224) Maree to Clayton Springs

Courting Bustards

We drove back to from our jaunt into Muloorina and Lake Eyre, and at Maree, we started our trek up the Birdsville Track in earnest.  As we neared our next camp at Clayton Springs, we were thrilled to spot this Bustard pair.  Majestic birds, they walk in a stately manner across the open country.  They are surprisingly big birds, up to 1.5 meters tall!


The roadhouses are a staple of track-travel. They have food, petrol, often have rooms and are the center of their respective communities. They have amazingly eclectic collections of stuff, both for sale and as decorations (as we shall see later).





Diesel sticker shock - with two 90 liter tanks this will get painful as we go north




















But...critically, they have ice-cream!


















And a yacht club (for the once per decade where there is water in the lake! Yes they had a catamaran on a trailer)










An ocher pit just north of Maree - the reds and yellows are hydrated iron-oxide. Ocher was widely used in painting, body decorations and the preservation of skins.












Nancy modeling the latest OZ desert fashions!

It was good to know we were ok to be on the road.  We found out later they were serious about the SEVERE penalties for driving on muddy roads (because you can ruin them).  Fines are charged by the wheel  ($2000 per/wheel we were told) to discourage big trucks from even *thinking* about making a run for it.






Interesting iron stone - differential cementing created some pretty wild shapes in the boulders in our campsite.

Diamond Doves

The Diamond doves are tiny little things, about 20 cm.  We found these birds near our camp, as we settled in for the night under the trees.  Supposedly there were some wetlands here where we hoped to find lots of birds first thing in the morning.

Male White-browed Woodswallow

We did find lots and lots of Woodswallows

Female White-browed Woodswallow

-some of whom were granting us severe looks for walking in *their* woods!!!

Masked Woodswallow

Zebra Finch

And one of our favourite dry-country birds, the cheerful zebra finches. These are one of the most studied birds in the world and only one of two to have been gene-sequenced (along with the chicken). They can survive "for months without water" and so do well in Oz's "boom and bust" climate.

Sadly the wetland was pretty dry and the big flocks had moved on.

Brown Falcon

Older adult Brown Falcons have more white on them than the juveniles, so this guy must be one of the sages of the the area. 

Wattles

hot bath at Clayton Bore

 Clayton Springs is sometimes a wetland - but it was now dry. In the parking lot there was a shower - and a large tank that could be filled with warm and rather fragrantly sulpherous bore water! I took of opportunity to wash of a few days of road dust











As with most things out here, ingenuity is rampant just to get things to work!

Pink-eared Duck

Next we continue north to Mungerannie Roadhouse which we were told has a permanent wetland