Gulf Country & Tropical Savannah Birding: Cairns to Mount Isa

The tour begins in Cairns. Guests make their own way to the hotel where the group meets its guide and fellow travellers over a pre-trip briefing dinner.

Overnight: Cairns.
Meals: D.

Climbing from Cairns onto the Atherton Tablelands, the drive crosses from rainforest to the drier tropical woodland on the western side of the Great Dividing Range, with stops for incidental birding along the way.

The group reaches Undara Volcanic National Park by afternoon and checks into huts bordering the park at Undara Discovery Resort. A guided Archway Explorer tour takes you through the lava tubes, hollowed out roughly 190,000 years ago when lava drained from a riverbed, leaving the rock shell behind.

Around sunset, take a walk through the surrounding bush to spot antilopine wallaroo, whiptail (pretty-faced) wallaby, and eastern grey kangaroo.

Overnight: Undara.
Meals: B/L/D.

Start the day with an outback bush breakfast at the resort, then take a morning birding walk before driving west to Georgetown through drier tropical savannah, where you may see emu, wedge-tailed eagle, spotted harrier, dollarbird, ground cuckoo-shrike and apostlebird.

Cumberland Dam, on the edge of town, is the afternoon’s focus; it attracts grassland, woodland and waterfowl species, including magpie goose, plumed and wandering whistling-duck, green and cotton pygmy-goose, comb-crested jacana and royal spoonbill. The surrounding woodland is home to blue-winged kookaburra, red-backed kingfisher, red-browed pardalote, brown treecreeper, squatter pigeon, red-winged parrot and honeyeaters including rufous-throated, yellow-tinted, banded, grey-fronted and blue-faced. Finches are most active early morning, which is why the group returns to the dam at first light the next day.

Overnight: Georgetown.
Meals: B/L/D.

Wake early for a pre-dawn visit to Cumberland Dam, this time for the finches coming in to drink: black-throated, masked, double-barred and zebra finch are resident, with Gouldian finch, plum-headed finch and chestnut-breasted mannikin occasionally recorded.

From there the route follows the Savannah Way towards the Gulf, watching for emu, Australian bustard and raptors, with brolga, sarus crane, Australian pratincole and numerous waterbirds in the grasslands and wetlands around Normanton.

Karumba accommodation sits across the road from the mudflats at the mouth of the Norman River (good for waders, herons, osprey and Brahminy kite), with views over the Gulf of Carpentaria that are best at sunset.

Overnight: Karumba.
Meals: B/L/D.

Spend a full day based in Karumba. The Gordon River is the focus in the morning, a great spot to see the resident birds of the mangroves on foot from the shore and then by boat: great-billed heron, white-breasted and mangrove golden whistler, mangrove robin, Arafura and mangrove grey fantail, mangrove gerygone, red-headed honeyeater and yellow white-eye are all possible.

In the afternoon, the group moves into the grasslands and wetlands around the town, searching for tawny grassbird, zitting cisticola, finches and other waterbirds.

Overnight: Karumba.
Meals: B/L/D.

Take one more look this morning for any mangrove species missed the day before, then head back onto the Savannah Way via Normanton. The dry season reduces what can be impassable wet-season country to a handful of creeks, waterholes, and billabongs, and the group will stop at the low-water crossings at Leichhardt Falls to watch for cockatiel, black-breasted buzzard, ground cuckoo-shrike, great bowerbird, and various honeyeaters and finches.

Reach Burketown and the Albert River by afternoon. The small settlement of around 200 people is named after Robert O'Hara Burke of the Burke and Wills expedition, which passed close by in 1860 searching for a route from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria; the advance party turned back at a stretch of mangrove swamp between here and Karumba.

Overnight: Burketown.
Meals: B/L/D.

Head south along the Gregory River for a morning of birdwatching, with purple-crowned fairy-wren, various finches, paperbark flycatcher and Arafura and northern fantail among the possibilities. The road into Boodjamulla (Lawn Hill) National Park is rough and slow going.

The tour’s base there is Wugudaji-Adels Grove, on the banks of Lawn Hill Creek. The property sits on Waanyi Country. Boodjamulla National Park itself was returned to the Waanyi people in 2023, more than 79,000 ha leased back to the Queensland Government and jointly managed with QPWS as the state’s first Aboriginal land national park — and Wugudaji-Adels Grove is owned by Waanyi Advancement Limited, a not-for-profit set up for the economic development of the Waanyi people.

The grounds hold Gilbert’s dragon and freshwater crocodile, with a chance to see an archerfish spit at passing insects from the creek. After dinner, listen for nocturnal species including barking owl, Australian boobook and Australian owlet-nightjar.

Overnight: Wugudaji-Adels Grove.
Meals: B/L/D.

Spend the full day in the national park, walking in the morning and taking a solar-electric boat ride in the afternoon. The park mixes pandanus-lined creeks and sandstone gorges with semi-arid savannah grassland and open woodland, and the species list follows the habitat: purple-crowned fairy-wren, buff-sided robin, pictorella mannikin, crimson and long-tailed finch, sandstone shrike-thrush and honeyeaters including white-gaped, yellow-tinted and grey-fronted.

Grey falcon and black bittern are both recorded here occasionally, the bittern a real possibility as the boat cruises quietly through the middle gorge towards Indarri Falls, and azure kingfisher and white-bellied sea-eagle both frequent the same stretch of creek.

Overnight: Wugudaji-Adels Grove.
Meals: B/L/D.

Do some early birdwatching around the grounds before driving south to Mount Isa, with a stop at the Riversleigh fossil site along the way.

Riversleigh is a World Heritage area for its deposits of prehistoric Australian mammal and bird fossils, built up over roughly 25 million years.

In the afternoon, the group checks likely habitat for the endangered, and famously difficult, Carpentarian grasswren, along with other arid-zone species, before checking in to rest up in Mount Isa.

Overnight: Mount Isa.
Meals: B/L/D.

The most difficult target species are most likely to be seen at first light: the Kalkadoon grasswren (Amytornis ballarae), found only in the spinifex-covered ranges around Mount Isa and named for the Kalkadoon people whose Country surrounds the town, and the Carpentarian grasswren, searched for again among the boulder-strewn hills and low open woodland. The same country holds spinifexbird, black-tailed treecreeper, grey-headed honeyeater, spinifex pigeon and various finches.

After a midday break, spend the afternoon following the Leichhardt River to Lake Moondarra for a change of habitat and species: wandering and plumed whistling-duck, green pygmy-goose, glossy ibis, plumed egret, red-backed kingfisher, diamond dove, varied lorikeet, more honeyeaters and finches, plus purple-necked rock-wallaby and freshwater crocodile.

Overnight: Mount Isa.
Meals: B/L/D.

Enjoy a final breakfast and say farewell to the group, then continue on your own from Mount Isa.

Meals: B.