Alice Springs, NT - Australia

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DanTheMan
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Joined: January 19th, 2011, 4:06 am
Location: Sunshine Coast, Qld
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Alice Springs, NT - Australia

Post by DanTheMan »

At the end of last year, a friend and I went on a massive herping trip for 6 weeks throughout Queensland and the Northern Territory. We found over 140 specis of reptiles & amphibians for the trip and covered 20,000km of outback roads.

That friend (Mattsnake on this forum) has posted some pics of this trip, but has got lazy so I'm going to finish it off, starting at Alice Springs, Chapter 5 of this trip, copied from my blog where the previous 4 chapters, along with the following 3 chapters can be found (final chapter yet to be posted) along with many of my other herping trips, of which many are yet to be posted.

http://www.danswildaustralia.com.au

If using Internet Explorer, the photo's on my blog are for some reason distorted, but seem to be fine using other programmes such as Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, please let me know if this is incorrect and are distorted in others. I will be posting the rest of this trip on here anyway.

Here's where we went on this trip
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After camping near the small border town of Camooweal, we left Queensland and entered the Northern Territory on the Barkley Tablelands, again targeting Speckled Browns basking on the road before it got too hot. One very fresh road kill was found, and so was a defect label.
We were pulled over at Avon Downs Police Station, where they did the usual checks, along with a vehicle inspection where they found a hole in the exhaust, and a crack on the windscreen. We were issued with a defect label, and were given 30 hours to drive the 1000km to Alice Springs, where we wouldn’t be able to drive the car until fixed and had a full inspection to check for other minor faults.

After a disheartening start to the day, we decided to continue on to Devils Marbles. Between the Police Station and there we saw bugger all apart from the usual V. gouldii.

Devils Marbles is a spectacular place
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We discovered that rocks can be funny!
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Despite it being a very warm night, we found nothing in this area. We now know that this is because we were looking in the wrong spot!

The next day we headed to Alice Springs. 60km north of the city we found this Western Blue-tongue – Tiliqua occipitalis
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11 days into the trip, we finally arrived at Alice Springs.
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We nervously headed to the city centre, we were not sure how big this place was and whether or not they would have sufficient facilities to accommodate our needs over the next week while getting the car fixed. We were extremely relieved when we finally saw what we were looking for. Those heavenly golden arches, they had McDonalds!
Like everywhere else we went, this was a new place to us and we were itching to do some herping! But this couldn’t be done until the car was fixed! After getting a new windscreen and a new muffler thrown in, we took it in for inspection for them to find a heap of small things that needed doing that would later add up to $1000 on top of what had already been spent on the old Pajero.
Finally after all the vehicle dramas were over, we were able to do some much awaited herping! Despite having hot days, the nights were pretty cold at this time of year due to the high elevation of Alice Springs, as soon as the sun went down the temperature would fall dramatically. But we still managed to find some animals of interest in the Alice area, but missed out on the ones at the top of the list this time.

Rough Knob-tailed Gecko – Nephrurus amyae
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Northern Spiny-tailed Geckos were extremely common, so common we didn’t bother getting photos. Fat-tailed Geckos were extremely common, but we took a photo of one.

Fat-tailed Gecko – Diplodactylus conspicillatus
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Mesa Gecko – Diplodactlyus galeatus
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Beaked Gecko – Rhynchoedura ornata
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Gehyra purpurescens
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Gehyra montium
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I never thought I would say this, but there is such a thing as a good looking Bynoes Gecko… The ones found in Alice are quite different. I believe Bynoes are also in the proccess of being split, who knows what this may end up being.
Heteranotia binoei
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Also a very interesting find, this Thick-tailed Gecko – Underwoodisaurus milii, not only was it very large (approx. 21cm total length) but it was a different looking one, and found quite far north for their range.
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Stimsons Pythons – Antaresia stimsoni
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Unbanded Shovel-nosed Snake - Brachyurophis incinctus
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Narrow-banded Shovel-nosed Snake – Brachyurophis fasciolatus fasciatus
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Mulga Snakes continued to be the most common snake on the trip, but the ones in this area were stunning
Pseudechis australis
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An unfortunate looking Western Brown – Pseudonaja mengdeni, not the stunning gold body, black head form.
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Northern Delma – Delma borea
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This was an exciting find! Centralian Bandy Bandy – Vermicella vermiformis
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We saw planty of frogs, but unfortunately didn’t bother photographing some of them despite them being new species to us. We’re idiots sometimes. But heres a few we did photograph!

Centalian Tree Frog – Litoria gilleni
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Limnodynastes spenceri
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This was one monitor we had really wanted to see in this area, and we found 2! Only photographed this one though.
Perentie – Varanus giganteus
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The Perenties home
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Ridge-tailed Monitor – Varanus acanthurus
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Freckled Monitor – Varanus tristis
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Long Nosed Dragons – Amphibolurus longirostris
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Some scenery shots from around the Alice Springs area
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Simpsons Gap
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After a bit of herping in the Alice Springs area, we headed for Uluru. I thought this place would be over rated… Not at all!
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The Olgas were just as impressive!
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Some habitat on the way to Uluru
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We hung around the Olgas until sunset and then made our way back to Erldunda on the Stuart Highway. This night was unlike the others, its was freakin’ hot! We managed to find plenty of geckos and a few other things, but again we missed out on the target species! (Woma Python and Desert Death Adder).

Centralian Blue Tongues – Tiliqua multifasciata were common at dusk
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Lerista desertorum
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A bad shot of a very small juvinile Western Hooded Scaly-foot –Pygopus nigriceps
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Delma nasuta
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We saw plenty of Shovel-nosed Snakes, but only one was new to us.
Southern Shovel-nosed Snake – Brachyurophis semifasciatus
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The only other snake we saw was a very yellow Mulga found when looking at a gecko on the road, from a distance I thought it was a Woma! No pictures…

Uluru is a great spot for Knob-tailed Geckos.
Smooth Knob-tailed Gecko – Nephrurus levis levis
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Different animal
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We also found a Pale Knob-tailed Gecko which was exciting for me – Nephrurus laevissimus
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The next day, we left Erldunda and headed north towards Darwin. We had no real plans where we would end up on this day, and as there wasn’t much interesting in between there and Katherine. That day we nearly drove the length of the Northern Territory. 1,300km later we stopped just south of Katherine, which can wait until chapter 6!
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Bill Love
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Joined: June 7th, 2010, 7:33 pm
Location: Apache Junction (near Phoenix), Arizona

Re: Alice Springs, NT - Australia

Post by Bill Love »

Those were all critters I'd hoped to see out there, but didn't (mostly). The perentie was very nice, and the setting it was in really made your shots look great. Beautiful post!
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moloch
Posts: 561
Joined: June 16th, 2010, 1:26 pm

Re: Alice Springs, NT - Australia

Post by moloch »

Fantastic, Dan. What a successful trip! You found so many interesting species and the photos are excellent.

Regards,
David
scott s
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Joined: August 13th, 2010, 5:36 pm

Re: Alice Springs, NT - Australia

Post by scott s »

Great post!

Congrats on getting such cool pics of your Perentie.

I saw a a big one in the same area, but wasn't able to snap any photos.

Those things move like a giant whiptail when chased :-)

Mine moved so fast, I couldn't even see which hole it went down.

Did you get any rain while you were there?
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Saunders
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Joined: June 7th, 2010, 7:42 am
Location: Boerne, Tx

Re: Alice Springs, NT - Australia

Post by Saunders »

I have been waiting for someone to post a Perenti, those are my favorite monitors.
Great post man.
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crocdoc
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Joined: June 7th, 2010, 11:43 pm
Location: Australia

Re: Alice Springs, NT - Australia

Post by crocdoc »

Looks like it was a great trip. Excellent photographs!
scott s wrote:Those things move like a giant whiptail when chased :-)
Yeah... best way to photograph monitors is to not chase them :-)
DanTheMan
Posts: 17
Joined: January 19th, 2011, 4:06 am
Location: Sunshine Coast, Qld
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Re: Alice Springs, NT - Australia

Post by DanTheMan »

Thanks guys!
Certainly was an awesome trip. Had a few afternoon thunderstorms that dropped a bit of rain.
I spotted that Perentie out the corner of my eye sitting in that crevice a few metres off the ground, we sat next to it for about an hour taking photos as he popped in and out, toward the end we were sticking our cameras right in his face.
Alice Springs is the best place I have been herping, that place is crawling with reptiles, particularly geckos!
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Nshepard
Posts: 377
Joined: June 7th, 2010, 12:08 pm

Re: Alice Springs, NT - Australia

Post by Nshepard »

Very nice....I was in that area back in late 03, so I found this post to be a particularly enjoyable one.
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