Over the four days of this excursion, 11 members and two guests came and went at various times to enjoy the delights of Dairy Wells, five kilometres from Cue. Some camped, others caravanned and the remainder slept in vehicles. The weather remained dry; in fact the weather had been dry for too long and the vegetation was suffering; consequently very little was in flower. Normally there would have been a good show of Eremophilas but we saw very few in flower and apart from E longifolia—only a couple of flowers on a few bushes.

We visited Lakes Austin and Nannine and the railway dam. We also wandered around Dairy Wells and visited Cue. The town has suffered from the loss of the working of the local mine and the IGA has gone, replaced by a small supermarket in a fuel station. The caravan park was busy and we saw evidence of a lot of prospectors, some of whom even wandered into Dairy Wells in search of gold.

The few flowering plants included the Eremophilas, Frankenia, a tiny Calandrinia, and a small prostrate yellow-flowering pea. At one end of Lake Austin we saw the curious plants of the Dunn Dunna (Lawrencia helmsii). At the lakes we saw a number of different coloured samphires. At Lake Austin we saw a lot of tiny fish in the water and ‘trillions’ of minute snails at the water’s edge.

Always a treat at Dairy Wells are the Mulga Parrots, Western Bower Birds and Crested Bell Birds. Other sightings included a Swamp Harrier, Coots, Black-fronted Dotterel, Mudlarks, plus Australian Shelduck at Lake Nannine. At Lake Austin we saw a raft of Hoary-headed Grebe and four White-faced Heron. Over the four days we saw over thirty different species of birds.

Daniel Heald has provided the following summary of the invertebrate species encountered.

There was not a wide variety of insect species sighted, even at the light trap we set up one evening. Those that Daniel has managed to identify so far included some very spectacular grasshoppers and katydids, including the Crested Katydid (Alectoria superb), the Common Toadhopper (Buforania crassa), the Bark-mimicking Grasshopper (Coryphistes ruricola), the Common Tooth-grinder (Ecphantus quadrilobus), the very large katydid Elephantodeta (that we found dead inside a tyre of all places), the Gaudy Acacia Grasshopper (Macrolobalia ocellata) and the Western Acacia Grasshopper (an undescribed genus recorded in the literature as Genus Novum 82 sp. 1) and the undescribed Gumleaf Grasshopper (Goniaea sp.2). We also saw (Pycnostictus seriatus), the Common Bandwing, which was minute compared to all of the others.

Other sightings included a tiny Pachygronthid True Bug with a comparatively huge bright pink mite attached underneath the clear wings.

The handful of moths included a few Daniel managed to identify: an unidentified Prorocopis sp., Lydia’s Wave (Scopula Lydia), the Pasture Day Moth (Apina callisto), and the Double-spotted Line-blue Butterfly (Nacaduba biocellata).

Also found were a variety of small weevils possibly related to the White-fringed Weevils (Naupactus sp.), a few very robust Amycterine Weevils, and a whole range of stuff found in owl-pellets, including the heads of very large Ground Beetles (Euryscaphus or Scaraphites?), the decapitated bodies and long legs of desert Darkling Beetles (Family Tenebrionidae), and the related Pie-dish Beetles, similarly decapitated.

Blue Skimmer dragonflies (Orthetrum caledonicum) were found at the Railway Dam. A large hairy golden-brown native bee of the genus Amegilla (Asaropoda subgenus) was another sighting.

Spiders included a Two-tailed Spider (Tamopsis sp.) found sunning himself on a metal pole one morning; there was an unoccupied trapdoor burrow near the dam; we also saw the Golden Orbweaver (Nephila edulis), and the Foliage-webbing Social Spider (Phryganoporus candidus), which builds debris-covered silk refuges in the top of shrubs, and that may contain up to 600 spiders.

A straggling white-flowered shrub on edge of Lake Austin was identified as Pimelia microcephala. The samphires at Lake Austin were a mixture of species: Sarcocornia, Rnchyleana, Halosarcia. Halosarcia halocnemoides seems to be one of the red-coloured ones we saw. There was a ‘Cue mallee’ also, that we are unable to identify.

We would like to express our appreciation to Rosalie and Michelle Barrit for their hospitality and especially for keeping the home fires burning. We did love the hot showers!

Lynnette Goodale and Anne Bellman