Biological, Earth & Environmental Sciences Centre for Ecosystem Science

Day 19, Goolwa to Traralgon

Richard Kingsford headshot Richard Kingsford
Map of southern South Australia and Victoria showing flight path marked with an orange line

Date: Thursday November 3rd 2022

Project: Eastern Australian Waterbird Survey

Observers: Richard Kingsford & John Porter

Pilot: Tim Dugan

We started early on our way south to Survey Band 2 of the Eastern Australian Waterbird Survey. The previous week our survey team had not been able to get west of the Victorian town of Nhill due to the weather which had closed in. So our first task of the day was completing this western section of the Band 2 survey. We then spent a couple of hours surveying a range of different wetlands around the South Australian town of Naracoorte, before stopping there to refuel and having lunch.

Bool Lagoon was the only sizeable wetland with reasonable numbers of waterbirds, a few hundred. There were quite a few magpie geese on the wetland. 

Bool Lagoon.

Afterwards, we headed off down the coast from Kingston to Mount Gambier, surveying some of the coastal lakes along the way. Like everywhere, there were very few waterbirds on any of wetlands. The weather started to turn, again. Low cloud and rain were coming in from the west, across southwestern Victoria. We had originally planned to stay in Warrnambool for the night. But we had to rapidly change our plans because of predicted fog the following morning, meaning we wouldn’t be able to take off. We dropped in to refuel but then kept going. 

We headed east across Survey Band 1, surveying the many small dams and lagoons along the way to Phillip Island. Most of the waterbirds were Straw-necked Ibis, swans and Cape Barren Geese. The dams also had a few cormorant, but not much else. From here were bumped on our way across to south of the Gippsland Lakes, mostly surveying large water supply dams and small farm dams. The normally unnoticeable small creeks had water pouring down them, flooding areas that we had never seen flooded. 

We then made our way across to the lakes around Seaspray including Jack Smith Lake. Like everywhere on this survey, waterbird numbers and diversity were low. We also expected more water in these wetlands around Seaspray, but again not today. There were some patches during our surveys where surprisingly, wetlands were not as extensive as we expected, with only moderate flooding, despite the third La Nina year in a row.

We ended up landing at La Trobe airport and overnighting at Traralgon in Victoria.