Site Report: Lakefield National Park

Visits

• 2012-11-11: The "adventure" on the Bloomfield Track finished, it was time to do some real adventure. I have to admit, I was very nervous about leaving the path of the upcoming solar eclipse just two days before it was set to happen, but logic says there is a much greater chance of cloudiness than for a pretty new car to break down. Lakefield National Park was said to be more or less devoid of human life, so I constantly entertained thoughts of being stranded in the bush for the big event. We stopped at a trickle of a waterfall just before the entrance where we had the chance to feed a barramundi. They say that fish have a memory of a couple of seconds, but that fish recognized that it was about to get a treat. As soon as the lady at the counter handed us the fish treat pellets, the fish behavior changed and he caught our attention with its loud snappy feeding method. Anyway, we reached the entrance to the park to find that it was pretty much on fire. And, there was some sign demanding that we reserve our campsite before entering the park. We moseyed on along the road until we arrived in a town called Laura where we phoned in for our campsite reservation (Kalpower site #1!). After grabbing a couple of toasted cheese sandwiches, we were back on our way into the park. We then drove for hours through bush fires, stifling heat, and endless flat eucalyptus forest on the dustiest road in Queensland until we reached our campsite just before sunset. The campsite was a new world however. There, we found a lake (no swimming, crocodiles...) and a huge empty campsite. We were the only visitors in a National Park the size of Belgium! As the sun set, I walked over to the "airstrip" where I could get a view of the horizon. The sky was painted every shade of red and orange with the light intensified by all the dust and smoke. Then came the first spectacle. Flying over head, I saw a couple of large bats (actually flying foxes, but they look like giant bats). Then, I saw a couple more. The flying foxes kept multiplying until I could see bats everywhere that I looked all the way to the horizon. I am not kidding when I estimate that the must have been 100,000 or more bats visible from this airstrip! Later that night, I had a lovely dream about getting eaten by a crocodile while I completely trapped myself in my newly mangled tent. Up at the crack of dawn, I could not imagine anything that could be more impressive than the "bat show" when the "lorikeet show" started. There were far fewer lorikeets than bats, maybe only a few thousand, but they made up for their lesser numbers by flying in tight groups over the campsite screeching at a deafening level. Throw in a few Black Cockatoos and Wallabies, and there you have Lakefield National Park.

Species Seen

Lifelists

• Australasia
• World

Trips

• Eastern Australia