Lotus Bird Lodge

The lodge is in, or adjacent to, Rinyirru (Lakefield) National Park. It's a lovely location beside a large billabong (lake) crowded with plants and water birds. Some of the latter, and a small mob of Agile Wallabies, were clustered near the dining area when we arrived. Such a delightful welcome is orchestrated by scattering food for the wallabies at the same time every afternoon. The birds are on the lookout for any morsels they can grab.

An Agile Wallaby and her joey

A Bar-shouldered Dove

The accommodation was in very pleasant cabins, each one named after a bird and suitably illustrated. Ours was “Jabiru” aka Black-necked Stork. Reliable wi-fi was available in the dining area, and occasionally the signal reached our cabin. The fact that there was any wi-fi at all in this location was impressive.

"Jabiru" with its deck

A machine dispensed espresso coffee 24/7, there were drinks available before and during dinner and the chef was an artist. There once was a time when I preferred my national parks carrying a tent on my back, but if luxury cannot be avoided I will stiffen the upper lip and tough it out with the best of them. I'll even use the coffee machine!

The big adventure at Lotus Bird Lodge is a helicopter flight over the national park. It's a small helicopter with room for the pilot and 3 passengers, so it takes many flights to make sure everyone gets a ride.

Neither of us is terribly keen on helicopter rides, and this machine has an interesting feature – no doors. Bill is an acrophobe (having an irrational fear of heights) and being able to look vertically down when the ground is hundreds of feet below is about the worst situation he can imagine. Whether he would undo his harness and jump out he doesn't know, but it is certain he would not enjoy the flight and he decided it would be foolhardy to test the hypothesis that he would not jump. The pilot was very good about it, and didn't try to coax Bill into flying. It was made clear that if he should change his mind then they would take him up.

Eve decided to go.

Eve is in the front seat.  Removing the doors must give a much better view for those who are not scrunching their eyes up in terror.

Take off!

Fortunately, Eve enjoyed it very much.  Here is a sample of her photographs.

While Eve was away some feral cattle wandered by.  

This mother did not put her horns on straight this morning!

The other group activity for the day was a guided walk around the billabong. Those that were to fly in the afternoon walked in the morning, and vice versa.

Eve flew in the morning, so we were in the afternoon hike. The morning walkers had seen a snake. The reptile had no sense of the dramatic and simply wriggled away. Would be be equally lucky?

A Yellow Ants nest

The main part of the billabong

Black-fronted Dotterel

Blue-winged Kookaburra

Comb-crested Jacana

A Darter preparing to take off.

An Agile Wallaby in the billabong

Blue-faced Honeyeater

Magpie Goose taking off

Forest Kingfisher

A Brolga in flight

No snake on our walk, but we did see this Yellow-spotted Goanna.  The experts at iNaturallist have identified it as the Eastern Argus subspecies.

While we were at Lotus Bird Lodge we discovered that there was another birder. Karleen was also aiming her camera at the avifauna, and we were able to swap intelligence about the species of kingfisher we had seen and where the Frogmouth was perching. We got on well with her and her husband, Blythe, and we are still in touch.