Mallee and Outback Birds of Victoria and Mungo

Your guide collects you in Melbourne in the morning and heads north over the tail of the Great Dividing Range to Mount Korong Conservation Reserve, where granite hills rise out of the surrounding plains. The reserve and the covenanted properties around it protect woodland bird habitat holding wedge-tailed eagle, peregrine falcon, brown falcon, white-browed babbler, Gilbert's whistler, rainbow bee-eater, southern whiteface and diamond firetail. Painted honeyeater, red-backed kingfisher and white-backed swallow turn up less predictably. Kangaroos, wallabies and echidnas are about, and the warm rock brings out shingleback lizards, marbled geckos and Jacky dragons. After a picnic lunch there may be time at Kooyoora State Park or Inglewood Conservation Reserve, depending on how the morning at Korong has gone. The day ends in Bendigo, a gold rush city with a largely intact Victorian streetscape and mature city parks that hold birds. Overnight: Bendigo. Meals: L/D.

A full day in Greater Bendigo National Park, 17,020 ha assembled in 2002 from a group of smaller reserves, working the Kamarooka and Whipstick sections. These hold heathland, grey box and mallee eucalypt woodland, and they sit on the crossover where northern and southern honeyeaters both come in to flowering trees. Water holes draw birds as the day heats up. The afternoon is at the Bendigo treatment ponds and the red gum woodland along Bendigo Creek: waterfowl, raptors and forest birds including red-capped robin, shy heathwren, brush bronzewing, peaceful dove, brown treecreeper, and white-fronted, fuscous, yellow-tufted, tawny-crowned and purple-gaped honeyeater. At dusk there is a chance of grey-headed flying foxes in the city centre parks. Overnight: Bendigo. Meals: B/L/D.

North first to Terrick Terrick National Park, 3,880 ha, protecting granite outcrops, one of Victoria’s largest remaining stands of white cypress-pine, and a section of northern plains grassland that forms part of the Patho Plains Important Bird Area and one of the last strongholds of the plains-wanderer. The granite gives long views over the Riverina plains. Then across the plains to the Kerang Wetlands, a Ramsar site of 23 lakes, marshes and swamps covering 9,784 ha, designated in 1982. The lakes the tour visits depend on water levels and what is present. Some hold large Australian white ibis and straw-necked ibis rookeries; others carry waders, waterfowl and terns. Later in the day, Lake Tyrrell: 20,860 ha of salt crust, Victoria’s largest salt lake, holding a thin film of water only after good rain. The name comes from a Wergaia word for sky, and the Boorong people of this country are recorded for their star-lore. The shrublands on the southern side hold rufous fieldwren, black-faced woodswallow and white-winged fairy-wren. The day finishes at Ouyen, a small town in the middle of the Victorian Mallee. Overnight: Ouyen. Meals: B/L/D.

The morning is on a private property of about 2,430 ha managed for malleefowl, with the local guide who monitors it. The property carries established mallee woodland, revegetated ground and open areas, and several malleefowl mounds are known on it. Malleefowl are megapodes. The pair builds a mound of leaf litter and sand up to 5 m across and 1 m high, the female lays around 15 eggs into it, and the male tests the mound with his bill and adds or removes material to hold the interior at 33°C, tending it for as much as nine months of the year. Chicks dig their own way out, can fly within a day and get no parental care at all. The species is listed as vulnerable nationally, and its range has contracted sharply over the past century; what remains depends on predator control and on landholders like this one. Desert parrots and honeyeaters use the same country. The afternoon is in Hattah-Kulkyne National Park, 48,000 ha of mallee, native pine and river red gum on the Murray. Crested bellbird, peaceful dove and pied butcherbird are all vocal here, and the picnic grounds are reliable for apostlebirds, which move about in noisy family parties. Overnight: Ouyen. Meals: B/L/D.

Back into Hattah-Kulkyne, this time the mallee-spinifex woodland in the west of the park. Mallee eucalypt over a Triodia spinifex understorey is the specific habitat for Mallee emu-wren, striated grasswren and chestnut quail-thrush and getting onto them means standing still and listening. The Mallee emu-wren is about 16.5 cm long, most of that tail, and is listed as endangered: the 2014 Ngarkat fires removed it from South Australia, and the birds being reintroduced there come from Victorian stock. Crested bellbird and grey currawong call through the same country, and western grey kangaroos, lace and sand goannas, shinglebacks and bearded dragons are all about. After a picnic lunch, the tour crosses the Murray River into New South Wales and enters the Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area, walking a section of the fossil channel of Willandra Creek, the inflow that fed the whole lake system until it stopped flowing about 14,000 years ago. After checking in at Mungo Lodge, there is time in Mungo National Park for the late light on the dry bed of Lake Mungo, which is usually where the first red kangaroos of the trip turn up. Overnight: Mungo Lodge. Meals: B/L/D.

The first of two full days in the park. The morning goes to the lunette itself, the crescent dune on the eastern shore known as the Walls of China, which runs for more than 33 km and stands up to 40 m above the lakebed. Erosion of it has exposed the archaeological record the World Heritage listing rests on. Access is by guided walk only, and nothing may be moved or collected. The rest of the day works the habitats around it: dense mallee woodland, cypress pine and buloke, mulga scrub and open saltbush plain, each with a different bird list. White-backed swallows nest in the eroded faces of the white sand dunes. Emu, pink cockatoo, mulga parrot, bluebonnet, chestnut-crowned babbler, crested bellbird and splendid, white-winged and purple-backed fairywren are all on the day's list, along with black-faced, masked and white-browed woodswallow, orange chat and zebra finch. Red and western grey kangaroos are common. Reptiles include sand monitor, bearded, painted and mallee dragon, shingleback and Bynoe’s gecko. Overnight: Mungo Lodge. Meals: B/L/D.

A second full day, given to the parts of the park the first day does not reach and to the Willandra record in detail. The lakes filled and dried repeatedly over more than 100,000 years, and the sediments hold that sequence. The same system preserves a megafauna layer from a cooler, wetter Australia when giant marsupials lived here alongside people and the lakes held fresh water. Mungo Lady, recovered from the lunette in 1969, was cremated, her bones crushed and buried. At roughly 40,000 years old, hers is the oldest known ritual cremation anywhere in the world. Birding continues through the day across the saltbush, the mulga and the pine-buloke country, with more time at the water points where the arid-zone birds come in. Late afternoon is back at the lunette, when low light picks out the erosion channels in the dune face. Overnight: Mungo Lodge. Meals: B/L/D.

After breakfast, the tour heads for Wentworth and the junction of the Murray and the Darling (Barka), the two largest rivers in the Murray-Darling Basin. The water and the banks hold Caspian tern, Australasian darter, white-bellied sea-eagle, whistling kite, yellow rosella and blue-faced honeyeater. The tour finishes in Mildura around midday. Meals: B.