My wife, Lynn, would not.

Who am I? Who are we? Deeper meanings and silliness swirled about in my brain as I wrote that sentence, but I will keep those in check. Simply, we are originally from the United States. We are in our sixties and have been married since November of 1990. We are both in reasonably good health. I used to be a long distance runner, having done a marathon in 2005. Lynn donated a kidney to her youngest son in 2010, but had been mostly complication-free regarding that. We are what some might call old hippies.

I am a mostly retired singer/songwriter/entertainer and Lynn is a retired RN. I am a passionate birder. Lynn loves birding, but only while she is doing it. She is a classic introvert. I am a classic extrovert. I have Attention Deficit Disorder and a bit of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. She does not. I have been a successfully recovering alcoholic since April 1990. She drinks socially. I have dealt with issues of anxiety and depression that lead to my being agoraphobic for a long period of time from my mid-twenties to my mid-thirties. Yet we lived together in a vehicle travelling across the length and breadth of Australia for a year. I would not say that as a couple we are undamaged, but we are still married. We are in Australia living in a very tiny house in Victoria. Yes, we have a house now, but I still love travelling.

And now, a quick bit of history. I owe it all to Ronald Reagan.

That is a sentence I imagine you were not expecting, and a sentence I never thought I would write. But it is true. I would not be writing this book if not for the 40th President of the United States.

In 1981 he fired the air-traffic controllers who were on strike in the United States. My stepchildren’s biological father was an air-traffic controller and was one of those fired. Australia was hiring. He took the kids and moved. Time passed and the children liked it in Oz. When some of that family moved back to the USA, three of the four children stayed and went to University here. They met and married Australians, with whom they successfully reproduced. So we now have six grandchildren in the land down under. Lynn and I had been visiting here regularly since the late 1990s. We wanted, and needed, to be near the children and grandchildren.

In 2011 we purged our stuff and moved to Australia, and by January 2012 we had Contributing Parent Permanent Resident Visas. Unfortunately, our accommodation plans failed the following year, so in 2013 we returned to the US to regroup and spend time with Lynn’s dad who was having health issues.

Not long after we returned to the USA, we discovered that Lynn’s father was very ill with leukaemia. Since we were there, she was able to have a hands-on part in his care. It was quite a blessing that she had this time with him. It was a blessing that I had time with him as well. He and I always got along, but in those last months we became friends. He passed away in January of 2014 and Lynn and I stayed in the US for a while longer.

So we were in America with no house in Australia and the clock was ticking. It was ticking loudly because in order to satisfy our permanent resident visa requirements we needed to spend another full year in Oz somewhere, somehow, before January 2017.

In early 2015 while visiting our son Josh and his family in Torquay, Victoria, we came up with an idea. We would purchase a small camper vehicle and our home, for at least a year, would be the entire continent of Australia. Our plan was to circumnavigate Oz. Yes, really. Of course, I loved the idea.

In April of 2015 we bought a 2001 Toyota Matilda Motorhome camper. We referred to her as, Matilda. She was a 2WD Hi-lux, dual-fuel (petrol and LPG auto-gas) vehicle that was small, but very comfortable inside when parked. However, she was a nightmare on the highway. But, she was the vehicle in which we began this adventure and I will forever be grateful for her.

After purchasing Matilda, we headed back to the US to put things in order to be able to spend a year on the road in Australia.

Since we were both birders, admittedly much, much more of a passion for me, we decided to let the birds lead us. We’d be travelling anyway, so our routing would be based on birding locations and weather. Lynn was adamant that she had no interest in doing an actual birding Big Year. She was very clear about this. A birding big year is when a birder tries to see as many species of birds in a certain region (i.e. Australia) in a year’s time. It becomes a quest for numbers. There are books and even a movie about this.

We did keep a list for a year, from 20 August 2015 to 19 August 2016. It was a list of birds that we saw together. It was a casual couple’s year list. In its way, no less phenomenal than many Big Year efforts, because we had to do it together, and trust me, that is a whole different animal than solo listing.

Planning our trip at a lobby table with John Weigel at The Biggest Week in American Birding, May 2015.

We consulted our friend and brilliant big year record holder, John Weigel. He is the man whose Australian Big Year record is 770 and whose North American Big Year record is 835. Both will likely remain the records for many years to come. John laid out a basic route for us to take. We followed many of his suggestions, but our routing and timetable changed again and again as life intervened. We had to push back our departure from the US by a month as I needed cataract surgery on both eyes. That changed our original schedule from the start.

But start we did…

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The Beginning, VIC

20 August - 6 September, 2015

We spent a couple of weeks at our son, Josh’s house in Torquay, Victoria while we sorted ourselves into Matilda. It was a cosy, comfortable space, but it was a limited space. Packing was more about choosing what not to take than it was about what to take. I had no idea how many t-shirts I considered favourites. I had to choose the favourites of the favourites. We made our choices as best we could and stored things where they would fit. It was a learning experience from the very start. We were learning that we could indeed do without a lot of stuff.

Our couple’s year list began on 20 August with a low fly-over of two Gang-gang Cockatoos calling as they passed above us. We also did a bit of birding around the neighbourhood, and at the world-famous Western Treatment Plant in Werribee (only 35 minutes away). Our road trip did not start until 1 September when we lumbered out of Torquay to stay in the first of many, many caravan parks. We chose one just down the road in Anglesea, so that if we had difficulties we could still run back to Torquay. All went smoothly.

I will never forget the first morning waking up in Matilda. We were in a powered site so I made coffee with the electric kettle as I watched a mob of kangaroos in the paddock only metres away from us. Of course we had seen heaps of kangaroos, but not from our own home. Yes, it felt like I was home and my yard was all of Australia. After two nights there, and doing a bit of birding around the area, we headed west.

Matilda at the first caravan park.

On 3 September our couple’s year list reached 100 in Horsham, Victoria. It was there we saw the big-eyed, beautiful, Bush Stone-curlew that was being reported. With the help of information shared on Facebook, we located the spot and it flew out to greet us. It became our 101st. The connections that we made, and maintained, with other birders on Facebook became an important part of our travelling and birding.

We drove on to Little Desert National Park where we stayed at Kiata campground. It was our first unpowered campsite. It was chilly, but in Matilda we were, again, quite comfortable.

I had heard that one of the best places to get Black-eared Cuckoo was at Little Desert National Park. There is also a Big Desert National Park to the northwest, although I have not been there. It was a beautiful area with native plants like banksia, flame heath, and river red gums. It had that scrubby, grey, rough Australian gorgeousness that I love.

Several emus were wandering around the campsite looking like large made-up creatures operated by a tipsy puppeteer. I have often thought that much of the flora and fauna in Oz looks as if it was created in collaboration between Jim Henson and Dr. Suess. I truly love that about this place.

Speaking of odd looking fauna, while we were choosing a spot, we watched a very large echidna waddle slowly across the track. They do not really hurry. Come to think of it, Matilda was quite echidna-like. The campground was almost deserted. After we were set up, we did a little late afternoon birding. Within an hour we had found Lynn a sweet Southern Scrub-robin, as well as lots of White-browed Babblers. Both were life birds for her.

Following a cosy night’s sleep, I was up at 4:30am making coffee, this time with Matilda’s little gas stove. It was chilly and I could see my breath. As the dawn chorus began, we headed out amongst it. We had a successful day. We got lifers Black-eared Cuckoo at Kiata that morning, and Rufous Fieldwren at Little Desert in the early afternoon. We saw the fieldwren at two different sites, one being across the street from where we hoped for Slender-billed Thornbills, but they were not around.

Lynn beside Matilda.

Black-eared Cuckoo at Little Desert National Park.

By 4pm we plugged-in at a nice, small caravan park in nearby Nhill, Victoria. I had a non-alcoholic beer, worked on the blog and edited my photos. Then we hit a pub for supper and I had lifer pie in the form of a large bowl of chips (French fries). This is one of my go-to treat foods and quite a treat they were.

So what is this Lifer Pie?

It is simply a way to celebrate getting a life bird. It can be any self-indulgent treat that you choose. There are no rules to lifer pie (except that you need to have seen a life bird, of course). It began at The Biggest Week in American Birding in northwest Ohio. A little place called Blackberry Corners had pretty good pie. They were the sweet, American style, dessert pies. We’d often ask one another on the Magee Marsh boardwalk, What kind of pie are you having today? After several days of asking and being asked this, I said that I wasn’t going to have pie again until I got a life bird. Then it would be lifer pie. And somehow, lifer pie became a thing. Was I the first person to specifically call it lifer pie? It doesn’t matter. I am okay with it being associated with me, and a lot of Aussie birders are now taking advantage of the practice. Yes, if nothing else, I brought the concept of lifer pie to the Australian birding world.

A very cool example of this was when my friend Nigel Jackett was writing about having found and photographed the Night Parrot in Western Australia with Bruce Greatwich, Adrian Boyle and George Swann. This was the first time this extremely rare bird had been photographed in Western Australia. Regarding this historic find Nigel wrote, That is going to be some sweet lifer pie! I was very pleased. I felt like in my own very small way, I was a part of that amazing event.

The next morning we left Nhill and went over to Wyperfeld National Park picking up White-backed Swallow and Redthroat lifers. We had gotten good information on birding that area from our friend, Philip Peel, a valued Facebook connection. He had also given us information on the Little Desert birds. We had a long look around there for Mallee Emu-wren without success, but we were heading to Hattah-Kulkyne National Park where I had seen them a few years ago. I hoped that Lynn would see her lifer there as well. After spending a night in an unremarkable, but quite adequate, caravan park in Ouyen, we were up and out at Hattah-Kulkyne early the next morning.

An indispensable resource during our year of travelling was an app called WikiCamps. It is a user-updated database of campgrounds, caravan parks, points of interest and more. Users comment and rate the spots themselves. I began reviewing caravan parks and campsites where we stayed. I thought it only fair for me to contribute to something that I used. We would search ahead and plan our accommodations by the locations and reviews of the caravan parks. Some had been recommended by friends, but many we just found using the app. It was a very handy tool. I reviewed the caravan park in Ouyen. I said, No complaints. Good value, would return. And close to Hattah-Kulkyne NP. Not exactly an exciting read, but that about summed it up.

At daybreak we were looking and listening on the Nowingi Track for the endangered Mallee Emu-wren. It is one of the more reliable spots to look for this cool, little bird. There are three species of emu-wren in Australia: Mallee, Southern and Rufous-crowned. We had gotten Southern down by Torquay in the Anglesea Heath. Emu-wrens are unique in that their tails are composed of only six long feathers that make up over half the entire length of the bird. They fly low and poorly, but that does not mean that they are easy to find. And the Mallee Emu-wrens have an uncanny ability to disappear into the spinifex. It is a tough, very sharply pointed, tussock grass. These birds do like their spinifex.

As we walked along the track, Lynn heard, and then we saw, a Mallee Emu-wren. Sweet! During our travels, I referred to her as my hearing-ear person. I cannot hear the higher, thinner calls of many birds, but gratefully she could.

As we stood there rejoicing Lynn’s lifer, a vehicle rolled up the track and stopped in front of Matilda. They had to stop since I had left her in the middle of the road. She was not good at parking on a sandy shoulder. It was Tim Bawden, an excellent birder from Victoria and also a Facebook friend. We had a nice chat then he went back where we had just been and he got some cracking photos of the emu-wren. In the meantime, Lynn saw her lifer Chestnut Quail-thrush.

I will mention a bit here about photographing birds and my feelings regarding that. First let me say that I love getting a nice photo of a bird, especially a life bird. I do. But on this journey I began to make a conscious choice to keep the emphasis where I truly wanted it, on the birding experience, not on getting a damn photo of the bird. I wanted to rejoice in each new bird. And yet, I occasionally caught myself getting that feeling of, Oh no, I didn’t get a photo! It began to happen that morning with Lynn’s lifer emu-wren. So, while I still like to get a photo if it’s possible, I make a conscious choice to look at the bird first. Bins first, camera second, that became my rule. I am a birder who often takes photographs. I am not a bird photographer. This was a birding adventure, not a photography safari. I will probably mention this again somewhere in this account.

Collared Sparrowhawk in Woolworth’s car park.

We left Hattah Kulkyne for Waikerie, South Australia. There we checked into a very comfortable caravan park. We made a trip to the Woolworths grocery store for supplies and had a surprise Collared Sparrowhawk perching right beside Matilda! It was on a branch in a tree not more than four metres away. Not a normal car park bird and very cool to see so closely. Perhaps it was an omen of good things to come, perhaps it was just a bird in a tree. Whatever, it was a beautiful little raptor.

So with fresh provisions packed away, we got a good night’s sleep and were ready to head for Gluepot in the morning.

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Gluepot: Mallee Wonderland, SA

7 September - 9 September 2015

Gluepot is owned by Birdlife Australia, and is part of the largest block of intact mallee left in south-eastern Australia. Yes, I got that off the website. The name Gluepot is in reference to the fact that after a heavy rain the dirt there becomes a lot like glue. So the whole place becomes a glue pot.

The first time I went to Gluepot, I was with two other birders camping in a little pop-top caravan. We were a retired proper Aussie, a Jewish South African and an old American hippie. I was the youngest. It was a mixture of very different personalities and cultures, but we made it work for the most part. I am still acquainted with both of them, although I have kept much more in touch with the Aussie. That was back in October of 2012 and some Scarlet-chested Parrots were around. We did see them then. Lynn and I did not, but we got some good birds and enjoyed a very cool place.

We arrived in the reserve about 10:30 in the morning after the 50k drive up the dirt, sand, rock and mud road. There had been rains and there was one bad mud hole in an area referred to as the Taylorville stretch. Bless her, Matilda made me proud. She was underpowered and only two-wheel drive, but she had clearance, determination and heart. She skidded, bounced twice and then slid through the mud without bogging. Phew!

Splendid Fairy-wren at Gypsum Dam in Gluepot Reserve, South Australia.

The birds that welcomed us into Gluepot were a little group of White-winged Fairy-wrens. The males are brilliant blue, little birds with bright white wings. They were out in the brush at the Gypsum Dam area just inside the reserve. They are one of the most beautiful of a group of very beautiful birds and only the second fairy-wren on our year list. We were to add a third, the Splendid Fairy-wren, later that day.

We noticed another couple birding down the road, and I walked over to say hello. We told them about the fairy-wrens and they wanted to see them. We showed them where the wrens were, chatted a bit, then headed to the visitor centre. They soon showed up there as well. Everyone who visits Gluepot is required to register. If you are camping there is also a fee per night.

Before we set ourselves up in the Babbler Campsite, we dropped off a couple of camp chairs in our spot and drove a few kilometres to a site called Long Dam. Once there, Lynn got her lifer Major Mitchell’s Cockatoos as a pair flew along the far side of the dry dam. She had beheld the pink cockatoo for the first time, although certainly not the last. She was dutifully impressed with her first looks.

They are stunning birds. I mean, they are cockatoos that are pink with amazing crests! They are one of Australia’s most amazing parrots.

The other birding couple, Lindy and Nick, arrived at the dam as well and we birded with them for a while. Among the dozens of Spiny-cheeked Honeyeaters we also saw some Australian Ringnecks (Mallee subspecies) and one bright and beautiful Mulga Parrot, which was another lifer for Lynn. As we were heading back to the vehicles, a little flock of small birds were flitting about the scrub, and I said, Look, Southern Whitefaces, which turned out to be life birds for our new friends. The next best thing to finding yourself a lifer is finding one for someone else.

We parted company and Lynn and I headed back to our campsite by way of the visitors centre to check the notice board, but there were still no reports of Scarlet-chested Parrots. As we were talking to the ranger, Lindy and Nick showed up and told us that they had left a note for us on our chairs, telling us that they had seen two Gilbert’s Whistlers back on the track near the dam. We went. We saw. Lynn got another lifer. Sweet.

Matilda in Gluepot red dirt.

Since then Lindy has become a very good Facebook friend and we have kept in touch. The birding circle grows ever wider. I am a grateful member of a wonderful community. We share information and enthusiasm, elation and disappointment, knowledge and experience. We share a love of being out amongst it. We are diverse, yet similar. We are birders, and twitchers, and birdwatchers. We are the birding community. We are genuine, and passionate, and I am happy that I am a part of it.

Then next morning we were out before first light in pursuit of the Red-lored Whistler. We had been given a good spot to try and it was recommended to be there early. We were. They were not.

Miner Surprise

As we walked and listened and looked in vain for the whistler, a flock of miners came in. Gluepot is one of the only places left to look for, and hopefully see, the endangered Black-eared Miner. They have hybridised with Yellow-throated Miners to the point where it can be difficult to find a purebred Black-eared Miner. I had seen one in 2012 on my first visit and I hoped to luck into one again.

There were thirty or more miners in the mallee trees around us. Many were hybrids of Black-eared and Yellow-throated. But we found at least one particularly dark miner with a darkish rump and the darker feather line (submoustachial stripe in technical terms) on the lower jaw. Yes, we had studied. We were both on it and had enough confidence in our views to tick the bird before the flock moved along. The brilliant author, ecologist and avian expert, Dr. Rohan Clarke, positively identified the miner of which I had managed a few quick photos as definitely being a Black-eared Miner. We had been planning on looking for these rare Miners further down the track, but they had come to us.

Australian Ringneck (Mallee subspecies) in Gluepot.

The drive out of Gluepot was gratefully uneventful and Matilda lumbered once again safely through the mud. Back in Waikerie, we took a walk around Hart Lagoon, a river wetland just across the street from the caravan park. It added a few birds to the year list including an Australian Reed-warbler that was much more easily heard than seen, but see it we finally did. We spent a nice evening at the caravan park after a lifer dinner at the hotel. It was a large, new place that definitely did not have my kind of ambience, but we did have a celebratory meal of some kind and that is what matters. The next day we had a 500 kilometre drive ahead of us.

At this point almost everything was still fresh to us both. Admittedly, I had already seen some of these areas, but camp living as a couple was all brand new. Getting used to being in the small space together was all new enough that we were not having conflicts. We were learning to make it work and learning that indeed, it could work. So far.

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Road Days: SA, VIC and NSW

10 September - 12 September 2015

When I was a touring entertainer performing music and comedy across the US, I referred to days that were just for travelling as, road days. These are days of getting from point A to point B on the way to point C or D or whatever. On our first Aussie road day we drove from Waikerie, South Australia to Broken Hill, New South Wales, with a stop in Mildura, Victoria to do some shopping. I just realised that we were in three states in one day! Cool. That was the only time that we would be in three states in one day during the year of travel.

The drive from Mildura to Broken Hill was about 300 kilometres of bush and dirt. I like that kind of thing, but it can become monotonous. The speed limit was 110kph and Matilda was not comfortable doing anything over 90. About a third of the way to Broken Hill, we were passed by a small group of senior motorcyclists riding large, sparkly, colourful, basically hideous motorcycles and tricycles, some even towing sparkly, colourful, hideous little trailers and/or, sparkly, colourful, hideous sidecars. Maybe twenty minutes later, I noticed a huge column of red dust rising in the distance and I said, Damn, I think one of that group has wrecked. Sadly, I was right.

We arrived on the scene and a huge golden motorcycle and sidecar was upside down and stuff was strewn everywhere. It was a sparkly, colourful, hideous crash site. The other dozen or so riders were gathered around. There was one guy on the ground. He was conscious, but definitely injured and confused. Lynn,