Weekend Adventuring Berry Springs & Territory Park

This last weekend we all went out as a family, to a thermal spring and to the Territory park, The thermal springs were a surprise as they really were thermal, I didnt expect that as this isnt known as a volcanic region, it must be a deep deep old radioactive reservoir of contaminated water from old nuclear tests out in the desert, or maybe not. Anyway the water was nice and warm and the little girl was screaming with delight and terror as I submerged both of us under the mini waterfall, I think she likes me doing dangerous things with her, I sometimes call her Dangerous Emma and she laughs so much but i think a face full of water was almost too much for her. Almost too much for me, the other funny thing was the force of water rushing over the ledge was enough to pull down my shorts and leave me showing my ass, it must have been visible as it is white and luminous, it probably shone out through the water like an underwater beacon. Anyway it was fun and the little girl loves showing off her swimming skills.

The mini waterfall that tore off my shorts




We then swam-crawled along a small channel that connected the falls to the main pool the water was full of rocks at shin height for me and i banged my legs and feet as i went along, it was a mistake i should have walked around the park to get into the pool, it is obvious that the pool is man-made with a large dam wall at the other end, but as it is meant for people and not crocodiles i am not too unhappy with that. We played for a couple of hours and the little girl thought it was excellent fun to jump of the wall and splash me in the water, how they grow up so quickly, she is also reading the names of the birds in the Australian Bird Identification Book i got for her.

the main pool in the forest


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Actually we went to the Torritory park next door first as i didnt want to be walking round in wet swim trunks in the park, we got there late about 12 noon and it is meant to be a bus tour around all the activities, but the bus only went round every 30 minutes so we would have spent all day waiting for the bus so we had to walk and it was a long way between all the different exhibits. First was the play area with tame wallabies. The are really small and these have become accustomed to the tourists and beg from the tables but we managed to get one to eat grass from the little girls hand.

It was too cute, I wanted to take it home




we then caught the first bus up to the nocturnal house, this housed a collection of the night time animals, actually this basically means everything in Australia other than birds, everything just sleeps during the day in the shade and then comes out at night. We saw some cute little animals from flying squirrels and marsupial mice things and water rats, marsupial predators, like large hunting mice, some rock wallabies, many snakes and a few bats, from the nocturnal house we went to the bird aviaries, there were some spectacular birds on display, and we went through a huge open aviary and it was full of a couple of species, the imperial pidgeon and some tree roosting ducks, Radjah Ducks, very beautiful birds, plus a few others, it made me want an aviary, even though i am completely against caging birds it was a fantastic sight to see all these wonderful birds




After the aviaries we were running late for the birds of prey show, and we had to walk and my wife was complaining about me always making her walk everywhere and never having enough time to relax and look around, but we just made it to the bird display to see a wonderful crested hawk flying around, very large eyes and a square head almost to put the eyes into, then they had an Osprey, circling round and I was wondering if it had been bored with its normal routine and decided to just have a fly about but once she threw some fish into the pond it swooped and dived feet first into the water, it was amazing, the only drawback was it then carried the fish to a perch just above the little girl and i had visions of it doing a nasty fishy smelling turd right onto her head so we moved pretty quickly. They also brought round a few others just for display and not flight, like the barking owl, it really does bark like a far away dog, very funny, also a black breasted buzzard, a young fish eagle and finally a Wedge Tailed Eagle, it was huge and very impressive, I am always impressed by these large raptors,

Crested Hawk




Wedge tailed eagle




A Tawny Frogmouth




we managed to see all of the park but only just as we left just after closing time, so we had a fantastic day and even got radioactive poisoning in the thermal springs.