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Australia, the "Island Continent," is a great plate of Earth's crust that has come to rest between the waters of the Indian and Pacific oceans. Isolated since the breakup of Pangaea, it is an old continent, unchanged by the catastrophic mountain-building forces that have so altered the others. Only in a narrow crescent in the far eastern region do low hills and mountains, cloaked in dripping rainforest, relieve the brushy woodlands and arid plains that stretch away to the western edge of the land. Interior Australia, the vast Outback, ranks among the world's largest deserts; it imposes a further isolating force on the continent's flora and fauna, for in this hard place, relatively few creatures have evolved the means of survival. The greatest diversity of Australia's abundant wildlife, however, is beyond the edge of the deserts, in the deep rainforests of the east, the extensive woodlands and heaths of the southwest, wild swamps and forests of the humid north, and the riverine districts and eucalypt forests of the southeast.
Australia, far removed from the nearest continental land mass, has evolved a broad range of endemic flora and fauna during its long period of isolation. Of the seventy-six native families of Australian birds, eight occur only in Australia and seven are shared only with neighboring New Guinea. Some 300 of the 780 species known from Australia are endemic! There are huge Emus and the awesome Southern Cassowary; tiny fairywrens, among the world's most vividly colored birds; handsome currawongs and odd mud-nest builders; bizarre frogmouths and Australian Owlet-Nightjars; lyrebirds, largest of all passerines and master singers at their display grounds on the forest floor; and strange kingfishers--including the giant Laughing Kookaburra--giving voice to haunting rolls, wild chants, and hair-raising cries from the middle of the desert to the canopy of the dark rainforest. And there are megapodes, buttonquail, woodswallows, parrots, pittas, pardalotes, fruit-doves, flowerpeckers, treecreepers, honeyeaters, thornbills, logrunners, and whipbirds, not to mention the birds-of-paradise and bowerbirds! Among the many families of mammals native to Australia are some of the most peculiar on Earth. A few of the special mammals we should see are Platypus, Koala, several species of kangaroos and wallabies, giant flying fox fruit-bats, and numerous possums and gliders.
Our tour will take us to wild places in each of Australia's important geographic regions where we'll see some 450 species of birds and a good variety of the larger mammals. We'll pass through most of the country's greatest cities along the way, beginning in Sydney, then traveling to Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Alice Springs, Darwin, Cairns, Brisbane, and Hobart. Visits to several coastal areas of great scenic beauty will find us watching colonies of Little Penguins on the shores of Bass Strait and albatrosses off the rocky headlands of Torndirrup National Park. Indeed, Australia is home to one of the most exciting assemblages of native wildlife on Earth. Austral springtime brings out the best in a continent rich in natural wonders.
We also offer our popular post-tour extension to TASMANIA. We will search out all twelve of the endemic birds amid some of Australia’s most beautiful scenery.
Australia is a vast continent, and it presents the visitor with a daunting variety of new habitats and diverse landscapes. Throw in entirely different plants and animals and you have a good picture of the challenges involved with designing a "survey" tour. Though not designed to see every bird in Australia, our trip is intended to search for many of the birds endemic to the various regions we will be visiting. Many of Australia's birds are common and widespread, but others are rare and/or very localized. We hope to see as many of these rarer birds as possible, while preserving the holiday aspect of the tour. Unless there are recent changes or a known nearby individual, no group effort will be made to see the Rufous Scrub-bird, an extremely difficult species that might entail most of a day. As we will be covering a lot of territory in a limited amount of time, we will use recordings at times in a responsible manner to lure certain species into view. While this is a birding tour, Australia has some of the world's most fascinating mammals, and we'll make a point of searching for these as well. Lastly, Australia has a very rich assemblage of reptiles and amphibians, and we'll surely encounter a variety of these, too.
Since the country is so vast, it is necessary to do a lot of travel by plane and minibus to get to the appropriate habitats. While we have endeavored to find lodging as close to our birding sites as possible, in some cases this isn't practical. As a result, there are some early starts to assure that we get to good birding sites at an optimal time. Furthermore, we will have a number of picnic meals to maximize our time in the field. Whenever the schedule permits, we will take time off in the middle of the day to recharge.
Finally, all of our accommodations are quite comfortable. Some are roadhouses between remote towns, some others coastal resorts, or in the case of O'Reilly's, a very fine guesthouse. Staying in step with the remote location in Tasmania, the cabins at Mountain Valley Lodge are more rustic than others encountered on the tour. There are wall heaters in the cabins in this sometimes chilly area, and the fireplaces and electric mattress pads make it quite comfy. There are five cabins, so the number of participants taking the Tasmania extension will dictate the rooming situation, though it is unlikely single cabins will be available. Sharing accommodations here is a small inconvenience for having Tasmanian endemic birds right outside the rooms and being in one of the best places to see the Tasmanian Devil.
Select the KEY INFO tab or click here for our itinerary plus space requests, status, fees, limits, and guides for any departure.
Client comment
"I'd travel with our guides again without hesitation! I cannot say enough good things about Chris Benesh and Alex Sundvall. Their birding skills--hearing, seeing, identifying--were phenomenal. Their desire and ability to get everyone on the bird was contagious. Individually, each brought to the table his own unique skill set, complementing each other in a way that, as a team, resulted in working seamlessly together. They made Part One not just a good birding experience, but a great, fun experience all around. A good tour leader is worth his or her weight in gold. Chris and Alex were Fort Knox. I would love to travel with them again, individually or as a
team." P.P., AUSTRALIA PART ONE
"This was an excellent experience. The guides on Part Two were excellent. It was a privelege to bird with John Coons, who has been at it all these years. He makes his job look easy, the sign of a pro. So knowledgable about where to go and what to look for. Cory Gregory was the perfect complement to John, taking care of eBird lists and up with the latest taxonomy. He was a very pleasant person to spend hours a day with for two weeks. They both worked hard to make everything work smoothly and, most importanty, to get everyone on the bird." R.W., AUSTRALIA PART TWO