Inala Karen came by our cottage in the morning and we spent time inside going through our wildlife lists and our plans for the remainder of the trip. She provided some great tips on places to go for certain animals so it was time well spent.
We had ordered a pack lunch from the Hotel Bruny so we all decided to head out for a bit since we needed to pick up lunch anyway. Inala Karen took us to Cloudy Bay (which lived up to its name) and a few other places in route to the Hotel Bruny. We did see another white wallaby and had a lifer sooty oystercatcher but otherwise the trip out was uneventful in the poor weather.
After returning to our cottage we agreed to meet at 3PM and try again. So, Karen and I just ate our packed lunches in our cottage listening to the rain. The weather that blew in was a remnant of a tropical storm apparently and a lot of rain had come down. In fact, the water levels on the Inala property were rising very quickly and their river had overflowed into the fields. But the rain ended up letting up in the afternoon so there didn't appear to be any damage from the flooding.
We had hoped to spend the morning walking around the Inala property but obviously couldn't do that given the rain. So, our only "regret" the whole trip was not being able to do that. The grounds have more endemic birds and other wildlife that we missed out on.
I used the time after lunch to update my notes from the trip and write down some observations about the trip. One of the first things that we realized after arriving was that the Aussie's aren't big fans of long words or even some short words. So, they will shorten just about every word possible and add an "ie" after it to make it sound more casual and fun. Here are some examples:
A common brush-tail possum is a "brushie" as I have already mentioned
A grilled sandwich is a "toastie"
Tasmania is actually just "Tassie"
Sunglasses are, of course, "sunnies"
Candy is just called "lollies"
Breakfast is "breakies"
I came up with a few of my own hoping to fit in:
A camera would be a "clickie"
A lotion bottle first opened after a flight would be a "squirtie"
A hire car rented by Americans would be a "wreckie"
Anyway, Inala Karen picked us up at 3PM. The plan was to drive out to the lighthouse since we had yet to see it and then grab some take out pizza from "you know where". We would then drive to a location where Inala Karen has seen daytime quolls before. We would eat our pizza dinner and stakeout the quoll site to see if we got lucky.
The rain was pretty light when we reached the lighthouse so we were able to get out and walk around a little bit to stretch our legs. There we some rabbits and wallabies around as well as a few birds.
New Holland Honeyeater:
Beautiful Firetail:
We even made a quick stop at the local bakery so I could take a picture. You see, this isn't an ordinary bakery. It's just a couple disconnected fridges (to keep out the wildlife) on the side of the road where a local man sells fresh bread. It is run on the honor system but the man does take electronic payments which is nice. Inala Karen said the bread is really good.
As was the case with all their food, the pizza from Hotel Bruny was pretty darn good and we really didn't have to wait that long to pick it up amazingly. We sat eating it with the windows rolled down as we did our quoll stakeout. The only flaw in this plan was the "windows rolled down" part because as dusk approached this allowed quite a few "mozzies" to fly in the car. After a healthy few rounds of "whack a mozzie" we took care of most of them. This ended up being the own time we had issues with bugs the entire trip.
The timing was good on the end of "whack a mozzie" because not long after that was done we saw some movement. It turned out to be a potoroo eating however. Then, a bit later, more movement and up popped an eastern quoll. It was pretty curious of us and came a bit closer making for a decent picture.
It hung around for a only a short while before darting off. At about the same time, the rain started back up again so we headed home and did a night drive on the way. We ended up see 10 more eastern quolls on the drive back including one that was on a carcass off to the side of the road:
We even spotted another potoroo as well but other than that it was a pretty quiet drive back to the cottage when compared to the past two nights due to the weather. We arrived home at around 10 PM and decided to walk around the grounds a bit since the rain had stopped but we didn't end up seeing anything.
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