Biological, Earth & Environmental Sciences Centre for Ecosystem Science

Day 4, Rockhampton to Birdsville

Richard Kingsford headshot Richard Kingsford
Aerial photo of green ground cover and shrubs meeting the edge of a less vegetated yet still green floodplain across which water filled tendril like channels weave, intermingle and bifurcate creating a vivd landscape scale pattern

Date: Friday October 7th 2022

Project: Eastern Australian Waterbird Survey

Observers: Richard Kingsford & Paul Wainwright

Pilot: Tim Dugan

We headed out of Rockhampton with some concern about the weather. The front was heading our way. It was just a question as to when we would meet it and how strong it would be. Thankfully we were a fair way north and so were hopeful that up here it wouldn’t have the same damaging strength as further south. 
Aerial photo of open cut coal mine and coal fired power station and it's large blue cooling dam in the background. In the foreground is a green vegetated rolling landscape with several dirt roads cut out on ridges leading to the power station lined by power transmission towers and powerlines.

First wetland to survey was the cooling dam for the coal-fired power station, with its coal at Callide. 

These large dams are deep and so the waterbirds are few and we only surveyed a few cormorants and pelicans. 

From here, there were a few lagoons around Biloela and Moura, in between the coal mining. 

These lagoons are usually deep and permanent and so do not make good waterbird habitat. Even a long lagoon such as this only had a few black duck. 
Large grey soiled, open cut coal mine showing terraces, roads and neatly aligned piles of pre worked earth, all sunken down from the light green farmed and patchy vegetated landscape around

Then over the coal mine at Moura

It was primarily dams along the way along here, before we started to survey the large rivers of the west. 
Aerial photo of dam with dead trees in the water from one edge to almost the centre of the dam and living trees surrounding other sides of the dam. The water is green, The sky is blue with high clouds. The landscape is rolling with hills ion the horizon
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Surveying one of the many dams out here. Most had a few waterbirds, usually black duck and wood duck but also grey teal. 

We refuelled at Blackall on the Barcoo River. It was windy and looking ominous in the west, mainly to the south rather than directly west where we were going.

The Barcoo River was flowing reasonably strongly, a rare sight at this time of the year. 

Barcoo River with a good flow.

One of the wonderful parts of this survey is crossing these big western rivers every two hundred kilometres (the distance between our survey bands), from north to south. We had seen the Thomson River the day before, near Longreach. Down here it was flowing in many of its channels before joining Cooper Creek.

Survey of Thomson River 
Aerial ohoto of section of river with yellow-brown water running up to the green tree line
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Thomson River 

Then it was on to the mighty Diamantina River. Here it was much wider across its floodplain, compared to where we crossed it near Winton yesterday. The flow was also reasonably strong in its main channels. 

Diamantina River in flow.
Aerial photo of a large branching creek with numerous tree lined channels close in proximity over the light beige soil so they form a massive landscape scale river bed winding it's way across the light orange floodplain
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One of the many branching creeks running into the Diamantina River. 

It was about here we met the storms. There were a range of storm cells right across in front of us. Luckily, we only briefly went through one of the relatively weaker storm cells.  Thankfully it didn’t last long before we were on our way again. The real blessing was the cool temperature. It was great for flying although there was still a strong wind making it a bit bumpy. 
Low level thick grey clouds being connected to the yellow soil of the floodplain below by dense rain in two sections at the horizon and one closer to the middle of the picture.
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Storm cells ranged across in front of us

We then surveyed the Lake Machattie which was barely thirty percent full and the two other lakes, Koolivoo and Mipia. 

Surveying Lake Koolivoo 

If you are into waterbirds as we are, and even if you aren’t, these lakes are spectacular for their diversity and numbers of waterbirds. There were thousands of ducks and pelicans on the shallow Lake Koolivoo, mostly grey teal, pink-eared ducks and red-necked avocets but also a range of other species. Lake Mipia had fewer birds and Lake Machattie even less. 
Aerial photo of floodplain with a vast number of tendril like flood runners spanning the entire landscape. They land is light brown sparse vegetaiton along the tendrils but towards the horizon the density of this vergetation amplifies turning the landscape to a stunning emerald green. The sky is blue with few high clouds.
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Eyre Creek flood runners into Lakes Koolivoo and Mipia.
Aerial photo of large lake, beige water surface covering most of image with a small band of land at the horizon. Sky is blue and clouds are high, white but building up.
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Lake Koolivoo
Aerial photo of light green water in creek runners combining into a larger flow that is lined with trees and has smaller vegetated islands at the top of the flow until they run out and the water surface takes over. The floodplain in the background has tree lined creek runners meandering across it in long dark green tendrils

Inlet from Eyre Creek to the two lakes, Lake Mipia and Lake Koolivoo.

Then it was to the west to see if there was any water in the most westerly lakes in this survey band. This is on the edge of the Simpson Desert. They were all dry apart from some water in the Mulligan River and other drying waterholes. 
Aerial photo of outback Queensland. Long almost straight sand dunes are lined up with dry grey lakes lying between them. Sparse vegetation is also clustered between the orange sand dunes. Sky is blue and clouds are very high.

Out here there were just dry lakes in between the dunes.

Surveying one of the drying waterholes on Eyre Creek.

There were very few waterbirds, usually no more than about thirty. With so much flooding everywhere, most waterbirds had moved into the newly flooded areas. 

We landed for the night at Birdsville.
Photo of small cessna light aircraft on the tarmac, with a golden sunset lighting up the horizon and reflecting in a warm yellow band along the length of the plane.

Our plane at sunset.