Riverside meanders

 The common thread today was the floodplain of the Murray River, where the red gums towered majestically in unusual shapes, depending on the way the floodwaters had shaped them. Sunlight filtered and gleamed on the trunks.  
The township of Tocumwal had been bypassed by passenger trains but the Lions members served us a classic morning tea in the station staff room. Meanwhile, a modern diesel locomotive engine stood ready to cart containers across the river and down to Port Melbourne.   
Rainbow bee eaters fluttered high in the red gums, catching insects. Three paused briefly on a branch and I managed to zoom in on their vivid colours.

 

From a bird hide on Quinn Island, we observed a friar bird attending to its nest, suspended in the shape of a Viking ship and tastefully decorated with blue twine.

  
Further upstream, we came upon a narrow bridge with a three-tonne load limit. David assured me that the Prado weighs only two tonnes, so we were all right. We carefully eased the 4WD over the wobbly planks to the other side.

   
It was the first day of the fishing season and fishers in little tinnies were trying their luck for Murray cod.

 

Kookaburras kept an eye out for edible movement. A platypus wriggled its flat tail in the snags near the riverbank, but I wasn’t quick enough to capture them on record. All about was spring activity.

Turtle and Koala by Murray River at Cobram

  
A short-necked turtle ignored us as we tootled by, heading upstream on the paddle boat Cobba.

Riverboats don’t need a wooden helm these days. The skipper of the Cobba uses a remote control. A diesel engine drives a generator that powers each paddle wheel separately, so each paddle can be controlled independently, at different speeds or direction.

   

The Cobba paddle boat moored at beach on River Murray, Cobram. The Murray is Australia’s longest river system, defining some of the boundary between the states of Victoria and New South Wales and finally emptying into Bass Strait in South Australia.
 
A pleasant cruise from Cobram up the Murray River took us under a historic drawbridge, past houseboats, then alongside an island sanctuary where koalas looked down at us from red gums above century old post-and-rail fences.

   
Disused drawbridge on River Murray, built in the days of paddle steamers and sailing boats.

 
Koala in red gum on Quinn Island, now a sanctuary.

   
Houseboats moored at the anabranch at the end of Quinn Island.

 
Post-and-rail fence from early twentieth Century stands above eroded bank of Murray River on Quinn Island.

Capetown photo montage

 
African penguin glistens as it emerges from the sea at Boulders, Table Mountain National Park.

  
Kirstenbosch national botanical garden lights up with spring protea  display.   
 

Street performers entertain bystanders at V&A Waterfront, Capetown.
 

To reach the Constantia wine region, take the Blue route of the City Sightseeing Tour then switch to the Purple route at this corner.

 

The cold Atlantic Ocean doesn’t discourage surfers on the beaches south of Capetown, under the watchful gaze of the Twelve Apostles (peaks).
   
The Cape of Good Hope is wild and windy!

 

Kirstenbosch gardens have developed the softly coloured Nelson Mandela Strelitzia.
  
Ostrich chicks parade along the cliff top near the Cape of Good Hope.

Puppies and hyena mums play before sundown

Coming out from their culvert home beneath the Kruger access road, mothers chilled out with their young.   

The chocolate coloured pup is very young and hasn’t yet developed his spots. It was most interested in suckling.

  
But it also experimented with cutting its teeth on a stick.  

His playmate was still chilling.  
And so was Mum:

  
A zebra trotted across the savannah

  
And as the sun set behind a giraffe with elegantly long eyelashes, we felt sad that this was our last Kruger game drive.

  

Wallowing in the heat at Kruger

At a waterhole just around the corner from Jocks Lodge, we came upon three elephants cooling off by spraying themselves with water.

  

 Just as we were setting up our cameras, they scrambled out.

  The cause was two rhinos that had arrived and chased them off.

  After checking out the lie of the land, they too wandered away, leaving the muddy waterhole deserted. Estien, our guide, took the 4WD down to a larger muddy wallow, where four rhinos were placing mud packs on their delicate complexion.

  On the back of one, the red-beaked oxpicker birds were cooling off; their beaks wide open. 

   

Cute baby animals with zebras, lions and a “Tusker”!

Our guide from Jocks took us out before sunrise and what a feast for wildlife enthusiasts!

Lions by resting the waterhole were a highlight:

  
But first Estian, our guide pointed out a trio of distant zebra.

  
  
Then a family of hyenas. One cub walked under the 4WD and sniffed at the running board.

   

Then we came across a rhino family. The curious baby sniffed it’s mother’s dung.

   
 
As the sun rose higher and the day became hotter, a hippopotamus kept cool in a wallow, watched over by a bird.

  
To top the morning game drive, we rounded a corner and came across an elephant with huge tusks. Estien pointed out that such “tuskers” are now rare due to previous poaching and genetic tendencies.

  
  
The end.

 

Big five African predators on a single game drive

Last night, our first ever game drive revealed all the famous Big Five African predators.

Elephant:

  
Lion:

  
Leopard:

  

Cape buffalo:

  

 And rhino:

  
That we should be so lucky!

Elephants passing by

After a late breakfast, we decided to skip lunch and by noon were lounging by the pool in little lodge that is part of Jocks Concession adjacent to Kruger National Park, South Africa.

David pointed out an elephant coming towards us down the sandy dry river bed. As we lay still, a herd of eleven emerged. I had been uploading yesterday’s blog on my iPad so hastily attempted to capture this special moment.

  
In this photo is a large elephant followed by a baby with mother. Elephant herds are apparently matriarchal, so the leader may also be female.

It’s been a hard day’s drive

  
to paraphrase a Beatles song. We drove from 10:00am to 5:00pm with breaks. Dave did 90% of the driving and I had a half hour’s van towing lesson, but I think Dave finds it as tiring being a passenger as driving because he is instructing me. Hopefully I will gradually be more help, but navigating using Hema maps on the iPad and Wikicamps is more to my liking.

I did take some photos as we edged steadily east across the South Australian section of the Nullarbor. We shared the highway with road trains. The sign on the back of this one says that it’s 37 metres long.

 Then a police car came towards us on the wrong side of the road, lights flashing. This was to warn us of an extra wide load carried by an approaching vehicle. It turned out to be two trucks each with a mining bucket that took up both lanes of the Eyre Highway.

  
Gradually civilisation encroaches, reminding us that our holiday is finishing soon. Our lunchstop the rest area was bounded by a fence with wheat planted the other side, plus powerlines and underground cable. A far cry from the unfenced wilderness plain that we had spent the last four days traversing.Edit

  
At Esperance we submitted our Nullarbor Links scorecard to the Information Centre and David proudly took possession of a Certificate of Completion, including his score – 146! The attendant said that the highest score she had processed was over 400! What with crows stealing balls, saltbush concealing them and trees concealing the greens, it’s a miracle that he finished at all.

We are now at a cosy caravan park and pub at Poochera, in South Australia’s wheat belt. Major Mitchell cockatoos, with their pink plumes, flutter and squawk around the gleaming silos. After four nights in the bush, it is a luxury to wash hair and clothes and enjoy pub-cooked fresh whiting from nearby Streaky Bay. But we will always cherish our memories of the vast Nullarbor plain and its beautiful southern seascapes.

  

Nullarbor musings with bikers

  
Departing late from our bush camp, (due to the time change), we returned to Border Village to fill a gas cylinder. While there we met a couple who had ridden a motorbike with trailer from Devonport in Tasmania. 

Further down the Eyre Highway, while pulling into a lookout to check out the Merdayerrah Sandpatch at the start of the Bunda Cliffs, we met them again. The trailer opens out to a double bed. They carry a small icebox for perishable food and  the bike is equipped with a GPS. When they got wet, they checked into a cabin for the night to dry off. They weren’t enjoying the windy morning, but overall were having a great trip.

The next lookout was over the Bunda Cliffs, which come abruptly out of the sea and stretch as far as the eye could see.

  
The word Nullarbor is Latin for ‘no trees’, but the Nullarbor Plain only lives up to its name on the Eyre Highway for a few, monotonous kilometres. The rest is scrubland and mallee (multiple trunked eucalyptus).

  
Once again, we visited Head of Bight, where hundreds of Southern Right Whales come annually to give birth and nurse their calves. I took some more photos, but it’s hard to zoom in and snap them at the moment they do something interesting. Most of the time they just lie flat in the sea, but occasionally they blow water or stretch a fin.

  
This evening we have found a lovely camp in Mallee bushland. The coastal dunes are visible on the horizon, but here it is sheltered with blue bush and little flowers. Once again we had a beautiful sunset.