Australia Part 4 - Ayres Rock, Uluru, Alice Springs and Katherine Gorge

From Melbourne we flew up to Ayres Rock and our visit to Uluru.

Unusually they had just had some unseasonable downpours, and the surrounding area was quite green, we were expecting much a much more barren landscape, but we can say we have seen a more unusual outback than most. It did have the advantage that some area of the rocks had had waterfalls and left black streaks down the cliff faces, this added a different aspect to the place.

Of course there were birds about, plenty of Crested Pigeons,

wandering through the Cafe as we had lunch. One other bird presented itself while we were eating, a
White-plumed Honeyeater

After lunch we went to visit Kata Tjuta another huge rock not far from Uluru, I have to say I think it's as good if not better than Uluru, Uluru just gets good press!
You can see the dark streaks where the water had recently been flowing.

After this is was a little down time at the hotel before going to the sunset viewing at Uluru,

a brilliant evening with a great sunset and plenty of bubbles, I think our group of 38 drank 28 bottles of champagne and there were quite a few non-drinkers! So the coach back to the hotel was fairly jolly!

Next day we set out for Alice Spings, but first we did a close up tour of Uluru, which was fabulous. It did give us a couple of birds as well!
Pied Butcherbird (m)

 White-plumed Honeyeater

 Pied Butcherbird (f)

 Willy Wagtail

 Pied Butcherbird (j)

We arrived in Alice Springs late afternoon, after a 6 hour drive, where in the whole time we only made 2 left turns, the second of those was to turn into the town!

The next day we went out to explore the McDonnell Ranges and see some of the fabulous gorges that are secreted away in there.

Of course there were always a few birds about, wrong lens though for this
White-necked Heron,

managed to get the 500mm on though for a
Whistling Kite,

 and a Rufous Whistler,

in the next gorge that we visited we were treated to some
Rainbow Bee-eaters,

I wanted to get closer but a bunch of lads intent on enjoying themselves went to the tree where they were hunting from so they frightened them off. Bl**dy tourists! 😊

The final gorge we visited was home to the elusive Rock Wallaby, apparently very shy and difficult to spot in the nooks and crannies, well not today!
Black-footed Rock Wallaby

A new bird showed up as well!
a Dusky Grasswren.

So a grand day out.
The next day we did a tour of Alice Springs itself, visiting the Royal Flying Doctor Service HQ, the School of the Air and the original Telegraph Station, the reason Alice Springs exists at all. So birding opportunities were few, however we did see a Brown Goshawk, Collared Sparrowhawk and some Zebra Finches to add to the list. After the tour we boarded the wonderful Ghan Train for our overnight journey to Darwin.

We had a great time on the train, boarding about 4pm and arriving into Darwin 24 hours later. We did however stop at the town of Katherine on the way and have a few hours there where we took a boat trip along Katherine Gorge, when we arrived at the boat jetty, there were a couple of trees nearby full of bats.
Little Red Flying Fox

Birds though were few and far between on a scorching morning, we did see some distant Sulphur-crested Cockatoos and an
Australian Darter

then an even more distant
Brown Goshawk (I think!)

So that it for this bit, next post will be about the Wetlands about an hour out of Darwin, a proper birding day!