Animals & other creatures

Apart from feral goats, kangaroos and dingos, the animal life we saw tended to be reptiles, mainly lizards or close relatives, but at Timber Creek we saw Fruit Bats festooning a tree:

Timber Creek was also where we had our first sighting of crocodiles; Arriving at the caravan park at ten to five, we were told "Crocodile feeding starts at the bridge at 5 o'Clock", so we hustled down and sure enough, dead chickens dangled on the end of a pole enticed darting lunges from the murky depths of the creek. The somewhat abstract shot below is the closest our camera could get to them - a little girl was quite excited about seeing the chocodiles!

Shingleback Lizards were by far the most common form of animal life we encountered. They are very numerous despite their slow moving gait causing them to feature heavily as West Australian speed bumps. Don't be fooled by the threatening posture, they can only gum you to death. Some have nice markings.

By contrast, rock dwelling dragons like this one are extremely fast:

but slowest of all is the Thorny Devil (Moloch Horridus), immobile and relying on camouflage to hide him from your gaze:

Sheltered canyons in the Bungle Bungles provided a home for frogs:

The humble, useful honeybee is a major ecological catastrophe in outback Australia, feral hives depriving native birds and animals of their habitat in hollow trees:

but native insects perform many vital functions:

and they make interesting nests (Ants and wasps here):