Platypus Hunting and Kingfishing in the Tropics.

Outsider and nature photographer tells us about his recent adventure in Far North Queensland.

Where I live, the same city io has it’s HQ here in South Australia, we're really fortunate to have some pretty great natural spaces and wildlife. But other parts of Australia have different environments, so they have different critters and when I had a last minute opportunity to tag along on an Australian Geographic tour of Far North Queensland I jumped at it. My two main goals: see a platypus and some of the kingfishers they have up there that we don’t get down here. 

My destination was Cairns, about a three hour flight from Adelaide, which I did not do because a) I love road trips, b) I wanted to take a LOT of camera gear with me which is always tricky on a plane and c) I’m a bit of a moron.

It’s 2,971kms if you take the most direct route, and me being me, I did not do that. Not even close. I added at least 500kms and quite a few extra adventures on the way up. Which were actually pretty excellent fun.

Down south, the weather was cool at times, and actually freezing cold at night, before getting progressively warmer as I made my way north. And yes, I absolutely wore my io every. single. day.

Cold? io. Warm? io. Humid? io. Daytime? io. Night time. io.

Next time you're travelling, be sure to take some high performing merino layers with you and stay comfortable.

This isn’t a sales pitch. It’s a fact. I could easily just say I wore a T-shirt some of the time, but nope, I wore the socks every day, usually for three or four days at a time with tactical boots. I wore the boxers every day, usually for a few days at a time under full tactical pants. And I wore a couple of T-shirts in rotation, again, for a week or two before I managed to do some washing. And they were all ridiculously comfortable and versatile.

But I know what you probably really want to hear about is Platypus, so let me cut straight to the chase: I saw a LOT of platypus. Before this trip I’d seen them a grand total of once. On this trip it was platypus-arama. I even stayed the night at a place called ‘Platypus Camp’ and yep, you guessed it, they had platypus living right there in their stream just a few hundred metres from where I was sleeping!

Backing up for a second, if you’re not from Australia and you’re wondering what the heck a ‘platypus’ even is, it’s basically a duck-billed, beaver-tailer, otter-footed, egg-laying aquatic creature. (For the scientists out there, they’re a species of mammal known as a ‘monotreme’, which are separate to other mammals because of the whole egg laying thing.)

Our unique, lightweight, natural merino fabrics mean you can do less laundry, and have more time for adventures. 

Having managed to see a few platypus, that just left the kingfishers and some of those required a LOT more effort in some pretty tricky conditions.

There was the aptly named Little Kingfisher that required me to hide out in a swamp and get bitten ten million times by mosquitoes.

Then there was the Forest Kingfishers which were probably some of the most obliging.

The Azure kingfishers required me to navigate a croc-infested river - albeit in a boat so I was fairly safe. I think/hope.

The Torresian Kingfishers decided to turn up on one day only, on a rainy day, which required me to sit in the rain for hours overlooking some mud flats where it was hunting crabs - lucky for me I was in my io and did not get cold despite getting drenched in a cool day. (See? Genuinely versatile!)

The blue winged kookaburra (a type of kingfisher) was not very obliging at all, and despite driving around in 1,000 degree heat all day, I managed only a quick glimpse and what's known as an ‘ID shot’ - nothing great, just something that proves I did indeed see one.

The Sacred Kingfishers were out and about and not too elusive, but this is the one species of kingfisher I get quite close to home, so wasn't high up on my list.

I also managed to catch a glimpse of some Red Backed Kingfishers, but I can see them not too far from home also so didn't spend too much time searching for them and didn't come home with any good pics. 

And finally, the Buff-breasted Paradise Kingfisher did not bother to turn up. At all. I stayed two nights right near one of their primary breeding grounds, but these guys migrate from New Guinea for our summer and I reckon I missed them by about two weeks. A few weeks after I got back I heard they'd started turning up and dammit! But it's also an excellent excuse to go back again next year!

Having ticked off the kingfishers (and a bunch of other pretty cool wildlife) it was time to head home. About five days driving right through the desert.

All up I covered the better part of about 7,500kms, took 35,000+ photos, and wore a couple of io T-shirts the entire time as well as my socks and jocks. And for the record, my T-shirt of choice is the Universal for most things, and the Celsius when I want something even lighter in really warm weather.