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In my research about South Australia, I read that the Coorong National Park was a great birdwatching site. The morning after arriving back from Kangaroo Island, I hired a car in Adelaide and drove down to the Coorong. Driving around central Adelaide was confusing but once I got out of the city, driving was easy and smooth. After I passed through the small town of Tailem Bend on the Murray River, the landscape changed. I stopped at a viewing point that had a lake one side of the road and salt flats and mud the other. It was so quiet and peaceful under a clear blue sky, with some birds paddling around in the distance.
I continued to the small town of Meningie (it means 'mud' in the local Aboriginal language) which is on the shores of Lake Albert. I saw some pelicans there and picked up some food. I then continued to the tiny settlement of Salt Creek, where I was booked to stay for two nights. The place I stayed at is a combination of petrol station, shop, cafe, campsite and cabins. The cabin I was in was basic but comfortable, although having to go outside to go to the bathroom at night was a bit scary. Salt Creek has a full size replica of Australia's first oil rig, the road house where I stayed and about four other buildings.
There is a sealed road which runs down through the Coorong, then unsealed roads coming off it which go closer to the lakes. I had hired the cheapest possible car so I had to be careful to avoid the 4x4 only tracks. It was really quiet, even over the weekend. Most of the cars I saw were 4x4s or utes heavily laden with camping and fishing equipment but I'm not brave enough to camp, especially not alone.
The Coorong National Park consists of ocean beaches and sand dunes which make up a peninsula and then two long lagoons and a flat landscape with a lot of smaller shallow lakes. It is rich with wildlife. I drove down an unsealed road with a white surface but then it ended at a private property and the road that continued wasn't suitable for my car so I turned around and went back. On the way back I saw what I thought was two chunky sticks in the middle of the road and then realised I'd not seen them on the way. I stopped the car and got out and zoomed in with my camera and saw that the sticks had legs. They were blue-tongued lizards, also known as "sleepy" lizards because they're so slow. I had to stop to let quite a lot of them across the road over the following two days. After this I drove down to a small town called Kingston SE, where I saw a lighthouse that looked more like an oil rig than the kind of round stone building I expected. It had apparently been moved in the 1980s from a reef off the coast to the town. The town also boasts a giant fibreglass lobster sculpture, which is a very Aussie thing. Another attraction, which I didn't visit, is a tractor museum.
After this I headed back up into the Coorong and took the Old Coorong Road off the main highway and drove around looking at the lakes. At one point I disturbed a snake which was sunbathing in the road - once again it looked like a stick, but there aren't any big trees around so I was suspicious and slowed down. When it slithered away I yelped out of surprise. I then drove the Loop Road which is another scenic drive through the National Park, ending by Salt Creek. I mostly viewed the Coorong from the comfort of the car, to avoid the flies and more dangerous wildlife, but I did do a signposted nature walk around some lakes. Back home I try to be quiet and careful to avoid scaring birds, but the combination of wanting to warn any snakes in the area of my presence and batting away flies meant I wasn't very subtle. I did see some Cape Barren Geese though.
Back in Salt Creek, it was very quiet and there were hundreds of swallows flying around and grazing in the middle of the highway. There were also a few types of colourful small parrot, some sparrows and I thought I saw a few goldfinches like we get back home, but I didn't think they migrated. It turns out European goldfinches were released in all sorts of countries in the 19th century.
On Sunday morning I had to stop the car because there were three emus in the road. I drove back to Meningie and stopped to watch some pelicans and egrets on the lake. When I got back to my car, I noticed a sheep looking at me strangely from the front garden of the house I was parked outside. It wasn't a big garden and it was still within the town so I wasn't expecting to see a sheep grazing there. Google Maps showed a road going to a place called Narrung, towards a place called Pelican Point, so I drove there and saw pelicans, cormorants and big black and white wading birds with downward curved beaks. I think they were ibises but I'm not sure what kind. I drove to the point where there is a narrow channel separating Lake Albert from the larger Lake Alexandrina and took a small free ferry across. On the other side there is a historic lighthouse called Point Malcolm, Australia's only inland lighthouse. I walked up the hill to the lighthouse and saw a kangaroo which bounded in front of me, then stared at me for a bit before bouncing on its way.
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