Birdwatching Holiday Australia

Southeast Australia: Tasmania, Victoria & Plains-wanderer

Sunday 3 October to Thursday 14 October 2010

Sunday 2 October to Thursday 13 October 2011
with David Fisher and Judy Davis as leaders
and Richard Loyn, Ed McNabb, Phil Maher and Tonia Cochran as

local guides

Cost: £2,940 (2010)

Single room supplement: £300

In country price only - allow £1000 for return flights from London if booked by Sunbird

Click here for explanation of price breakdown

Maximum group size: 8 with 1 leader; 16 with 2 leaders.

Bird List
Booking Form

'David and Judy did a marvellous job throughout. Apart from all their other excellent qualities as leaders, we were particularly appreciative of their driving skills, whether in heavy traffic or on quiet tracks. They even managed, on top of showing us the birds and wildlife, to keep us all in order! And entertained - and happy. Grateful thanks to all the local guides too.' D. Smith and H. Brooke 2007.

This tour to Victoria, southern New South Wales and Tasmania passes through a wide variety of habitats and climates. The Victorian countryside seems reassuringly familiar due to two centuries of European settlement, but the birds that inhabit it are anything but familiar. Large flocks of exotic parrots feed on the verges along the highways, and multicoloured fairy-wrens and honeyeaters fill the woods, while kangaroos graze in the paddocks, and Koalas look down from giant Eucalyptus trees. The area around Deniliquin in southern New South Wales seems much wilder – almost the outback – with major ornithological attractions including the almost mythical Plains-wanderer. Tasmania holds many endemics include some fascinating birds – even flightless ones such as the Tasmanian Native Hen.

This tour can be taken in conjunction with our Central Australia tour, followed for those who wish by our Eastern Australia tour. Because of this the dates refer to Melbourne to Melbourne and the tour price does not include the international airfare from London. This allows those people wanting to combine sections to calculate the total cost of their tour.

David Fisher first visited Australia in 1985 and this will be his 25th Sunbird tour there.

Day 1: The tour starts at our hotel in Melbourne at 2.00pm from where there will be an excursion to a local park to see our first colourful Australian birds including Galahs, Sulphur-crested Cockatoos, Red-rumped Parrots, and Laughing Kookaburras. As well as these widespread species in previous years this park has also produced less common birds including Tawny Frogmouth, Purple-crowned Lorikeet, Crested Shrike-Tit, and Varied Sittella. Night near Melbourne airport.

Day 2: Today we'll visit the area southwest of Melbourne. First we'll visit Brisbane Ranges National Park in search of Koalas, and a good selection of bush birds. A small swamp near Geelong may reveal Latham's Snipe which spends the northern winter here as well as a variety of local waterfowl, including the beautiful Chestnut Teal. Then we'll drive down the spectacular Great Ocean Road to Airey's Inlet where we'll look for the local Rufous Bristlebird and where a seawatch from a nearby headland may reveal a graceful Shy Albatross or two. On the way home we'll stop at Weribee in search of Striated Fieldwrens that sulk in the saltmarsh and might find a pair of Brolga cranes, a rare and endangered species these days in Victoria. Night in Melbourne.

Day 3: After breakfast we’ll head east towards Healesville where we’ll spend two nights. En route we’ll stop to look at a vast 'camp' of Grey-headed Flying-Foxes. Thousands of these amazing creatures roost in an area of parkland on the edge of the city. We should arrive in Healesville in time for lunch. In the afternoon we'll visit Toolangi State Forest in search of Gang-gang Cockatoo, Pink Robin, Pilotbird, and Olive Whistler, and to marvel at the ancient Mountain Ash trees some of which are over 200 feet tall! Night in Healesville.

Day 4: This morning we'll make a very early start and visit Badger Weir, where the great attraction is Superb Lyrebird, indisputably the world's most remarkable mimic. It's a bird that is easy to hear but hard to see. While walking the forest tracks in search of the great mimic we should see Rose Robin and the spectacular Eastern Spinebill among others. After breakfast we'll visit a local park where Australian King Parrots and Common Bronzewings are abundant and provide excellent photographic opportunities. We'll also see an active bower of Satin Bowerbird and watch how the male decorates the bower with various blue items in order to entice the females of the area to visit and mate with him. In the afternoon we’ll visit a local lake in search of Blue-billed Duck and other waterbirds. After dinner there will be an optional spotlighting trip in search of Sooty Owl and we should see Greater Gliders and, with luck, a Yellow-bellied Glider as well. Night in Healesville.

Day 5: We'll have another chance to look for lyrebirds if they eluded us the previous day and also for any other species that might still be missing. After breakfast we’ll drive north to Chiltern arriving in the early afternoon. Close to Chiltern is the recently designated Chiltern-Mt. Pilot National Park. This park was set up in 1997 to protect the box-ironbark forest which once covered much of northeast Victoria. It is now home to one of the few scattered populations of the endangered Regent Honeyeater, and during our afternoon in the park we'll search for this scarce species. Other birds that we hope to see include Turquoise Parrot, and Fuscous, Black-throated and Painted Honeyeaters, the latter a truly beautiful bird in its own genus. Night in Chiltern.

Day 6: We’ll spend the morning visiting various sites around Chiltern perhaps including the national park again, but certainly including a private property in search of Speckled Warbler and several lakes that hold a good variety of waterfowl including Australian Shoveler and Hardhead. After an early lunch we’ll drive west to Deniliquin and will spend two nights there. While there are many species to be seen in this area, the main reason for visiting Deniliquin is to search for Plains-wanderer, a unique species in its own family, and this will be our main focus. It is a cryptic, buttonquail-like bird that can be very hard to find, but by driving at night across the short-grass native pasturelands in this area, accompanied by local expert Phil Maher, we have a very good chance of finding this fascinating and rarely seen bird. Other possibilities on our night drive include Banded Lapwing, Inland Dotterel, Stubble Quail, and Little Button-quail. Night in Deniliquin.

Day 7: The time of our start will depend on how late we stay out the previous night, but we'll spend the day in the Deniliquin area searching for local specialities that we are unlikely to see elsewhere during our tour such as Australasian Bittern, Superb Parrot, Crested Shrike-tit, and Gilbert's Whistler. In the evening we'll have a second chance for Plains-wanderer should we have missed it the previous evening. Night in Deniliquin.

Day 8: We'll spend another morning birding around Deniliquin with Phil, searching for such species as Apostlebird and Striped Honeyeater and then in the afternoon we'll drive south to Melbourne where we’ll spend the night.

Day 9: We'll catch an early morning flight to Hobart in Tasmania, from where we'll drive south to Bruny Island. En route we'll stop to look for our first Tasmanian endemics perhaps including noisy Yellow Wattlebirds, and Yellow-throated and Strong-billed Honeyeaters. We'll catch a ferry across to the island, stopping first at the terminal to look at the Black-faced Cormorants on the harbour side pylons. All of Tasmania's endemics occur on Bruny Island, most of them on the property owned by our local guide Tonia Cochran. We'll spend the afternoon walking around her private estate looking in particular for Green Rosella, Dusky Robin, and Forty-spotted Pardalote. Night on Bruny Island.

Day 10: We'll spend a delightful day exploring the forests and farmland of Bruny Island, searching for the remaining endemics - the enormous and flightless Tasmanian Native-Hen, and the diminutive Tasmanian Scrubwren, Scrub-Tit, Tasmanian Thornbill, and Black-headed Honeyeater. We'll also search for a number of species that are easier to find on Tasmania than on the Australian mainland including Hooded Plover, Brush Bronzewing, Swift Parrot, Flame Robin, Crescent Honeyeater, and Forest Raven. Tasmania is famous for having a more intact marsupial fauna due to there being fewer introduced predators, so after dinner there will be an optional night-drive mostly in search of mammals including Bennett's Wallaby, Rufous-bellied Pademelon, Long-nosed Poteroo and Eastern Quoll. And we'll also visit a bustling Little Penguin colony and see our first Short-tailed Shearwaters. Night on Bruny Island.

Day 11: The final Tasmanian endemic, Black Currawong, winters on Bruny Island and at the time of our visit they may have all left for the Tasmanian mainland. We will leave the itinerary for this day flexible to accommodate this possibility and if there is none left on Bruny will return to Hobart in the morning and drive up to Mt. Field National Park where the currawongs breed. In the late afternoon we will catch a flight back to Melbourne where we will spend the night.

Day 12: The tour ends after breakfast. Those joining the Central Australia tour will catch a morning flight to Adelaide.

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Last updated August 2010