Darwinia Drive Trail, Dryandra

Visited: summer

Recommendation: Drive the trail early in the day to get the best chance of seeing a range of animals. This area is better for ground dwelling animals rather than birds. 

The Darwinia Drive Trail is a 23km drive around the Dryandra woodlands. There are several back roads criss-crossing the area so there's plenty to explore. It's better to be driving when you're in Dryandra, particularly if you're looking for numbats and other wildlife. This is partly because it's such a big place and partly because everything gets spooked quite easily. It's much easier to see things from a car and obviously you don't want to walk 23km. 

My partner and I visited in the heat of summer so we spent time on the trail in the early morning and late afternoon. The advantage of visiting at this time of year was that it was very quiet. I'm not sure how much we would have seen with lots of other cars on the track. This, obviously, increased our chances of seeing some of the ground dwelling animals in the woods. The disadvantage, of course, is that we were then stuck in a campervan during the hottest parts of the day, just trying to find shade. 

The trail itself is very pleasant. In part, it skirts the outside of Dryandra and you can see into the crop fields adjacent to the woodlands. The first time that we drove it, it was late afternoon and we didn't see very much. We did it again at night and we mostly saw possums. We stopped to photograph a few of them but there are only so many possum photographs one needs! The highlight of that circuit was a Tawny Frogmouth who sat up very nicely for us. 

The next morning we went out quite early and we had a bit more luck. It was quite cool in the mornings, up until around 9.30 and then the temperature shot up. At around 7 each morning, we would see monitors alongside the roads. Some would tolerate us from a distance and some disappeared rapidly. We only saw Sand Monitors here and they were much smaller than the ones I have seen in Queensland. 

I really don't know what this guy is doing on the left here. He looks like he's practising to be a meerkat. Maybe he was sunning himself or just looking down the road to see what was coming. He was interesting though and unconcerned about us. 

Sand Monitor or Goanna (Varanus gouldii) 

The highlight of that drive was finding an echidna. This is a relatively small echidna and he was very close to the road. Echidnas are really shy and once they sense your presence, they will curl up into a ball. But if you hang around and they get used to you, they will uncurl and eventually will go about their business, ignoring you unless you get too close. If you have a camera with a decent lens on it, it is relatively easy to photograph them. They are very interesting and curious creatures too. 

Short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus)