Sunday, June 30, 2013

Al forgets his head - uh, camera

Well we were out and about again today.

It was raining again so after a slow start we followed our noses and ended up down on the Nymboida River which starts not far from where we live.

The river descends 1,250 metres (4,100 ft) over its 165 kilometres (103 mi) course. We stopped at a section called Platypus Flat, which is a favoured spot for launching kayaks and white-water rafts. Some raft trips follow the gorges for three or four days.

Now for some reason my brain was not working this morning and I left my camera behind :-(
So these couple of shots were taken on my smart phone, which is just not up to the job.

This first piccie is looking upstream from the flat. You can see why this spot is used for launches,
a nice sandy beach and a slow moving pool


This piccie is looking downstream to where the first white-water starts around the bend.


 The eagle eyed among you might notice a little white dot in the water near the gravel bank on the far side of the river.

As I said I left my camera behind so this next piccie is the best I could do with the phone of the mysterious white dot.

It is a platypus!
 
It seems Platypus Flat is well named, In fact there were two platypus cruising around while we were watching.

Platypus are actually quite common, but they are so shy it is usually really hard to spot them.

These two were actually only the fourth and fifth platypus I have seen in the wild in my whole life!


 A special moment only slightly dampened by the fact my camera was sitting at home.

  So unfortunately there was no chance of shots like this one I got a couple of years ago


 







5 comments:

Susan Flett Swiderski said...

AHHHHH! I'm so excited! At first, I was just gonna say I wanted to visit that place just because of its name... but you actually saw a platypus there! How awesome. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: you have some amazing wildlife there.

And the pictures look good to me! That phone really IS smart!

Linda G. said...

Still great piccies! Love seeing the platypus.

Kathleen Jones said...

Lovely pics of the new landscape. Very 'OZ'! I've never been to the north west. It seems very different.

mshatch said...

Still some pretty nice piccies, I'd say. And what odd looking creatures those platypus are!

Lisa said...

I had no idea that platypus' were so shy. What a pity that you didn't have your camera!