Australia
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| Walking trails in the Center |
The Australian outback is an amazing world of contrast: red and black cliffs, dry desert landscape with water-filled gorges, prickly spiky plants with soft colourful flowers, beautiful birds and their loud calls. I was lucky enough to call Australia my home when I was a child and always look forward to going back, seeing my family and having another look at the land. This year, I spent quite a bit of my holidays in Australia’s Center. I wanted to check out more of the land and walking is a great way of doing it. We bought our food and water from the town of Alice Spring and went walking along a number of different trails.
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| Depending on the light, cliffs are either red, burnt orange purple or varying co.lours in between. |
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| Honey bee colony on a cliff in the Center. |
We saw quite a bit of wild life including kangaroos and lots of birds. There were very few insects around because night time temperatures were around freezing a lot of the nights. I was pleasantly surprised though when Matt showed me a honey bee colony. Matt told me he had seen them at this location before. It was about 30 feet up on a cliff. Honey bee comb attached to an open cliff would be a rare sight in Canada, but in Desert country it is the perfect place. There is very little rain to speak of so a colony does not need protection from the rain. Since it had rained recently, trees and shrubs were showing off their bloom. This of course means food for honey bees.
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| Gum tree flowers with a foraging honey bee. |
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| Hakia flowers provide lots of nectar for birds called Honey-eaters |
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| River beds and cliffs provide great habitat for all kinds
of wildlife including lizards, cliff dwelling birds and hawks.
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In the next little while, I will be adding a few more blogs of my trip. You can imagine the number of photos I took! Have a great summer!
