​Burketown to Cape Crawford - 19 to 24 June 2017

The road ahead viewed through my lucky feather! It's was dropped by a helmeted guinea fowl! So gorgeous.

And what of the roads I hear you ask? shockers for the most part - you definitely know you're in the outback! Earth and rocks changed from pale sand colour, to reds the colour of new tomatoes through to the rich colour of dried blood, and then to dark rich brown. And no, this time I haven't been collecting rocks, well not too many anyway!

From grass plains to scrubby forests.

Something that interested me was seeing Mesquite trees. We saw them in Arizona and I had no idea they were in Australia but indeed they are. They are weeds in this area along with Prickly Acacias. But to return to the journey..... I spent sometime standing within the branches of a small bushy tree (no idea what it was) looking at and photographing mistletoe. Fascinating flowers up close - rather speccy. Did you know that of the meagre 1000 odd species works wide, 10% are endemic to Australia?  Really! It's a clever little plant. We didn't kiss under the bunches, but I got lots of pix. Also spent oh about an hour photographing a Desert Bloodwood in full bloom. Very pretty.

The best of a bad lot of shots but I wanted to capture these little gems in situ. I have never be able to get so close.

How amazing are these!? I wish I could paint.(I picked to show Lindsay naughty me)

These are the buds and flowers of the Desert Bloodwood - I just love them! The whole tree was buzzing with bees and at least 10 different species of birds were busy diving and fluttering around the flowers. It was a fascinating hour or so.

You can imagine that I scuffled around on the ground for a while to find these budding specimens of Desert Bloodwood trees. Cute and lovely eh!? One bud unopened, one starting to break out and one that was starting to unfold its petals with its cape close by.

We eventually climbed from the plains into the hills of the Barkly Tablelands and Lawn Hill National Park and the vista changed yet again. You could almost see the minerals and ore oozing out of the rocks. Rich beyond imagining but a bit of a no-go zone now.

Just as a matter of interest along our Savannah-Tablelands loop, we camped at Hells Gate, Burketown, Camooweal, and somewhere north of Barkly Homestead at one of those rest stops - see last post (there was oodles of space and that's about all except for glorious banks of wattle).

The Apostle birds decided to explore the bags of stuff in our roof rack; we travel with firewood etc. this little sweetheart had scored some bits of grass for her/his nest.

The Apostle birds were fascinated by their reflection in our mirrors. Love those birds.

At Cape Crawford we were kept entertained for over an hour by the chattering, fussing and busyness of apostle birds and blue faced honeyeaters. Priceless! The Apostle birds are gregarious, always busy and the the honeyeaters noisy, somewhat aggressive, fearless - picked food out of my hand.

Oh what big blue eyes you have! This guy ate out of my hand picking delicately at small bits of bread I held between my fingers. Clever fellow. We made a pact he and I - I'd feed him if he'd pose for a few shots. Great arrangement. Nice profile!

"You've fed me now how about scratching my back, hmm?"

What an amazing country we live in - I seem to have said that before i think ... hmmmm! But it is true.