Hattah Kulkyne

We set off for Hatta Kulkyne early. There was still a bit of fog about as we drove down the Calder. The fog burned off soon enough and we got to the national park in brilliant sunshine.

We walked around the mallee dunes for a bit and spotted some nice wildflowers and some webs that had caught the dew. The forest was also alive to the sounds and sights of a range of birds. I tried to shoot one but realized I had not loaded the battery into the Nikon. Doh! The one thing I had to do and I stuffed it up. Oh well!

Anyway, we continued around the park. Spent a bit of time walking around Lake Hatta and Little Lake Hatta. It was very pretty. They have been allowing environmental flows back into this distributory system and the river red gums are proliferating along the shoreline, also the bird life is magnificent. Pelicans, spoonbills, cormorants, ducks, regent parrots, sulphur crested cockatoos, galahs, little corellas, yellow rosellas, white winged choughs, apostlebirds. What a day to forget my birding camera.

The choughs were really interesting, they were in a largish group chattering away and displaying together. We were quite transfixed.

The landscape at Hatta is quite diverse. We were expecting mostly malle with porcupine grass and the odd buloke. Instead we had that, plus lovely stands of cypress pine, black box open forest, quite beautiful river reds and open grasslands in places.

We lunched by one of the many lakes in the area and enjoyed some lovely sunshine and the water rippling in the gentle breeze.

After lunch we cruised along a number of ever smaller tracks on our way to the Murray Kulkine part of the park that runs along the river. We were glad we had the Subaru in a couple of places. This is a really lovely part of the world with the pick of your camping places on sandy beaches along the Murray. It would be a bit of a quagmire in the wet, but lovely now and I suspect quite busy in the summer months.

Back via Red Cliffs to see the red cliffs. A disappointment. The national park had beter everywhere you went.