Posts by author: Seamus
You can Fly into Cape York and spend some time exploring. There is heaps to see in just one area. Explore the Iron Range National Park, Chili Beach and Lockhart River area from Portland Roads. To encourage people to visit Portland Roads Beach Shack during the wet season, we have negotiated deals with Skytrans and [...]
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This colourful tree snake is very long. At the other end his colour changes to an olive green. He is living under this water tank in our yard.
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We often have interesting guests at Portland Roads. I was just talking to some Lizard people and told them about this little fellow. So just found out that this is a Major Skink. He was in our kitchen and ran under the bench, behind some boxes. This photo was in July 2011, but I also [...]
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NOTE: We’ve closed the petition as we had to have all communication to DERM by 5pm Jan 5th. Thank you to the people who signed and I’m sure emails direct to the member (Lorinda.Morrissey@derm.qld.gov.au) after the close date can’t hurt. Have your say by 5pm Jan 5 on the proposal for Queensland Parks and [...]
Continue Reading →Here is a link to the Cooktown and Cape York website with road conditions that are updated regularly
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Ophichthus cephalozona, a photo by Ben Naden on Flickr. Here is a better photo of our sea creature, taken on North Sulawesi, Indonesia
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When we first got here and walked at low tide we spotted one of these strange creatures, when I asked around no one had seen anything like it, a sea snake with a frilled neck sounded pretty unlikely. Nothing came up on google and I had no picture to post on the forums. We just [...]
Continue Reading →We have just done a trip up to the tip of Cape York and back so I thought I would share where is good to go. We had friends up from Canberra so it was a good excuse to explore. Bramwell Station was a find, we took a wrong turn on the way to Bramwell [...]
Continue Reading →This is a beautiful video of the Lockhart River Aboriginal Community just near us. It shows the places we visit regularly, Quintel Beach, Chili Beach, and some of the people we know. It was made in 2008. Lockhart River intro to Bush Tucker video
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Portland Roads is the access point for Restoration Island which is just a quick boat ride across the water. Restoration Island is listed in the Wwoofing directory. In February 2010 this Wwooofer called to find out if Dave was taking anyone. He said no since it was the wet season and he was going away, [...]
Continue Reading →I found this wonderful article about a trip to Iron Range National Park. They spotted an incredible amount of wildlife in their 3 days, and have some beautiful photos of many of the species to be found around the Portland Roads area. He says ‘The Iron Range is a special place and really is like [...]
Continue Reading →Well, we have been living on Cape York for 6 months now. Portland Roads is very special, but we haven’t really explored further yet. We have some friends coming up from Canberra soon, so now we are planning our Cape York adventure. We thought we would share our research here as it may be useful [...]
Continue Reading →We often hear birds but don’t always see them, so we are left wondering what they are. I was thrilled to find this site to help identify our local species, especially the night birds. Bird sounds from Australasia and the Pacific is a site where people have submitted their bird recordings, it is also a resource [...]
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We spotted this huge green treefrog yesterday, here at the Portland Roads Beach Shack. He was perched in a tree just near the path to our house. He sat perfectly still while we photographed him. Notice that he has ear patches rather than holes. That is Seamus’ arm behind him holding down the tree branch [...]
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This Matrax ad was filmed at Chili Beach in June 2010. The film crew stayed at Portland Roads Beach Shack which gave them a good base to explore the area and easy access to Chili Beach.
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One dark night we heard a strange hissing noise. This is a worry when you live in the tropics in a house that is open to wildlife. On investigation the hiss was regular and occurred whenever we walked past this particlur post on our deck. Once we worked out that it couldn’t be a snake we [...]
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A Blue-winged Kookaburra flew past me while I was driving from Lockhart River to Portland Roads. Apparently they are common on the cape and Southern New Guinea. I had never seen a Blue kookaburra before, it was a very quick glimpse but quite striking. There seem to be lots of bright blue creatures here, birds, [...]
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The Palm Cockatoo also has a distinctive red cheek patch that changes colour when the bird is alarmed or excited. It has a unique display where the bird (typically the male) drums a large branch against a dead bough or tree, creating a loud noise that can be heard up to 100 m away. It [...]
Continue Reading →Golden orb-web spiders belong to the family Tetragnathidae, subfamily Nephilinae. There are two genera: Nephila (Golden orb-web spiders) and the monophyletic genus Nephilengys (hermit spiders). There are three species in the genus Nephila: Nephila pilipes fenestrata (black-legged golden orb-web spider), Nephila senegalensis annulata (banded-legged golden orb-web spider) and Nephila inaurata madagascariensis (red-legged golden orb-web spider). The genus Nephilengys consists [...]
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