AUSTRALIA TRIP REPORT PAGE 2 of 7
Dates: September 18-28, 2004
Location: Central-Eastern Queensland, Australia
September 20, 2004 – Fraser Island
Fraser Island is a National Park and Preserve and is located just a few miles off shore. It is the largest sand island in the world, running over 75 miles long and about 12 miles wide at its widest. The scenery is unbelievable and it is one of those places that you could probably spend months investigating and still not see everything. Unfortunately, we only had the day so we tried to get in as much as possible. You have to take a ferry over to the island and you either have to have your own 4x4 or rent one. There are well established “tracks” on the island and you must stay on them. There were four other vehicles on the barge to the island with us that morning and the traffic on the island was relatively light compared to what one would expect for an area of such beauty.
Here’s the basic terrain (pic below), the majority of the island is rain forest and dunes with a smattering of more desert-like areas along the fringes. The major north-south artery is along the east-facing beach, a stretch called “75-mile beach” (because it is!) however, the tides make it impassible at certain times and we only had a 3 hour window to get across the island to the east beach and then south to an access road that would allow us to explore the rest of the day.
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Fraser Island – typical 4 wheel drive track and rain forest flora
The first destination was a small fresh water lake on the island, there are many of these, they are quite stunning in appearance and also support a number of indigenous species including some acid frogs and fresh water turtles. As we pulled up to the trail that led to the lake we were looking for I was quite startled to see this handsome guy sunning himself on a tree.
Lace Monitor - Varanus varius
He was quite photogenic as long as you stayed a distance away as we quickly learned about Lace monitors. They seem to have a fairly large “safety zone” and once you penetrate it, forget it! Lace monitors seem to be closely associated with large trees/forests, we saw a total of 4 on the trip (more later) and all were in or near large trees. This guy took off up the tree you see him lying on and was out of sight faster that you can believe!
Here’s one more shot of my first Varanus in the wild.
Lace Monitor - Varanus varius
As mentioned above, we were heading to one of the fresh water lakes that is found on the island, there was a well-worn path that lead down a very steep hill through the forest. Many skinks darted away ahead of our advance, this quickly became a source of frustration for me as I was determined at the time to identify at least every herp and bird I saw… yeah, right!
Here’s where we were headed...
On the way down the trail to the lake I was in the lead when I saw this huge lizard run across the path. It was the largest skink I have ever seen, closest thing I could relate it to here would be an overgrown Gilbert’s skink, just massive, with tail at least 2 feet long and a stocky body to boot. Frustration again set in as it quickly disappeared down a hole before I could fire off a shot with the camera. A few hundred feet later 2 more! This time I thought I could get a shot but with the lighting poor due to the dense canopy, by the time I got a shot, it was too late, two more down a hole! This continued all the way down the slope. At least I got enough of a look to identify them and one picture (below).
Major Skink - Egernia frerei
We didn’t find much at the lake in terms of herps but on the way back I was able to get some shots of another skink. It’s interesting how the skinks in Australia have evolved into different niches, this one looked and even behaved like a North American whiptail lizard.
Copper-tailed Skink - Ctenotus taeniolatus
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Copper-tailed Skink - Ctenotus taeniolatus
In the early afternoon we came upon a small, 2’ or so black snake in the middle of the road but as soon as it saw us it took off like greased lightning, it looked and acted like a whipsnake but I wasn’t able to see enough of it to get a positive ID. This would be the case the rest of the day as far as the lizards were concerned as well. I noted that particularly in the rain forest areas of the island the smaller animals including the birds seemed to be much more sensitive to human presence than on the mainland. Not sure what the dynamic is here, it could be that there is more traffic on the island since it is a major tourist destination or it could just be general behavior due to the environment.
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- Thanks! - Brad Weinert -
