Hello forumites, here's a little story from this past weekend:
Just spent a few nights camping in the bush at a large secret magical private property which i can't disclose
up around Maleny on the QLD sunshine coast. We camped with some friends, some who have been coming to the property for 18+ years. There's a beautiful running mountain stream that winds through the property which we were camped at. The friends mentioned that they have never seen the creek water level so low. There were a few waterholes, maybe 1-2ft deep but most of it was 6 inches or less, crystal clear, many parts were only an inch in between the deeper sections. With a torch you could easily see the bottom. The creek was running but mostly trickling, there's clearly been a severe lack of rain and the water level is suffering though the property was still quite green. We spent a fair amount of time pottering about the creek and in the evenings after it was dark the kids enjoyed a spotlighting session looking for critters. Even though this creek was only 6 inches deep or less, it came alive at night. There was a carpet of crayfish and freshwater prawns, 1.5 metre eels and 2ft long catfish. I couldn't believe this creek was teeming with so much life after dark. The best part was the platypus... We had heard a rumour that they were in the creek but not many people have seen them. Well i went down to the creek, 10 metres from the camper trailer with a torch late in the evening after the kids (and all the noise they make) went to bed and there was a little platypus floating around! After a few seconds he darted under the bank where i was standing. He didn't like the torch so i sat there for a while with my night vision scope and watched him dance about in the shallow water amongst the big catfish and prawns. We also saw a lot of fungus along the creek bank which simply glowed in the dark! Beautiful stuff to see.
We had a great weekend camping but to see such an abundance of wildlife in a trickling shallow creek was great to see. Hopefully it gets some rain soon to let that little platypus have some deeper water to play in. It's amazing how resilient they can be.
cheers
