The speaker for the April meeting was Bob Goodale who kindly offered to share some photographs and experiences from a trip that he and Lynette made in January/February this year. They travelled from Perth to Tamworth and return over a period of around 8 weeks. During the trip they visited many regional centres, National Parks (Royal NP, Mungo NP, Wollemi NP and Hattah Kulkyne NP) and other reserves.   The slide show presented a large number of Bob’s excellent photographs, depicting the various landscapes, regional attractions and of course wildlife that were encountered on their travels.
The photographs highlighted the huge changes to the Murray Darling system brought about over the last few years of higher than average rainfall events. We were shown photographs of the flood gates at the Menindee Lakes while they were open to allow large volumes of water to be released so that there would be capacity to capture flows expected from the heavy rainfall experienced by SE Queensland and Northern NSW in late January – early February. This was such a contrast to a few years ago when these lake systems were under stress from the drought. Photographs of the Coorong perhaps best demonstrated the change, with one photograph in particular showing the outlet open and flowing into the sea.
As with any of Bob’s presentations, there were many excellent photographs of wildlife. These included some special sightings such as a male Lyre Bird in breeding plumage that he photographed in the Royal National Park. A Pacific Bazza was also photographed in the Royal National Park. Other memorable shots showed an unidentified raptor in flight carrying a large Desert Dragon that it had caught, Major Mitchell Cockatoos in flight, a flock of Red Necked Avocets in flight, large numbers of Pelicans on the Coorong and too many more to list.

Colin Prickett