Deep Creek National Park

Visited: autumn

Recommendation: Even in drought conditions, I saw lots of wildlife and great birds. Can't wait to visit again in the springtime!

Deep Creek is a National Park and Conservation Area on the Fleurieu Peninsula. It's quite a fragmented area with what seems like pockets of forests linked by track roads through farms and pasture fields. There are several different campgrounds you can stay at around the park that start down on the coast, giving great views of Kangaroo Island and the coastline to the east. I stayed at the Trigg campground and used that as a base to explore the park.

The National Park is renowned for being the largest remaining portion of natural vegetation on the Fleurieu Peninsula. Its diverse landscape, ranging from rolling coastal hills to deep gullies, supports a rich variety of native flora. It preserves significant areas of Messmate stringybark open forest (Eucalyptus obliqua) on high ridge tops and upper slopes, and also features Pink Gum (Eucalyptus fasiculosa).

I particularly like the large number of Yacca grass trees (Xanthorrhoea semiplana) is a prominent feature of the landscape, with its distinctive long flower spikes.

I visited in autumn and after a very, very long, dry spring and summer, and you could really feel how dry it was. The roads were very, very dusty and the trees were wilting and just very dry. There was quite a lot of bird life, though, still around, which I haven't seen in other places in the state that were equally as dry.

First up were Scarlet Robin and I saw them in various locations. What was really interesting was that the males were really brightly coloured, ready for breeding, and even the females had strong pink blushes on their breasts. I think that they start breeding in July so they were obviously gearing up to the courting rituals.

Scarlet Robin (Petroica boodang)

Superb Fairywrens, were everywhere in groups, and including males that were also in breeding plumage. They were ever present around the ground surrounding the campervan, pecking away and looking for water quite frequently. I didn't see any other species of fairy wrens here though.

Superb Fairywren (Malurus cyaneus)

Crimson Rosellas flew by in the mornings and the afternoons but they were busy and quite difficult to pin down. There were no Adelaide Rosellas here, which surprised me because I'd seen them not too far away up in Second Valley. Their range is in southeastern South Australia, through Tasmania, Victoria, coastal New South Wales, and into southeastern Queensland. There are reports of Adelaide Rosellas in the Fleurieu, so they might be seen here.

Crimson Rosella (Platycercus elegans)

My big find for the visit were Crescent Honeyeaters, and I heard them throughout the park on several locations. They were quite difficult to photograph as they didn't seem to come out of the foliage very much, and I only got photographs of one in the gloom of a small patch of water in one of the dry creek beds.

Crescent Honeyeater (Phylidonyris pyrrhoptera)

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