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Its always good have a special place to chill out… On a recent trip to Australia, I found the very place early on in the holiday, to unwind, listen to my music, read and nature watch at the end of each day, before walking back to my cousins house for the evening…

After purchasing a weekly travel pass (each week), to go out and about every day in the Perth Area of Western Australia, to places I wished to visit, I would find myself if the time and light were right, alighting the bus early (close to my cousins) and walk down to a great piece of wilderness, not far from here home. This area of ‘bush’ incorporated three lakes, and a wetlands system. Located on one of the lakes, was a covered round seating area, in the trees, where I could just sit and watch the sun go down… total CHILL !!!

View from the seating area

At this point I must say that the transport system in the Perth Area of W.A. is absolutely superb… All buses, go from Rail Station to Rail Station, and all Trains, go to and from Perth… there really is no way you can get lost, this system made it so easy to get around every day… I loved it, and have traveled all over the world on many forms of transport, but Trans-Perth certainly has nailed it !!!

On the days and afternoons, I could get to what turned out to be a very special place for me, I would always take a small bag of parrot mixed seed, and just bait various places in the bush and around the seating area, to see if anything would take it… After a few days of baiting, and relaxing in this place, to give me a chance to get over my initial jet lag, I saw what I thought was a rabbit come out of the bush and onto the path to hoover up the seed… donning a larger lens, it soon became clear that this was no rabbit I’d ever seen…

     
One of Australia’s Bandicoot’s (Isoodon obesulus)

This great little marsupial (known to the local Nyungar people as “Quenda”) was a timid little critter, but after I’d built up a little confidence on their part, they would pop out and naturally dig around the seating area, even with me sitting there, at the end of the month, I could even get to within 3 metres of them to set up a tripod to get a closer shot…

As for the birdlife in the bush… It’s soooooo hard to get a shot, these very shy little birds, dont perch like the small birds in the UK, they literally flit from one bush to another, perching for a splt second before moving off again. Really hard to get a shot off. I ended up focusing manually on an area and hoping I’d got the shot.

I had noticed a few female ‘Blue Fairy Wrens’ around the bush, and caught a quick glimpse of a male on one occasion. I had managed to rattle off a few shots of a perching female one afternoon, but had lost all hope of getting the male… until…. I was packing up my camera gear one afternoon…. and suddenly there it was…. perching about 4 metres away… watching the females feeding. I remember fumbling to get my camera gear back out… and thinking…. please stay…. please stay…lol.

     
Female Blue Fairy Wren   (Malurus splendens)   Male Blue Fairy Wren
(the colours are both true to life)

 Now you can see why this place was very special to me… Not only these wonderful moments, but some wildlife would perch up, as if to say “take me..”

Australian Magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen)

Pied Heron (Ardea  picata)