Nowra Showgrounds

Visited: Autumn

Recommendation: This cheap alternative to the expensive caravan parks in town really paid off. Spectacular views over the river during the day gives way to gliders, owls, possum and frogmouth at night. 

Nowra Showgrounds are in the middle of the town, 160 kilometres south-southwest of Sydney.  It is an important regional centre with around 25,000 people living there. It is the seat and commercial centre of the region of Shoalhaven. I really like the fact that it is named after the Indigenous word for black cockatoo. 

The region around Nowra is a farming community with a thriving dairy industry and a significant amount of state-owned forest land. This makes the whole area very nice to explore with open pastures and thick forest. 

The showgrounds themselves are like most such places, functional and basic but it was pretty cheap to stay there and the view of the river was spectacular. 

There were lots of rosella and lorikeet zooming around the tall trees in the campground and cockatoo screeched intermittently. When we arrived it was pouring with rain so we hunkered down until it passed. It was only on our second night that we started to hear the call of the Southern Boobook. We could tell it must be in the campsite for us to have heard it so we bailed out of the campervan on the hunt.

The first thing I found was a Tawny Frogmouth that swooped in front of me. You never get tired of finding these birds and they are amazingly tolerant of humans. Yet again I was able to walk right up to it. We took a few shots and continued the search for the owls.

There was a good bit of noise around and we identified possums and fruit bats as the likely culprits. On scouring the trees a Brush-tailed Possum was sitting in the fork of a tree and although it was quite high up, I couldn't resist. These large marsupials are so interesting. They are arboreal mammals and are well-adapted for climbing with sharp claws and a prehensile tail that they can use for grasping branches. As omnivores, their diet mainly consists of eucalyptus leaves, but they will also eat fruits, flowers, insects, and even small birds and eggs. 

But the possums don't get it all their own way. We spotted the Boobook sitting high up and while we were trying to photograph it, a Sugar Glider appeared on a neighbouring tree trunk. This took our attention and as we put the torch on to it, the owl swooped and tried to snatch it. Thankfully, the small possum escaped and disappeared immediately. We thought maybe the light distracted the owl for a fraction of a second allowing the glider to get away. It was heart stopping to watch!

And there it was, the owl sat briefly for us. Not a great shot but we were thrilled to see it hunting and flying around the campsite. 

Our next great spot was one of my favourites from the pigeons and dove family, the White-headed Pigeon. This one was looking a little ratty, maybe in moult but sitting in bright sunshine the day after our owl adventures, it was impossible to pass up. 

White-headed Pigeon (Columba leucomela)