Trip 23 – Dryandra Woodlands

Taking advantage of the labour day long weekend, Jules and I shot down to the Dryanda Woodlands for a couple of days with our friend Rodney

Having spent last year in Canberra with work, it’s been a while since we’ve done a last minute camping trip and boy did we enjoy it.

We love Dryandra, it’s only 170km from home making it a short 2hr trip, even when leaving during peak hour traffic on a Friday afternoon. Rod had had an RDO so got there before us but it wasn’t long before we were settling in for a quick dinner, bottle of wine and some muscat and lots of laughter.

This trip, we were all keen to try and spot some of the native animals after having seen some of the great Numbat pics taken by Loz, someone I’ve been following on Instagram for a while now. Armed with some Numbat spotting tips, we did a number of long walks and a couple of very slow drives through the park but unfortunately failed to spot the elusive Numbat. We did, however, find a couple of Echidna’s, plenty of Shingleback lizards, Kangaroos, lots of birds and a pair of cheeky Brushtail Possums that snuck up on us on the first night and stole some food from our dinner plates. They visited every night after that. We had hoped to visit the Barna Mia native animal santuary on the Saturday night but they were full so instead we took a very slow night drive around a couple of tracks in the park and saw a couple of owls fly through, one pair of particularly bright yellow eyes from an unknown animal reflecting in the light and three small hopping marsupials which we were pretty confident were Woylies, but it was pretty dark and they were moving (hopping) pretty quickly. Luckily for us, however, on our last night, a solitary Woylie hopped straight into our campsite to steal a discarded chip. I managed to get a couple of pics and we noted it had a little scar above its right leg so we were wondering if it was recovering from an injury, hence why it was foraging in the campground. Not that his injury seemed to be hampering him, however, as he was in and out pretty quick.

As you can see, no Numbats but plenty of other wildlife action, so we were happy.

For those that haven’t visited the Dryandra woodlands, do yourself a favour and do so as they feel different to Australia’s native bush. The trees are typically more widely spaced, many having beautifully coloured barks and the whole place has a sense of openess and airiness to it.

On the Sunday, we took a nice drive out through the farm and bush land, avoiding the main roads wherever we could. For lunch we followed the advice of a local from Wandering and took a detour out to the very small Quindanning Pub for a pint and counter meal. None of us had ever been to Quindanning before and enjoyed the friendly atmosphere and good feed before looping back to Dryandra via Williams, shooting some more pics along the way.

I even had time to try a few “arty” pics where I intentionally blurred the pics whilst taking the shot.