Queensland 2023, August 31st – September 25th

We went to Queensland in September 2023 as a part of our 10 months long travels between jobs. As we did not work at that time, and had spent quite a lot already during 7 months in Asia, we were on a very low budget. We were considering whether to visit Australia given the costs, but the uniqueness of its fauna overweighted this concern – and eventually it was not that expensive, even compared to third world countries.
This was my first trip built nearly entirely and only around wildlife, obviously with heavy focus on mammals. We chose to go to Queensland, as it had all the iconic species except for the wombat. Free entry to national parks also helped 🙂 . I did not know this website back then, and only just had discovered iNaturalist, so my main source was the excellent and outstanding Jimmy Lamb’s Quolling around blog . I highly recommend anyone planning a trip anywhere in Australia to check it.
The main reason I am writing this report is to reminisce the wonderful time I had, as I rate this trip as one of the top three I ever took (with South Africa and Namibia), but for readers, especially those travelling independently, it might be interesting how much you can see even if you do not know what you are doing and how cheap it can be (could have been?) to visit Australia.

Legend:

Mammal
Reptile, non avian
Bird
Other
Nearly all species were lifers

Fraser Coast

Originally we were to continue our long term travels, flying from Denpasar in mid July, but had to go back home to Europe for a month and half during the summer of 2023. The cheapest and surprisingly comfortable route was with Saudia to Kuala Lumpur with a transfer in Jeddah, and then with Air Asia directly to Gold Coast, landing August 31st in the late morning. We rented an MG3 – a fairly small car, from Bargain Car Rentals via Billiger Mietwagen, which was 600 € with third party full coverage for 25 days. After shopping for groceries, a lot of it, and a camping gear from K-Mart, including two chairs, a camping table and basic cooking gear, we did not quite fit into a trunk of such a small car, having also 2 large backpacks, but I hoped Australia would stand up to its reputation and no one would break into the car for seeing some chairs and matts on the floor.

We spent our first night in the Brownsea Sea Scouts campsite in Shorncliffe. After the dinner, we saw our first common brushtail possum , hanging out in the tree by our tent, in no rush to leave. In the morning, we saw a few cockatoos flying over and got acquainted with the impudence of Australian so-called-magpies. We continued to the Redliffe pier for pelican feeding, which had been cancelled a few weeks ago, but a few of were still around. We continued to the botanical garden, which is famous for the roosting black, grey-headed and the little red flying fox .

The next two nights we spent at Noosa, mostly for landscape and hiking. Australia was still wildly new to us, all the plants totally different to what we knew. I hoped for koalas, but retrospectively I did not make too much effort to see them. Only mammals we saw were Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins and maybe some other Tursiops species. My iNaturalist account, very fresh by that time, also states we saw a humpback; no photo, so I guess far away. Hiking through Noosa was a pleasant experience, though. During lunch break, another Australian so-called-magpie stole a huge chunk of a cheese from me (which reminded me of that time in iSimangaliso when a raptor tried to steal a loaf of bread from my hand 😀 ).

After the lunch on the September 3rd, we drove to Hervey Bay. We stayed at Tasman Holiday Park, a fairly cramped experience given how tightly packed the sites are; They only have a few of them for tents. Anyway, at one moment I looked behind the fence and there was our first ever group of macropods – eastern grey kangaroos. In my language, there is only one word for a genus of nearly all macropods: I usually despise the English zoological nomenclature, but here I appreciate the differentiation.

The next day we went for a whale-watching trip with Hervey Bay Whale Watcching Experience. We headed north from the port, finding some whales quite soon, but the captain ignored them and went on – he knew what he was doing. Eventually, we had a day of humpback galore, many breaches, a calf breaching, had many, many humpbacks just by the boat; we saw scores of them during the day. You can see my full review of the day here.
We did not see any other cetaceans, though, but the humpback show was great.

Mackay

The next day it was a long way drive to Cape Hillsborough. On one of those long days, I do not rememeber which, we saw an emu in the field by the road. I failed to stop, not knowing this would be the last we will see – a mistake I had made before with both paleognaths and other animals as well…
Also, on those long drives, an issue with our car was becoming more perceptible. It kept going left. Just a bit, but still, so when driving 800 km straight, you needed to turn right constantly for those 800 km…
We stayed in the park’s campsite, which I would recommend to all. During an evening walk, I saw an agile wallaby. Nocturnal spotlighting just around the campsite was more productive, with many coppery brushtails, a Pteropus sp. and, most importantly a squirell glider (Petaurus norfolcensis) .
In the morning we went to see the agile wallabies on the beach. A ranger came and positioned small brightly coloured plastic discs as a no-go (and feeding) area. Those needed to be retouched on photos, but on the other hand, the wallabies were relaxed. Two rehabilitated and habituated grey kangaroos were also present. We walked around the beach section of the park for the rest of the morning, seeing rose-crowned fruit dove and a pacific emerald dove – I find quite an appeal in green and colourful columbiformes.

After lunch, chasing off a few kookaburras (common all over, so I do not really mention them), we drove to Eungella. We camped at Fern Flat Campsite for three nights and if I recall correctly, we were alone for the two of them. The campsite is lovely, by the river, in the middle of the forest. Obviously, there is THE reason a wildlife enthusiast goes to Eungella. Before sunset we waited at the bank and got a glimpse of our first platypus. It indeed was just a glimpse, as it dissapeared quickly and that was it. We luckily got more prolonged views in the following days. Platypuses can also be seen in larger reservoirs at the river closer to the road, even during the day. In general, seeing this species was much easier than I imagined, throughout the trip. That did not make the sightings any less special, though, and I believe that this spectacular animal has to be on the top of every wildlife enthusiast’s list.
I went spotlighting in the evening, walking the campsite road to the visitor parking and returning through the path by the river. Red legged pandemelons are common, and I also saw an echidna and a tawny frogmouth (or, more specifically, almost bumped into it). We focused on hiking the trails the next day, seeing more common fauna of the Broken River (including platypuses), and also the first group of yellow-crested cockatoos at the visitor centre. It rained heavily in the evening and leeches started swarming all over including the (luckily outer) walls of our inner tent.
Our last day was more platypuses, more hiking and in the evening another spotlighting session with a bandicoot, probably a long-nosed bandicoot. The next morning, we saw a flock of black cockatoos (not sure which species of the Calyptorhynchus genus) when driving of the plateau.

Northern Queensland

On September 9 we drove the long way to Etty’s Bay to see one of our top targets. It seemed like a hard decision between Etty’s and Mission Beach, but then someone on Tripadvisor advised to check eBird (and that is the story of how I discovered eBird) and Etty’s seem to have quite an edge. We saw our first southern cassowary about here. A large female was just walking by the road, not caring much about our and the other car around. After she vanished in the forest, we drove to the beach, but our luck ran out for the day.
We tried again the next morning, also went for a swim (a lady at the reception said “Yea, we have salties here, but people normally swim, so you can try and probably it will be ok.” 😀 ), and soon enough, a smaller cassowary decided to show up and promenade around the campsite. I have a photo of three little kids observing it from like two meters distanc, but the bird just kept minding his own business.

We continued north, stopping in Cairns in Bargain Car Rentals to deal with that left turning. While they acknowledged the issue, they said the cars are always owned by each branch, so they cannot switch it for us, but they will call us in a few days with some kind of a solution. They did no such thing. But again, the car was 600 € for 25 days.
We slept just south of the Daintree river and went for a cruise the next morning. We chose Solar whisper. There are two conflicting approaches: Either go as early as possible, because that is when animals are active, or go whenever there is low tide to see the the basking saltwater crocodiles. We chose the first option, but “early as possible” was 9:30, and it was high tide, so there were not many animals, and also the crocodile chances were slim. We got lucky though and saw a large basking male, plus a few small specimens. Apart from that, a group of papuan frogmouths, mating Australian common tree snakes and one unfortunately too well hidden scrub python. The tour itself felt sort of dull, though, and not particularly well carried out, my review can be read here.
Companies there also offer a dawn or dusk cruises, usually longer and usually considerable more expensive. We were on a tight budget back then, but today I would definitely pay the extra 50 $ to do that.

After the tour we crossed the river and continued to Daintree National Park, staying at Noah Beach. The campsite was fairly full, but the sites are far from each other. My wife said she liked the forest the most of all the rainforest we went to. Wildlife wise, however, there was not much to write home about.
The first evening I walked the Madja boardwalk, while my wife rested. After leaving the mangrove area, I heard a large animal rustling in the shrubbery: A patroling male cassowary ! I felt so lucky 🙂 . I visited the same spot both following evenings, each of them succesful (and that’s how I got a photo of my wife 3 meters from a cassowary 😀 ). I also saw a red legged pandemelon on that evening. I returned at night, hoping for some mangrove snake species, but my snake blindnes prevented made the calls. Saw a crocodile swimming in a distance, though. Large peppermint stick insects are common at night.
The next morning we went to Jindalba boardwalk, but it was closed. We then followed to Cape Tribulation; at the parking lot someone found a spiny rainforest katydid (Phricta spinosa), quite a beast. We also saw nesting pair of orange-footed megapode (bird otherwise commonly seen througout the forest). Not sure if “nesting” is the right term here: The birds incubate their eggs in a huge pile of dirt (and manure?). A lace monitor, commonly seen throughout the trip and many times in Daintree, came by to check it, but did not get its snack this time. We went for the cassowary in the evening, also saw a yellow crested cockatoo at Madja Boardwalk.
I returned to Dubuji boardwalk at Cape Tribulation after dark: Some frogs were spotted and also a roosting southern blossom bat. Given the amount of fresh water in the area and habitat diversity, there must have been much more to see.
Our last day in Daintree was uneventful widlife-wise, except for a Melomys sp.visit by our tent in the evening. I returned to Jindalba at night spotlighting the roads in the area and also the full boardwalk, which was easily walkable once you got over the closing barrier, in hope to see the Bennet’s tree kangaroo, but no luck.
Apart from the species mentioned, coppery brushtails were often seen at the campsite. I also hoped to see the Boyd’s Forest Dragon in Daintree, but I probably lacked the sklil, or was simply unlucky.

Atherton Tablelands

We left the morning of September 14 for the Atherton Tablelands. Once again, and especially in this case, I must extend my thanks towards Jimmy Lamb: I might not have visited this area, undoubtedly a highlight of our trip (at least for those of us spotlighting), at all if I had not read his blog.
We stayed at Bonadio Campsite mid way between Yungaburra and Atherton. This is quite a special place. Birdlife is rich, pandelemons, bandicoots and possums roam the area and there are platypuses in the river under the campsite. They do wildlife feeding at sunset, which I do not deem as a best practice, attracting mainly red legged pandemelons and coppery brushtails.
After obligatory platypus spotting and dinner, I went for the Fig Cutrain National Park at night. The forest is teeming with animals, I was able to record more coppery brushtails, Queensland barred bandicoots, white-tailed rat, quite easily seen here compared to other sites, and a night or two later also green ringtail possums. I saw bandicoots, green possums and pandemelons also upon returning to the campsite. Bandicoots also visit the tents at night, which excited my wife, but not enough to incline her to start spotlighting with me.
On September 15 we went for “that another platypus” in Yungaburra, but did not see one. We followed the Peterson Creek north to the coony of spectacled flying foxes, one on which was kind enough to drop, please, excuse my language, a humongous shit right onto my lens barrell. Such a moment really makes one to consider turning birder… In the afternoon we went to Mareeba. Granite Gorge Nature Park’s endemic population of Mareeba rock wallabies (for some reason called “inconspicuous kangaroo” in my language 😀 ) is quite famous amongst general tourist, and they indeed are cute and well habituated. There is of course that feeding thing, not sure if the population would thrive without it. The park’s trails offer variety of reptiles and birds to see. Mareeba golf course’s herd of kangaroos is equally famous, and so is the unpleasantness of the receptionist there. Back then you needed to rent 1 golf cart per person, not sure what the price was, but we were not willing to pay. Kangaroos can be also seen from the road. We got very lucky in the evening, when returning from Granite Gorge, as a Serengetti-scale herd of grey kangaroos was on a grassland opposite Biaada factory next to the golf course.
At night I drove to Mount Hipipamee towards a lucky outing indeed. Right at the parking lot, ther was a Herbert river ringtail possum. I continued by the trail and about mid way suddenly heard rustling and a large animal climbed a tree a few meters away from me: Lumholtz’s tree kangaroo! It stayed perched for quite some time, allowing for prolonged views and even some portrait shots at 400 mm. When going back, I saw an animal high up in branches, which turned out to be a lemuroid ringtail possum. I also saw a couple of coppery brushtails. Succesful evening!

On September 16, we drove around, visiting various reserves. At crater lakes, we saw a small animal I was quite sure had been a musky rat kangaroo. There was also a huge flock of yellow crested cockatoos in Atherton, first time we “properly” saw this iconic species. We tried for the tree kangaroos at Nerada Tea Estate, but it was not accessible. My wife was driving this day and managed to cross the famous temporary speed camera in Malanda twice being over the limit: I tell you, Australian traffic tickets are not cheap at all! When we first got the notice, it even said something like 1500 AUD – luckily a business tariff, eventually reduced to some 190 EUR (times two 😀 ). Anyway, there is a whole community surrounding opposition against this particular camera, as some people got tens of thousands of dollars fees, crossing the point multiple times in a couplle of weeks. At night I went to Lake Eacham in hope to see some gliders. I got lucky and came by a striped possum (which is a glider, not a possum). After I visited the Curtain Fig Tree again, but I recorded only previously seen species (green possums, coppery possums, bandicoots, white-tailed rats, pandemelons) and a northern leaf-tailed gecko.
This was supposed to be our last day in Atherton Tablelands, but my wife said she would like to “see” the Great Barrier Reef, so we went diving the next day, leaving for Cairns in early morning. The diving at Norman reef was better than I expected, but still nothing to write home about, esp. after we had just done Komodo two months ago. Plus the value was obviously super low compared to southeast Asia. Anyway, I did not oppose the idea, as it gave me another evening to spotlight. This was one of the better decisions of the trip. First, an Eurasian house mouse came to join us for dinner. Then I went by Peterson Creek, seing platypus, Queensland barred bandicoot and, most importantly, a large carpet python! It was obviously crossing the path, otherwise my snake-blindness would prevent me to see it. I continued to the Fig Tree again, finding the gecko on the same place and more rats and possums.

The outback

We left the magical Atherton Tablelands on September 18th and went on to Charters Towers, the old gold mining town. We of course visited for the allied wallaby colony. The wallabies are not super shy, but definitely not habituated. Worth mentioning is also a flock of red-tailed black cockatoos and an echidna in the grass, which I tried to find after it went off, luckily surviving the snake risk I chose to be oblivious to harm free. I hoped for a wallaroo, but no luck.

The next morning we left for Carnarvon Gorge. We only reached the highway turn at 5:30 pm. Pastures between the higway and the camp provide quite a safari spiced with wild west experience. Grey kangaroos and Australian bustards are fairly common, so are the galah cockatoos, which we had seen only once or twice flying over till now. We also saw an echidna when driving to the campsite. We were lucky, as someone cancelled their reservation and we were able to book our second and third night inside the park. The first night we stayed at the Sandstone Park, which did not even had a bathroom, neither any charm, and was quite expensive: But accomodation comes short in this area.
The park is a lovely place, with interesting flora, fauna and landscape, but also quite popular and trails do tend to get crowded. Commonly seen mammals are grey kangaroos, swamp wallabies and whiptail wallabies, we also saw one black striped wallaby. After dark, common brushtails and a few greater flying possums. Along the nature trail by the Carnarvon Creek, there is a fairly reliable spot for a platypus, where we got our best sightings of the trip. The spot is marked on Open Street Maps.
I would say that Carnarvon Gorge and the road leading to it were the best place for macropods we visited, in both abundance and species diversity. I would say it even more strongly, if we had seen the wallaroo 😀 . Birdlife is also very rich, apart from omnipresent galahs and yellow-crested cockatoos I was glad to see a few pale headed rosellas.

Brisbane and Gold Coast Hinterland

On September 22nd, we left early towards Brisbane. During lunch break, we saw a large flock of bare-eyed cockatoos. We wanted to get to Brisbane well before dark, as this was our last chance for koalas. When parking at the Whites Hill Reserve, I saw a few lads with large telelenses and did not hesitate to ask them, if they were here for koalas and had seen any. They not only agreed to give us directions, but eventually said they would just lead us there, as it would be shame if we went to Australia and striked out on them. Such nice people in Australia… 🙂 We saw a male koala and on another tree a mother with a baby.
It was quite difficult finding a campsite in Brisbane on a last minute, so we registered as scouts (or scout friends, I do not really remember) and went to Karingal Scout Campsite. A quick stroll after dinner revealed a common brushtail (this one actually revealed itself in search of our food), a swamp wallaby and a yellow footed antechinus.

The last thing we wanted to see was the glow worm cave in Springbrook National Park. The rest of our programme was sort of unanchored, originally planned as a buffer. Having started using iNaturalist, I lead us to Tamborine Mountain in search of water dragons, but I did not realize they are there only (mostly) in the wet season. At least we did see a colony of grey headed flying fox and another red legged pandemelon. We briefly considered going back to Brisbane, where there are habituated water dragons in a botanical garden, but decided not to given the distance, which I regret.
The last two nights we spent in a campsite south of Numbinah Valley village. It was a short drive to the Springbrook’s Natural Bridge section park to see the southern Queensland glow worms (Arachnocampa flava), even though it was not the best season and we only saw a few blue dots. At the campsite, someone ran over a northern brown bandicoot. People…

My wife was not feeling well on our last full day, so I drove around by myself. Places of interest in this area are usually a few kilometers apart, but the land morphology demands hours of driving to get from one to the next. This was really more of a birdwatching day and I, following the iNaturalist, tried to find some more parrot species. We had already seen an eastern rosella at the campsite the day before. I first went to Binna Burra in Lamington NP, where I saw a crimson rosella, quite far out, and a female paradise riflebird. We had already seen a few riflebirds before, always female, but never took a picture.
I then continued to O’Reilly. Right upon my arrival, I saw a pair of crimson rosellas at the eye level. I did not know, that O’Reilly feed the parrots every day and I was lucky enough to come just before the feeding. King parrots are the main star here, together with crimson rosellas. I then realized that the man who showed us koalas spoke about this place and recommended us to come here. After the feeding, the birds flew off. I felt bad my wife did not get to see this, as she loves parrots. On both sites, red legged pandemelons are common, I also saw another one at Natural Bridge after dark.
The next day we left early in the morning, seeing two Notamacropus wallabies in the campsite (I missed focus, so we were not able to ID it) to return the car and fly towards our 9 days in peninsular Malaysia.

Once again, this was an amazing trip, ranking at the top list of my travels. Widlife watching was great, animals are abundant and mostly endemic. The country is safe both people and animal-wise (not like when you spotlight in Thailand waiting for an elephant or a tiger to show up).
As this was a budget trip and cost estimation was a huge part of decision if we go, I would like to mention that our costs were 3921 AUD for 25 nights for two people plus flights and diving – today it is about 2 200 EUR, it was about 10 % more. That is some 44 € per day per person, and was just 50 % over our daily costs in Thailand half a year before. I shared the breakdown here.
So you can visit this great region by means nowhere close to expensive, some would even say by budget means, and experience its endemic fauna 🙂 . Or course, provided you swim there, given how much are the flights nowadays…

You can see all my observations on my iNaturalist account, back then I did not try to log all birds etc., but mammals are there.

In total, we saw at least 35 mammal species and just 25 herp species. That might not sound like much for 25 days, but as said in the prologue, we were fairly inexperienced back then, just enthusiastic 🙂 . If we went today, with a thermal camera, current knowledge and interest in small species as well, possibly focusing even more on wildlife instead of doing places like Noosa, I imagine the count could be much higher (not the snake count though 😀 ) . Anyway, we saw all the iconic taxons we wanted to, missing just a frilled lizard and not having photographed an emu. But things are not perfect, and this trip was quite near perfect 🙂 .

Go to Queensland, it is worth it 🙂 .