Nullarbor Trip Part One ~ Naretha Joy

         

The Nullarbor. The outback. Those very wide-open spaces are not intimidating for me. I find them comforting. The vastness enfolds my soul like an embrace. As a former agoraphobic this really should amaze me, except that I now consider it normal. I am now this person. I am grateful for that with all my heart.
 

That said, I cannot stay out there forever, sleeping in the back of Troopi and living on sandwiches and meusli bars. I need to get “home” every so often and I am sitting here now. I will be continuing to work toward finally getting the book, The Year, out and available to the public. It will only be a couple more weeks or so. You have my word. So I won’t be doing any more traveling for at least a little while.

It is Sunday here now and I will begin to write the first part of the blog of the trip when James Cornelious and I went out to the Nullarbor. Bill Oneil called us, “Team Troopi” and I reckon that fits.

We left on a Wednesday and drove from Lara to Murray Bridge, SA, to Wudinna, SA, and arrived 1800 kilometres later at the Nullarbor Roadhouse midday Friday. We secured lodging and bolted for the Koonalda Track 97 kilometres further west. We were going to be looking for Naretha Bluebonnet. It is the stunningly gorgeous relative of the Eastern Bluebonnet. We started down that track with high hopes, but despite searching until dark, we did not find any Narethas. It is so beautiful out there. We drove back to the roadhouse, grateful for Troopi’s new spotties illuminating the road in front of us. Travelling back and forth, we would be grateful for them daily.
 

Sunset on our first day at the Koonalda Track

We were out there the next morning before first light. We spent the entire day going slowly up and down that wet and muddy fourteen kilometre track. We saw some sweet birds, including Ground Cuckoo-shrikes and a pair of Stubble Quail wandering around the edge of the track. We saw several Mulga Parrots that made our hearts jump. They are beautiful, but they were not our Narethas.

We had showers on and off that created some of the most beautifully intense rainbows I have ever seen. It was stunningly beautiful out there. But our hopes for the bird were beginning to sag. We drove out and around the old Koonalda Homestead with its scores of abandoned, rusting, rotting vehicles. I am not sure how or why they ended up there, but it is an interesting sight. As darkness approached, we headed back east to the roadhouse, again grateful for the spotties lighting our way.
         

  

The next morning we headed west again through the intermittent rain. We arrived at the track at first light and began birding. Truly our hopes were pretty low. At this point we had put about fifteen hours into this finite area. James had gotten two lifers in the Redthroat and the Ground Cuckoo-shrike, but the main target for us both had not even been glimpsed. About twenty past ten, we were driving back south down the track into one one of the first wooded areas as I saw two birds fly out of the trees. They looked light coloured and the right size. They flew to the right and behind some other trees. I quickly drove Troopi around the curve in the track to see where they went. I told James what I had seen and as we turned to the right, he said, “They landed in the top of that saltbush.” I stopped and we both put our bins on them and James said the magical, wonderful words we had longed for, “That’s them!” And they just perched there for us. We stared and took pictures. I know I choked up a little. A light rain was falling, but the sun shone on them. They are one of the most beautiful parrots I have ever seen. It was so worth it. That moment, that second in time when we realised that we were finally, after eighteen hours of searching, looking at our bird. The joy echoes through me yet again as I write this one week later. Lifer high is a time-release gift that keeps on giving.

 

 

 

The view in front of the roadhouse as I ate my chips and gravy treat for lunch. 

In the midst of Lifer High, we drove back to the roadhouse where we had lunch. My first lifer pie treat was chips and gravy. We had done it. We had beheld the Naretha Bluebonnet. Yay, Team Troopi! The adventure continued, more to come in Part Two. 

I write therefore I am. 

Love. Peace. Birds.