Reptile Fight Club - Australia Birthday Trip Recap w/ special Guests

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

In this episode, Justin and Rob discuss Justin's recent trip to Australia. Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIGFollow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network @FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Alright, welcome to Reptile Fight Club. It's been a little while since we've recorded. I guess we had enough shows in the bank, but back for another one, back in action again. So I'm Justin Julander here with my faithful co-host, Rob Stone. How you doing? I'm good. I'm good. I'm excited for tonight.

It's going to be great to, you're going gonna lead the party, but it'll be a little bit different from what we usually do, but I think it'd be great True true. Yeah, and we're I know I don't know if I told you guys but we're recording the video so we can show pictures and stuff so put on your prettiest faces if that's a possibility, but Alright. Well Today we're gonna be chatting about our recap of a trip to central Australia, which turned out to be quite a nice little trip. So,

but we've got quite the group with us tonight. I'll introduce Jordan first. He's been on the podcast before, but he celebrated his 50th as well on the trip So we were it was kind of a joint birthday bash out there. It was pretty nice Jason's not too far behind Jason hood. So and then also joined by Dale Egan Nick Vine and Aspen mayhem. So they we Form quite quite the team of herpers there so i think everybody contributed uh pretty well to the trip so it was a it was a great great time so we'll talk about

kind of the things we saw and we're also going to be uh i guess debating whether or not you should take real pictures with a big nice camera or if you should just be a phone or use your phone and that kind of thing so well I don't know what the best way to do this is without just unleashing the chaos so welcome guys thanks for thanks for being here tonight looking forward to talking with everybody yeah it's great to be here yeah great, for sure. Great to be here. All right, so maybe we'll start out with some of you guys, your experience first, because Jordan came over early, went down, flew into South Australia, picked up Nick,

and they had a little head start on the Herping Fun. Jason also, Jason Hood also flew in a few days early and grabbed a car and headed up north to Darwin. So they kind of went to opposite ends of the country and had some different experiences there. So maybe we'll start out with the Southerners and hear kind of what happened before they joined the Central Party. Yeah, absolutely. It was pretty fantastic to be back down in the Adelaide area again. And we did really well on the geckos. The geckos have always kind of stumped me down there a little bit. But Nick and I met up, our flights worked out almost perfectly and we landed in Adelaide at the same time and jumped

in our trusty Prado and headed over to Steve's Reptile Creative, his pet store there in Adelaide and saw all his incredible animals he's got there and a little bit of a behind-the-scenes tour cool what what's the name of it again his shop I think it's reptile creative okay yeah yeah but that was incredible to see everything that he's doing there and I was really taken back because it wasn't that long ago I was there with my family

and it was a couple of weeks before it opened. And the place was packed and the wall mural's incredible. The photos that he's got on the front window are incredible. Lots of great products, incredible animals. So that was really neat way to kind of kick off the trip is to see a lot of, you know you know, the Australian, uh, kind of deli cup scene, which is not something that, you know, I've seen before. So, uh, really neat to see that before we headed out to the peninsula and, uh, the only, the only downside was that Steve didn't join you in

the, in the trip. Yeah. He was supposed to join us, right? Yup. Yeah. Yeah. I was hoping his loss, I guess. Yeah. He'll be kicking himself, uh, here in this podcast. Cause I know he wishes he was with us. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. That was unfortunate. He couldn't make it. He was, he was planning on it in the beginning, but, um, some other circumstances kept him from making it. So, yeah, sad to miss out having him there. And here in the, what's the song?

The Fraggle Rock. Fraggle Rock, yeah. I hummed it the whole trip. It kept it down low because I didn't want to steal his thunder in case he joined us towards the tail end of the trip. But so you guys know I was humming Fraggle Rock the whole trip.

But yes, we made our way over to the Arab Peninsula, which is a bit of a drive after that long flight. But we made it out there. And my first time out there was two years ago with you, Justin. And yeah, well, we did get the thorny devil and, and that beautiful Mulga we saw then. We didn't see a thorny devil this time, we didn't see then. We didn't see a thorny devil this time. We didn't see the Eugurnia that we'd hoped we would see out there. But the goal for me was to see the Neferris that I had missed, the Stiletus down there. And of course, Nick was out there last year and he nailed it.

And that was the breeding pair you found out there, wasn't it, Nick? Yeah, that was in November. Yeah. So that was really neat to finally get down there. When Yeah that was in November. Yeah so that was really neat to to finally get down there when I was there in November it was pouring rain when I was there with my family so it's nice to get out there and have good conditions and we were hiking and hiking and kind of heading back to the vehicle because we hadn't seen anything and temperatures were dropping pretty quick and good good hiking conditions but a little bit cooler than I thought I would be great and as we got almost within sight of where the vehicle would be if it was light,

the sniffer just crawled out right between us in the middle of the trail. Oh cool. So that was a pretty neat experience. Yeah and that was Stiletus. That was Stiletus. Yeah. Got a picture of that one. Rob, you want to throw that up?

And then Nick, so you were out there the year prior. That was kind of your first intro to Australian her trips, right? And yeah, yeah, it was. Get your feet wet there. You found some. So did you see Stiletus then on that trip? You saw Stiletus? We saw quite a few Stiletus.

Yeah. All right. Nice. Yeah, it's a beautiful shot. see Stiletus then on that trip? You saw Stiletus? We saw quite a few Stiletus, yeah. Alright, nice. Yeah, it's a beautiful shot. So this is a shot from Jordan. So very nice detail. That eye is just crystal clear, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

I gotta admit I was a little jealous of this find. Yeah, I would love to have seen the neferis down there, but yeah, good stuff. Cool. All right. And then Nick, so you were a little bit of a late addition. You're not quite the old guy that most of us here are. So I thought it was really funny what your mom was telling people. Why don't you share that story? Oh, yeah. My mom just got a kick out of the the idea that I was going to be camping in the desert for three weeks with uh for for a bunch of people's 50 year 50 year birthday and um you know on the younger side but I wouldn't have missed it for anything. It was incredible. Yeah my son's out there with a bunch of 50 year olds.

It was incredible. Yeah. My son's out there with a bunch of 50 year olds. That was kind of funny. Yeah. Nick's young enough to be our, like probably my second to youngest kid. He's the about the same age. So yeah. Yeah. Cool stuff. But yeah, definitely, uh, worth having you there and, and productive herper and yeah, it was great to, to meet you in person and have you out there. Yeah. Yeah, it was incredible All right Okay, so after after you so you start on the peninsula kind of yep down below and yeah So the next night we headed up to Pernadine Nick. Why don't you tell us about that? Absolutely incredible evening. We had for geckos. That was nuts Yeah, it was pretty it was it was pretty remarkable.

Definitely. It was I think it took a little while for things to turn on. I mean, we were seeing a lot of spiders, some really cool really cool observations. There was a, you know, a wolf spider that as Jordan was shining his flashlight on it attracted a moth. And as like I was thinking it, and he as he said, wouldn't it be cool if it ate it? The wolf spider just grabbed the moth out of the air and that was really cool. Jordan went and got his camera and got some really awesome shots of that.

Do you want to throw that one up? Was it the Hagakosa? Yeah, yeah, it's a Tiger Wolf. You want to throw up number eight there Rob? Yeah, that's, that's a cool shot to cut that big old beefy in his, in his jaws. That looks like she loved, man. That's, I really liked those hoggy coast species. They're neat looking. Yeah, it was like, it was, you know, you don't get a sense of scale in a lot of

those photos, but it was, it was a big, you know, enough to stand out for sure. Yeah, cool. Yeah. And then it took a little while for it to turn on for the geckos. But then, like once it turned on, I think within an hour, we got six different species. Wow. Obviously for Pernadine, the target species is the Pernadine nobtail gecko, Nephris delani. And that was, that was, we, after a couple of leucasium, a couple of diplodactylus, yeah, that was the cherry on top.

The last, the last gecko of the night was that beautiful juvenile Delini. Yeah, that seemed to be kind of a theme. Like the juvenile geckos were out, especially the nephuras. Was this Deletus also a young animal? It was on the younger side, yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. But that's a beautiful gecko. I love the patterning on the delini. They're really nice looking geckos for sure. Another one I'm jealous of. Yep. There's leucasium. Man, that red just pops, doesn't it? What a nice looking gecko. Yeah, we actually got two. I didn't know that they overlapped, but we got leucasium microplex and leucasium danium, both in the same spot there. Very cool. Yeah. And then, yeah, Dippodactylus conspiculatus,

which was kind of an unexpected find. I don't know what it was at the southern extent of their range. I don't know what published records there are, but at least according to iNationalist, that's the furthest south that they've been found. Yeah, that's cool. And then the, you want to throw up number 11 there, yeah, the Pygopis. They're such cool things. I think these are one of my favorite species of legless gecko. They're so nice looking. And we we also saw one up in the center, I guess we'll get to that later.

But this one looks a little fresher, a little, yeah, a little different, a little younger, maybe. Nice looking animal, for sure. Very cool. So that that was all kind of in the in that area with the delini. Yeah, that was all it was all within an hour and 15 minutes. We got six species of gecko. Wow. Do you want to throw up that other number 17, the other leucasium? This damium, I just remember that color. It just pops on that thing. So nice. Very cool.

Yeah, the eyes on this one were really captivating. I absolutely love this gecko. Right. Man. What a, they're cool species for sure. So many, so many nice looking geckos. And, um, your pictures are really in, you know, making that clear, I think. All right. So you also, uh, had a little luck finding some gill and I right Yeah, we did yeah Nick had some experience. So nick why don't you talk about that as well? Yeah. Yeah, that was really cool. Um, it was A theme for the trip. It was blisteringly hot as we got further north. Um,

And so, you know, there wasn't a whole lot of activity during the day. So, but I have been on my previous trip, we went up through Roxby Downs and yeah, we got I think we got all the way up to Roxby Downs, we found Gil and I in two locations and with that, you know, having gotten experience with somebody else who, who was a lot more experienced in South Australia, I kind of got a feel for what the habitat looked like. And, and it was really cool driving through that country and seeing, you know, just the the expanse of of Molga carcasses and knowing that these are the Pygmy Mulga monitors, I was like, we, you know, we should stop and take a look around and it's actually really interesting before we found before I found this individual. them is you kind of look down in tree hollows and try to see them because it's too hot for them to be out basking. But one of the things I noticed is having kept dwarf monitors before, actually there

were a couple of those refugia that smelled like my monitors back home, which I was like kind of surprised by. I didn't, that was the the first time I noticed it and I don't know You know, maybe maybe that's a new method for herping is sniffing out the gill and I but I assume that they're just you know individuals are often confined to a like unlike a lot of monitors confined to a pretty small area so their droppings probably collect and sheds and whatnot and they're definitely is a smell associated with that Yeah and sheds and whatnot and there definitely is a smell associated with that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Did you know if the droppings and shed skins and things were kind of inside the hollow or are they?

I can only assume. I don't know. So that's, I probably should have looked a little bit harder. I was a little bit delirious walking around in 42 degrees in the with zero zero shade. 42 being we're in America. Oh yeah. I know you're still in Australia but. Well and I what is it? It's like a hundred and something. I can think about I can I know what 42 degrees feels like and I know what 105 feels like I just don't know what the conversion is. 107 is Fahrenheit.

Okay. So close enough. Pretty good. Yep. It's pretty warm. I think the other tough thing was is those Mulga trees are so white looking in that sunlight. Yeah, you know, you're in the heat of the day. And so when you start talking about the crevices, it's just, it's just black inside there.

Yeah. But, uh, yeah, it was really neat. That's cool. And it's neat to see kind of the, what the termites, uh, leaving's there on the last part of the shot. Yeah. That's probably been dead for a little while and the termites are taken over. And that's cool.

You wonder if he's snacking on termites at some time. What a find. That's's cool. You wonder if he's snacking on termites at some time. What a find. That's very cool. And then here's another, a Rhinkeodura, the fine snouted geckos. This was a different species than we saw in the center, but yeah, this was the variances. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. They're such nice looking things. And then then was this also in the same area or is this? No, this is Tessellated. This one is up in Cooper Pady. Okay. So we made the run up there to see if we couldn't find a Taipan and get to experience some of that Taipan habitat that I've heard lots about. And I've got to say it is one of the most breathtaking, surreal, most incredible places I've ever been.

It was wild. And I'd seen pictures. I thought I knew what to expect. But when you stand someplace on Earth and you look as far as the eye can see in every direction, and there's not a single plant around that you can see. It is really a wild, wild experience. Yeah, yeah. The next to the road, you got a little bit of grass, but then you take 10 steps off the road and there is nothing. And every horizon is a mirage. And so you literally have this, it looks like Mars, and then it just disappears into Mirage in every direction. And you think that there's no life, but as soon as the sun went down, every pebble on the road grew legs, and there was little dragons everywhere.

And then of course, is the picture on the screen, my favorite little brown lapid. I think we found what, six Suda the first night? Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. There was a bunch of Suda out moving. Yeah, it was but beautiful animals. Nonetheless, we did not find our Taipan, but the not find our Taipan, but the gibber dragons, the earless dragons and the pseudo were, you know, stunning animals to find. And it's really wild that there's that much life soon as the sun stopped beating down on us. The

place just came alive. So it was really neat. Very cool. I was taken aback by the kangaroos. Like obviously we had seen a ton of kangaroos coming north, but like all of these animals you could you could you could picture them being being able to shelter underground during the day. But yeah, having experienced that moon plane during the daytime, and then not seeing anything and then all of a sudden there are kind of roos on the road. Like where were you? You know? Right. Yeah. Where did they come from? That's crazy. What a neat place. And you said it was sparkly or shiny. Wasn't there some kind of...

Yeah. So it looked like there was glass broken and I was like, what is that? Like is someone dumping glass out here? And we pull over and I looked it up and I'm already, I think, oh, it's gypsum crystals. So there's petrified wood and gypsum crystals everywhere, but it literally is big sheets of this clear crystal. You can see your hand through it. Just really was wild looking, but in the bright sun, you know, it just sparkled like broken glass as far as the eye could see. It was really wild. And then of course, you look

out the other window where you've got the sun behind you and everything's just this soft dirt, cracked dirt, you know, brown soil as far as the eye can see. So really, really neat area. The dingo fence runs right through it. So it was interesting to see. I've always wondered how they keep the dingoes from crossing where the roads are. And of course, as we pass through where the dingo fence is, the siren kicks on. And it was super blaring loud.

And so I was like, oh, well, that makes sense. You could use an audio deterrent and still have to be able to keep them from crossing through those areas. like, oh, well, that makes sense. You could do, you could use an audio deterrent and still have, uh, you know, to be able to keep them from crossing through those areas. So another thing, another new thing for me to learn about Australia. Yeah, that's, that's really crazy. All right. So then you kind of made your way up north.

Um, maybe we'll, uh, uh, move over to Jason and hear about his, uh, adventures with, with, uh, Dale and up in the north part of the country you awake Jason Yeah, barely. Oh, sorry Rob not not this one. Yeah All right Yeah, I flew in to Brisbane and the Dallas Springs rented a car and left our Destination to go all the way up to Darwin.

Um, the, I, I'm too big to sleep on planes. Plus I got food poisoning on the way over. So I was like threw up about four times on the plane and was not, but when I, when I landed, I was, I was too full of energy to go to sleep and I wasn't, that wasn't my plan anyway. So I got the car shot north to,'s Marbles and I got there like 6 30 in the afternoon evening and that was as far as I could make it. I was exhausted. But I was planning on going further north to Tennant Creek but when I started driving,

I just felt it and the first time I got a signal, I made plans for Devil's Marbles, made the reservation, drove up there and I barely got there. I was falling asleep with the wheel. Yeah. Got in there, got the room passed out and 3.30 in the morning I woke up. I'm like, all right, well, I guess we're going.

Grabbed the shower, got my first herb of the trip was a Gecko on the bathroom window I'm like perfect. This is great. Let's go got out in the road Went up a little ways. I got some food then I went a little ways and I Came around the name of the the lake body up there Mary Mary like Mary Lake and I Got there, saw a angle dragon, angle head dragon right off the. The side of the parking lot.

And then decided I was going to go for a big hike, which I, there was stuff there. I didn't see any of it. I heard it and it just disappeared into the brush. I hiked over all sorts of crazy terrain To finally end up on a sidewalk Out in the middle of the whole field. I just hiked through nearly breaking my ankles multiple times And I'm like, alright, I'm exhausted. It's getting up over close to 100 degrees. I'm gonna walk back I walk back on the sidewalk saw three different lizards on the sidewalk I walked back on the sidewalk, saw three different lizards on the sidewalk, got close up as more of the same, the little angled head dragons.

And then right as I got back to the park near the pond, near the lake, there was some parrots mobbing a monitor. So I went running over to see what the monitor was. And by the time I got over there, like I lost him for one second as I crossed behind a tree. Yeah. And he just disappeared. So I assumed he had gone up a tree. So I just sat there next to this tree in a little bit of shade by a bench, dumping water on myself because I was just dying at that point. It was so hot. And after like 20-30 minutes of just sitting there, I'm like, All right, he's not coming out. I got no more time to wait.

I gotta get going. So I get my, go back to my car and just like I'm gonna take one little lap around the parking lot just to see. And that's where the monitor had apparently gone around the whole parking lot from where I was. It kind of went around and came back onto the parking lot and was walking across the backside of the parking lot. So that's where I got the, you guys were saying you thought it was a Argus, the the And I saw one or two dead kangaroos and then like 10 dead cows And about 10 dead vehicles that probably had run ins with cows previously

Got all the way up to Kakadu park I made another stop at Edith try to go to Edith Falls and see if I can see something there just to tie Time out my time going into Kakadu for darkness and I did the three feet from the car that I didn't see at all. And it was about a dozen donkey. Yeah. And I'm like, Okay, I need to be able to see what's going on. And my headlights were what I found out later were pointed straight downward. And then eventually later on, I figured out how to flip them up about an hour later. But the prior that it was donkey, like three or four

horses, and then a like full Brahma bull, but they were all off the road. And the whole time there was the frog mouse that were just kind of hopping down the road in front of me. And initially it was just one that I was kind of making run down the fly down the road every a hundred yards. And then I got a second one. So I'm slamming on the brakes every 50 yards or so, cause there's another Tawny in the road. And then right about then was the water the that the horn, then went to drive around it. I took the drive around. It was the first time it thought of moving. And the entire time I'm just thinking the speed limit here is either 80 or a hundred kilometers an hour. I was doing like 30, 20 or 30 is I couldn't see anything and I still almost hit the

thing like that was terrifying. Then I hit a dip, pressure dropped. Humidity went up. the and this was in Kakadu in Kakadu Yeah, nice got to the end of ended that little section and I thought man that I that this is it I got to turn around like if the pressure changed temperature went back up humidity went back down I'm like, no, that was it behind me I got I got to do I got five miles again and I pulled over and stopped and I went there's no way in hell I'm gonna make it because the other thing is I'm getting exhausted and the And they are not there to check you in late. I had to drive around for another half hour, finally find the buzzer to get, let them get, to get them to let me in, to find my room and sleep again. Um, I'm trying to rush this. I know we got a ton, but,

I wanted to ask Dale a quick question. Um, the bandy bandy, is that kind of a rare occurrence or are those pretty easily defined up there? I've never seen one out there. No, they're pretty rare. They are known to come out after the rain. So I think Jace timed it beautifully. When we were chatting earlier, sort of leading up to the trip, I sort of recommended that he hit when he hangs a ride on the Pine Creek and goes into that Kakadu National Park Road,

he tries to time that with sundown and that's what he was referring to when he went and stopped at Eden. So it was perfect timing, I think, and there's probably planning as well from Jason's perspective where he's hit that right at the dark period as the sun went down and then he was fortunate enough the rain just started and stopped and then the bandies come out. But yeah, they are typically, they are seen, the the It was beautiful. I did that hike during the day and it's the middle of nowhere forest and This thing that's kind of shocked me. Well that the it's out of season So they're they're not doing anything to maintain roads or paths or anything. So the paths were super overgrown Grass was six to eight feet high which was a neat feeling for me to be walking through grass taller than me, but the

me to be walking through grass taller than me. But the, as I got close to the art, the rock art site, my phone just went nuts. All this notifications and signal, I was missing from signal, all popped it, popped through at once up there. And I assume that's because they've got hidden cameras or something that they're using Wi-Fi for, Internet for to relay back to somebody or sensors or whatever. But whatever their security protocols were, it was great. I got to call my wife, do a video chat with her

with the rock art, get contact Dale, get some suggestions from him where I could spend the rest of my day. And from, did that, and the rock art was amazing. They had some of the, I didn't realize as I was looking at their Jordan mentioned later They had the x-ray style art where they were Showing you the skeleton and also different cuts of the meat on the fish and the turtles and whatnot So it was kind of nice to get an explanation after the fact of what I was looking at while I was up there

He went back to my pictures and enjoyed that stuff the that the that that it was just like show up get pop the Mertens move on to rest the trip perfect I was literally there for two minutes and there the Mertens just there and then nothing else I stayed for another half hour 40 minutes and nothing else happened from there I shot up and stopped at a boat launch on one of the rivers South Alley-Gate a boat ramp

South Alley-Gate yes and got to see a the I've only ever seen, I guess, the Indonesian, probably, mudskippers here in the American trade. So it's just cool to see a completely different mudskipper just sitting there. And they were super bold. Like that was super, super cool. And that was my first shot of seeing wallabies that weren't wild wallabies. They were kind of like, you know, you had city and country squirrels here. Same deal there with the wallabies and the kangaroos. They were really chill around the boat ramp. So they didn't care if you got close to them. We got pictures and videos.

And again, I think I had signaled there, so I was able to call my wife and do some video chat with her there as well. And then from there I went and got nothing all at Fog Dam other than the experience and almost tripping over a water buffalo. Right. I went for a little hike before sunset and as I was walking down the path and almost tripping over a water buffalo. I went for a little hike before sunset and as I was walking down the path, there was just a big stand of grass. And right when I was passing that grass, the smell of water buffalo just became very strong.

And I just kind of tiptoed away from that area, got to the end of the path and realized I had to go back the same way. And when I went, I had to go back. So when I went back, I was like very apprehensive and kind of like sniffing the air and no smell at all. So it was sitting right on the other side of that grass when I went by. But, um, apparently Fogged Inn was not, not the place to be that night because I didn't get anything except for one either whipsnake or a lapid on the road right before, the the as a result all those Adelaide River flood plains and all those crossings that you normally see a lot of abundance of wildlife heading out from Darwin to Kakadu, it just hadn't really ignited yet.

Particularly fog dam, when the flood plains are really up that's when you start seeing a lot more of the waters and slates and you know lesser whip snakes and a couple of death adders as well around the place. So it hadn't really hit. But, you know, obviously the rain have just kicked off in the last week or so. So that's probably going to be a reasonable spot the next week or two. Yeah, we, when we went to Fog Dam in October with Rob and the group, we pulled up behind this car. This car was stopped on the side of the road and there was a big water python right next to the car. And we got out and

we're taking pictures of them and they're like, what are you looking at? Like, oh, we thought you were stopped. We thought it was some herpers stopped for the, for the python, but they were just looking out over the floodplains and stuff, looking for whatever. They didn't realize it was a hot the long neck turtles and stuff sort of crossing. So, yeah. And you know, you can't really have your high beams on if another car is approaching the opposite way. So you sort of have to wait for them to pass and then go through again, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we only saw this one other car, right Rob? There wasn't much traffic when we were there, but yeah.

Yeah, old Grinchy. Yeah, that's true. I think she was trying to- A happy local. She was looking for water buffalo. Yeah, well, something. Her vanity plate said, Grinchy. That's right, old Grinchy.

Old Grinchy. It was obviously a huge effort from Jason. He landed, he's been in Australia for an hour and a half, just jumped straight in the hire car, took off straight up to Devil's Marbles, Tenant Creek, and the Yeah, it, um, everybody that I talked to about cockatoo said it just magical. And I just kind of got the very outskirts of it all. And that was the thing that kind of sucked it. I didn't really have time to spend there, you know, one exhausted evening driving through it and one fairly exhausted day hiking through the

heat in the, in the humidity and, you know, by myself with nobody around to, you know, throw ideas off of or anything or to feel comfortable like, like, yeah, let me go a little further, do a little more. There's someone else here in case a water buffalo stomps me out or something. Right. But yeah, I'd love to get back up there. But we finally met up with Dale and just kind of try to find some, I, the one thing I did see at the, when I stopped for the rock art, it was a bunch of little Brown skinks all over the place. Um, and, and at Coinda and at Dale's place, we started looking for some. And that was like the beginning at the trip of his garden, the go through all

the different, uh, for, for me as an American, one thing I thought was really kind of wild was all the different exotic fruit trees that he had in his yard. I thought, oh, like Australia has all these rolls and rags and you can't, you know, your feet are too dirty. They're going to stop you in the airport. You know, if you had seeds on your shoelaces, you're going to get thrown in the slammer here. And I go to his place and it's just, he had all this really cool fruit trees and stuff, South the the talk about the the hard hurt that we had the grabbed a bit of a bacon egg sandwich and a coffee and sort of did some nice meandering along the foreshore and all right there's a Scalaris, there's a Mitchelli, there's another Scalaris, so you know heaps of monitors around in those palm trees, so which is nice, so a Jace after Ben

doing it tough for the last sort of 36 hours, he's meandering along the foreshore with a sandwich and a coffee, just looking up, checking out all the Varanus species on offer. So he said, this is the most chilled out herp that I've ever done. And we probably saw a dozen odd Varanus there, whether it be the spotted tree or the Mitchell's water monitor. So he was pretty stoked with that. It was great for Gavin to come out and say hello and Jace got a chance to meet him. So that was good. And then we just jumped in the car and had a bit of a look around the corner. We got to manage to get the iconic frilled neck lizard, the king eye for Jace.

So that was really good. He managed to find one of those, but didn't have to look too hard either. the the mangrove snake, but we were starting to run out a bit of time. So we did the quick cruise through Mitchell Street, showed him, you know, Crocosaurus Cove entrance and the, and a couple of the street arts there of the blackhead python and that on Mitchell Street. And then we headed back and loaded the car up and headed on south. I'll let, let Jace, I'll let Jace sort of take off from there if you want. We went through Catherine and then around Daly Waters we saw another Argus or Penoctus

around there, but yeah, we didn't leave Darwin until probably 1.30 p.m. And we sort of had to get, you know, probably a thousand k's further south. So yeah, so it wasn't too bad I sort of elected to drive to give Jace a bit of a bit of a chance to have a bit of a rest so it was definitely good though he was he was keen that's for sure yeah letting him drive was magic because I was so exhausted it's stress from driving on the wrong side of the road that was the other thing is it no no

sleep and drive on the wrong side of the road. That was the other thing is it. No snow sleep and drive it on the wrong side of the road, trying to pull into a parking spot where your spatial recognition is just not where you expect it to be for the size of the car and then having to go down the down ramp after I went up. To the top level parking live of parking level at the, um, Woolworths I was at and Alice trying to go down it. And like, I was like, if I get six inches from, from my side, the other side's gotta be clear, just that that's how this works. It, but my brain was like, you're going to hit that.

You're going to hit that. That was a mess. But yeah, when we went looking for the monitors, it was literally egg sandwich coffee and I got to get my phone out. What do I do here? And like trying to juggle a coffee and an egg sandwich and your phone to take a picture of, Oh, here's another veranda. So wait, there's another one. Hold on. the and the people there were definitely kind of giving us some side eye. I was waiting for, because we were taking shots on some of them and they're on trees, but they're on trees in front of million-dollar homes. And my big butts walking across the street and getting like better pictures of the house,

or the tree monitor, we can go either way, but it looks like we were casing the joint. And then the next place we go to is was a also a little sketchy in my mind being, you know, American, we were by right by a school. So it was, it was like, yeah, okay, this is totally different style. But then as we got down to Tenet Creek, that was like my original, my original, original plan was to just ride at the Tenet Creek, that was like my original plan was to just ride up to Tenet Creek because I saw there was a handful

of Blackhead Python sightings in that area. And I can't go to Australia to join you guys for this trip and be south of Blackhead territory the whole time I'm there. I just didn't make sense. So I elected to go the four days earlier. And yeah, we got into Tenet Creek. the the the was still squirming. There's another Stimson's still squirming. And that you could tell, but barely on that one as well. Then the next thing we come across is a Woma that you can absolutely tell is dead

because that was just a pancake. And I was super excited about that. Just like it's pancaked, but still, I'm not even four days into Australia and I've already gotten a Woma the the the the the the the the the the

the the the the the the the the

the the the the the maybe let's do was about five to nine at that stage and said, let's ring Devil's Marbles and book in our room because we weren't actually 100% where we're going to stay. So we managed five, five, five K's out of tenant. We managed to ring through to Devil's Marbles. And luckily, they were about to close like in three minutes when we rang. So we managed to secure our room. And then they said, no worries, we'll leave your room open. Leave the key, the key on the bed and then go from there. the the unfortunately we missed that one because we scoured it for probably five or ten minutes around the place. We didn't see it but as Jay said then we sort of made our way into Tennent, past Tennent and then we had that bit of a hotspot where we got the blackhead, a couple of stimmies and the Woma. So that was great. That's pretty rare to find a blackhead and a Woma in the same area. That's pretty amazing. and too much other than that and it would have been about 11 o'clock at that stage and sort of finally

we got to Devil's Marbles and uh and we thought and I thought finally we've just driven for like 10 hours you know a thousand K's Jason's like been awake for probably 72 hours at this stage and then we got to Devil's Marbles thought finally we can go to sleep here and Jason said oh why don't we just go for another trip further down the highway we're up we're here so I was I the the that's good. Some poor little Asian girl with my big ass in her doorway at 11 o'clock at night, she's like, who are you? How can you help me? How can I help you? She was like cleaning staff, so she wasn't even like front desk or anything too.

So she had no clue whatsoever. And there I am, you know, showing up to wake her, get her. And she was like in her, like not a nightgown. She was like in sleeping attire though. Like she was in bed, but her light was on. So you're getting the knock on the door. If we don't have a key to get into our door. Cause while I was really willing at that point, if everything was perfect,

I was almost willing to jump in the car and take another run. But once we couldn't get in the room and then we spent another half hour trying that to finally get in. At that point, like the exhaustion kicked in. Cause I had that adrenaline rush rolling into the parking lot. And by then that adrenaline turned into kind of frustration and anger. Couldn't not be able to get the room.

And then, yeah, I'm like, man, I kind of want to go back out and I laid down in the bed and I think I was asleep within 30 seconds. Yeah, yeah, it is amazing though how you know that that excitement and adrenaline from being in Australia and the chance of seeing some of these amazing animals, you know, fuels you and keeps you going. But sometimes you just hit that brick wall and no amount of adrenaline or excitement is going to keep you out of out of your sleep mode there. the the the the path. We forwent the extra 1100 kilometers and no sleep. Well, there was no sleep for us as well, but it was a lot easier path. We met up in Houston, I think two days after they landed in country.

Right? Yeah, I was about two days. And from Houston, we flew into Sydney, made a mad dash through customs to catch our next flight, which we, we made easily. But at the time, it didn't seem like we had enough time. And pretty much hit the ground run. And as soon as we got into Alice, we got the rental car and hopped right out of the airport. And we're driving to what was that desert gardens desert to the desert museum or the desert museum desert park that was brings desert park that's what it was. So we were headed that way to all link up together. And

as soon as we're in the car, Justin's like, Oh, I was seeing Tristis the last time I was here on these fence posts and this tree had a monitor on it and all over here I saw a monitor and we saw absolutely nothing the whole way to the park And I mean it was a lot hotter than when I'd been correct. It was Unseasonably warm, I think for us the entire trip unfortunately Yeah, 43 43 or 110. So so yeah it was very hot. Yeah historical temperatures this time of year about 95 or so and I was thinking that's that's perfect you know

during the day but yeah it was a little warmer and drier and I'm like oh no is this gonna be a you know uh just one of those things you really can't plan for. You know, we talk a lot about that, you know, when you're planning a trip six months or more in advance and you really can't predict what the weather is going to do. So I was hoping that we hadn't planned this all in vain and it was just going to be too hot and dry to see anything. So yeah, I was a little nervous, But we got into the desert park and yeah,

we found a couple things there. Yeah. Yeah. No, as soon as we pulled into the parking lot, I think we were waiting for everybody to get in and just walking up to the main building. Justin pointed out the first going on on the trip, the first of many, many. Yeah. Most commonly seen. Yeah. Really cool little lizards though. They get up and run on their hind legs and make for some great shots. They're very bold.

So we're photographing that and I think both me and Justin are dirty birders. So we're getting pretty excited already. I saw my first parrot just right there next to the goad on and so I'm freaking out Photographing that and Justin's like, oh look over there. Those are we're trying to figure out what they were They turned out to be babblers a whole tree of I think they were gray crowned. I believe so. Yeah great crown babblers So we're we're enjoying them babbling away and I ended up Taking a picture of one. One of them had a little tiny baby long nose dragon

in his feet getting ready to feed some babies. So that's pretty cool. Yeah. You posted that on your Facebook. Yeah. Facebook and Instagram. Yeah. Yeah. It's such a cool shot. I was really geeked out by that shot. That was really cool. That makes two of us.

Yeah. Yeah. And then everybody joined us and well, I guess Jason and Dale made it there first and we had to wait a little bit longer for Jordan and Nick. They were having too much fun driving in, you know, via dirt road and such through some of the areas we'd be revisiting. That's why I didn't have them go too much into detail there,

but no spoilers, right? But yeah, we walked through the park and yeah, had a nice visit there and kind of waited out the heat of the day a little bit. And yeah, I think next move was to go check into a room. So I wanted to make sure we had a bed to sleep in the first night so we could get some reasonable sleep after flying in. But as soon as it got dark headed out to the

West Max. So let's see that brings us to our next picture there number 51. We got some frog life, of course. You know, the West Max have these great canyons with standing water in most of them. Some of it was maybe a little old and had been there for a little while and was getting a little shallow and they need some rain out there for sure. But still frog life was pretty abundant. So this one was the desert tree frog, Latoria rubella. That sounds like a disease there. I think these are my favorite just because we hadn't seen these before, but it was really fun. Was it Jordan that spotted the first Gillan's tree frogs? I think it was. Yeah. And they were just kind of sitting on the rocks.

You'd see just these green, uh, clumps and lumps on the rocks. That was pretty cool. I guess, uh, um, well, we're, we're missing the picture, but, uh, uh, Nick, why don't you tell what, what you came up on right as we got into the first Canyon? Uh, yeah. Um, I don't know how easy it is to I have a picture I can send through if it helps but yeah just within like the first 10 or 15 minutes walking into the canyon I was walking along a brush a bit of like I guess it was bufflegrass, and there was just some fuzz stimmy,

half of the stimsys python sticking out of the brush. And I was very, very excited. I kept, it was funny because I had the previous few days with Jordan to like think about how I was going to react in many situations. And I was like, I wanted to just like really, really subtly pick it up and just be like, oh, hey, look what I found, you know? But no, I was geeked.

I shouted, you know, Stimmy and it was really cool. First, I thought to be Stimmy. Oh, we heard you from the other side of the canyon. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I don't know what I was really gonna say to myself. Are you sure you said Stimmy? Cause I thought you said, Oh, here's a Python. And I, for a second for, I was thinking bread alive. You know, like, Oh, I remember Python as well. I was excited. Yeah. It was Python. Yeah.

It was okay. Okay. I'm like, Oh, maybe it was one of the other 25 that I shot in Stimmy. Right. Obviously, you know, the West max and the other 25 that I shot in skinny. Right. Obviously, you know, the West max and the canyons in the West max are a great place to look for bread. Alai. And that was kind of one of the main targets of the trip. So, you know, needless to say, shouting Python and holding up a fairly, you know, reasonably sized snake makes you makes your heart jump a little bit. But yeah, I don't know.

I, for, for me, I, you know, I'd been to the area and I hadn't seen any Stimson's, so that was really a cool thing. And for me, they'll always be Stimson's. I don't care what the publication says. Those Central Australian, I mean, it looks more like a Western Stim almost, but really nice specimens down there. So that was cool.

Yeah. But yeah, I was very happy to hear the proclamation of Python. This was another Nick find, right? Or did Jordan find this one? Or was it asked? This was, this was me and Aspen. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, we got a little bit on the outside. Okay, that's right. Yeah, yeah, I'm the least experienced in Australian geckos. I think it's safe to say, anytime we found a gecko, I just call for Justin or any of the other guys to come identify it. Rob, if you can go back, yeah, go back to that. So there's the heteronautia bonoi, which is the binose gecko, which is very common. This was a fairly closely related and actually sympatrix species, the pale headed gecko or fasciolata. And we weren't sure if, you know, I wasn't sure if it was a fasciolata or not, but

looking in the guidebook with the one from Jolly and his cohorts. Yeah, that was, it was definitely a fasciolata and the telltale sign I guess is that pale head which gives them their common name, but really beautiful gecko and illustrated nicely here in Jordan's photo. Yeah, it's really a good shot. So cool species.

This was a lifer for all of us, I'm pretty sure. Maybe Dale's seen them,. But yeah cool to see these And then the mystery Gihira I still can't well, I haven't you know, put too much effort into it, but I can't key this one out I'm not sure what species it is Anybody only thing I can think is maybe the purplish Okay. Yeah purple lessons or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, I guess maybe we need Jolly or somebody to chime in. That would be nice.

But yeah, very, very cool. They really just kind of blended in nicely with the red river gums, which are have that kind of nice white bark. Such cool trees that was really fun searching for bretoli in the Red River gums but seeing the guyra was was nice too. I think the first one of those we found we had about a 20 minute photo session and then 10 nights later we're like guyra over here if anybody wants it, just walked away. Yeah, no, I'm good. Yeah, we see. But there were there were a surprising number of species out there, too. Like looking back in the guidebooks, I'm like, oh, man, maybe we saw four or five, maybe even more species of guy out there.

They're pretty, pretty species and thick in numbers, too. This was another exciting gecko for me. Was this another Aspen finder Nick? It was. Aspen found this one. Yeah tell us about this one. Yeah I wasn't expecting him. I was crawling up in the the boulders again hoping maybe a bread lie and almost walked into a tree branch and decided to look at it and he was staring back at me. Surprisingly. So yeah, yeah. They actually were my favorite geckos to find the Oedura. Yeah, by far. This is a Cinta the what is it central or Bant central inland marbled again, inland marbled. Thank you. Geckos, I know the scientific name is much better than the common names.

But yeah, they were so cool looking, really nice. I think the size is the biggest thing that surprises you. They're big geckos. Yeah, and just beautifully patterned and a fair diversity between the ones that we did see. So yeah, most of the canyons had these in them and we saw, you know, saw most of them in or saw a species in most of the canyons we looked in. If I can speak clearly here. But yeah, all through the West Max and the East Max as well, we saw Oedurasynchta. And I think they have a fairly wide range. They have a disjunct range, at least from the record.

So I wouldn't be surprised if they got split at some point. What a nice shot there, Jordan. That's a good looking gecko. Yeah, it's easy to take good pictures when the animals are that good looking. Right. Yeah. So cool. Well, so yeah, we had some really nice success. We did drive to the next canyon over and it was closed, so that was kind of lame. We basically had to just kind of head back to the to the Accommodations am I am I missing anything there that kind of takes us the next step?

Sleep precious. Yeah sleep But so the next day we headed east out to the East Max and I'd gone a little bit on my first trip in 2010. I'd gone a little bit into the East Max but didn't make it out to some of the gorges that we checked out. So that was kind of an exciting deal for me to to make it out that that way and check some stuff out. But I don't know who wants to take take it from here we we stopped at some kind of fun little uh gorges and and I guess more um tourist sites and we're trying to take our time to you know make sure we we uh waited out the heat of the day and things like that. But I don't know, what did you guys remember

from the East Max? Yeah, it was obviously, there's a nice country out there. There's a few little gorges on the way. The East Max does tend to be a little bit drier than the West. So it did, I think everyone noticed that there was a lot little bit drier than the west. So it did, I think everyone noticed that the, that there was a lot sort of drier,

there are less sort of green, green grass and sort of shrubbery sort of around the place. But it was still sort of fantastic sort of habitat and gorges and we stopped at Jessie Gap and Emily Gap on the way. Then we sort of made our way up towards that Ross River area. And I think we stopped at Crowberry Rock as well

to have a bit of a look. I think all the time being, you know, 43, 44, it was pretty brutal, even for sort of locals, it was pretty brutal. So you'd imagine that most of the wildlife is ducking for cover as well. Right. Yeah, I think this was the first area

I really realized just how hostile the habitat is for bread lie. This being my first Australia trip, I wasn't really sure what to expect. But I think coming from the hobby side of things, you don't realize just how hard their habitat is to survive. How dry it is, how hot it is, hobby side of things, you don't realize just how hard their habitat is to survive how dry it is, how hot it is, and how

little cover there is outside of their little little oases inside of those gorges. Right? Cool to see. Yeah. But you got everywhere we looked at, like we all of us were kept the and nevermind everybody else. But anytime someone else said, oh, this is amazing habitat, I would go, well, where, which, what are we looking at now? And turn to look to see what else was amazing. And it was just every place we went was amazing. Right. Yeah, such a neat spot.

And we visited a couple different, I guess, canyons or hikes and kind of saw some of the amazing habitat there. And I guess that's the nice thing is even if there's no reptile activity, you're still taking in an amazing landscape, checking out bowerbirds and their cliff nests. And, you know, it's really a nice spot to check out. Sorry, Dale, I couldn't. I think we should say that wasn't a cliff nest. I think it's safe to say at this point. I was saving that for later.

So just for the record, we were sort of, we saw a couple of bowerbirds in a Jesse gap. We saw a great sort of bower or we'll refer to the bowerbird nest or a bower. Then we made our way from Trophyna Gorge up into John Hayes Rockhole. I mean, that's a fairly good little four-drive sort of path up there. Then you sort of park and you meander a couple hundred meters into the actual John Hayes Rockhole itself. And they hadn't had a good flush this year because the rain has been a little bit lacking. So it was a little bit stagnant.

But we started to look around the place and then Justin sort of heard the call of a and rightly called a bower bird. So it was a nice sort of a look and then I sort of looked up perched you know three quarters up on this escarpment and there was this beautiful example of another bower sort of overlooking the gorge and everyone sort of photographed it and the thought it was a fantastic sort of a bit of habitat for the boughbird to look over and Justin sort of thought it was just a ball of tuft of grass so we have a bit of a bit of a inside debate going on so we thought we'd sort of hike to the top of that rock hole to get a bit of the the the the

the the the the the the I'll have to find the mystery nest and post it up. I've got one somewhere. But yeah, the Bowers are really interesting. They kind of build up almost a tunnel out of grass and then they decorate it with different colored pieces of material.

So the one we saw at Emily, was it Emily Gap? Yeah. What, like white and green wasn't that kind of the preferred colors? I've seen some with yellows and some with blues and yeah they're really interesting bird. They kind of decorate it to entice the female to come check it out and think that they're a cool mate.

So they'll make these elaborate nests with much decoration. Some of the decorations are a little disgusting, but others are pretty interesting. So sometimes they'll get like pieces, you know, shiny glass or things like that that are, you know, a little green or they'll get plastic milk bottles that are blue or something, you know, decorate them. So kind of a cool, cool little thing.

But no, it was good, though. Then I think after that, we we left the John Hayes and sort of went back towards Chafina Gorge and looking for some breadly on the way. Yeah. And that the picture of the the bug, the cockroach. Yeah, that was kind of on one of the night hikes. We did see quite a few of the inland velvet geckos through there that were really nice. I guess I probably have a picture one I can throw up there, but I haven't made it as far into my photos as Jordan has. But yeah, we were hiking up along the ridge and saw that cockroach that was just almost

like a metallic glow. It was really cool looking, pretty fun to see. Yeah, I'm super bummed I missed the 24 karat roach. I think it was me and Jason were just wiped that day the the the this Um, so it was, it was nice, but yeah, this roach was kind of all that was moving when we walked across the ridge there, but really a cool area and probably just a little too hot and dry to have too much activity. But, um, so we made the decision to let, we only did one night there, right? And then we headed back west. Um, the other, or did we stay two nights? I don't recall.

We just did the one night and then we headed north. That's right. So one of the other cool spots down there was that giant ghost gum that was, I mean, the photos just don't do it justice of how just incredibly huge this thing was. Yeah, so that one's noted as the largest ghost gum in Australia and over 300 years old

and it's pretty spectacular. It's just, there's not too many ghost gums around. And I mean, you see a lot of big river red gums down there with the same sort of girth, but that ghost gum was just sort of phenomenal, particularly we got to that sort of a golden hour of the evening as well. So it had the sort of nice sheen of the setting sun over it

and sort of the surrounding landscape and gorgeous. So it was a beautiful specimen. I think apart from that, it stood alone. It wasn't crowded by other trees or shrubs. It was pretty well cleaned up and it kind of stood alone on its in its own glory. Yeah, yeah, incredible tree. I mean, I think if we would have like all joined hands and went around it, we may not have been able to make a full circle around it. It was such a

large gum tree. Yeah, just stunning. Just a beautiful three. It was almost a spiritual experience to walk up to it and just, you know, put your hand on that big three. It was just, it's a, yeah, was, was, was really neat. Yeah. And we, we've found out that the river red gums were shiny, right? And the ghost gums get their name because they're more matte. Is that right? Or did I get it back? Yeah, and the river red gums tend to fork

a little bit closer to the base of the tree and where the ghost gums sort of grow up a little more straighter and then fork and sort of have their branches further high up in the canopy. Not in all cases, but generally, right? Yeah, yeah. Such a cool area. Well, the ghost gum, what I was reading was the reason they get that moniker ghost is that powdery matte finish glows in the moonlight. So, you know, we saw that if you turn off your headlamps when the moon started coming up later on in the trip

We could see that the the the river red gums you would not get that same reflection You know, you'd get like a little bit of a shine off them They look a little bit metallic but the ghost comes the whole tree almost looks like it's glowing and the moonlight and that's apparently Where they get their name. That's cool. That reminds me of midnight oil lyric ghost comes dance in the moonlit night Absolutely, yeah midnight oil fans out there, but yeah, so Cool cool area, but probably a little better with a little more water I think so, you know we headed headed back west wasn't there the wasn't there one puddle in that gorge? Mm-hmm with a bunch of frogs around it

Yeah, that's a gorge Aspen spot. Yeah. Yeah some other stuff, too, right? the the and listen to me. That's where the roach was, yeah. And I think it had cooled down substantially since you did it. So it wasn't as baking as much as you experienced. It just burned out my legs just hiking up there and it was just super dry. Like there's not, no Herp life is gonna be up there in my opinion. But down the gorge, there was that one little spot of water

and then on the rock face themselves, there was a bunch of geckos that were there. But we had already kind of, it was species we had already seen. So it wasn't as exciting as the very first ones we saw. But I feel like we had a great time in that gorge. Every night was a great time. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, it's hard to know. Well, what about the stars, right? Like the stars when we were hiking there at night and the Milky Way was in full splendor above us. It was really incredible to be out there. Oh, it's fantastic. Yeah, that's why we were laying down on the rock because we just wanted to get the view of the stars. It was nothing to do with exhaustion at all. at all. Exactly. All right.

Well, the next morning we decided to drive out. We were in three separate vehicles. So Jason and Dale took the lead and they took off and made sure they had their radio on in case they saw something cool. They could radio us, you know, we turned ours on and so we start driving and Aspen and I are in the second car and then Nick and Jordan were in the third car. So I don't know Aspen probably wants to tell this part. Oh I'm fine either way. Yeah, our radios work perfect. They were great. Yeah, I think we distanced our cars out about by 10 or 15 minutes each.

And like Justin said, a little too far for the radios, unfortunately. We're second car in lead and Justin is playing his probably, I think, by now famous soundtrack. What was the song that was playing? It was something the lizard Kings. Yeah, it was the the the lizard wizard King gizzard and the lizard wizard. I think it was was it now I can't remember I can look up the song. Go ahead. So we're cruising on I'd happen to look I can't remember if I was looking at my camera or the guidebook I was looking down and Justin goes, Oh, that's a monitor. That's a freaking parenti.

And I look up and there's probably, what would you say? A good three foot, three, three and a half medium sized. Yeah. Average size. He wasn't huge, but he wasn't a baby. And he was just parenti walking right down the road, pretty much right at us. And he slams on his brakes. I'm fumbling to pull out my camera.

He jumps on the radio. He's like, hurry up and get your shots. Like get him before he takes off. And he's kind of just walking, looking at us in the shade. Meanwhile, Justin's calling on the radio. Guys, come in. We got a parenti. Someone get over here.

Come on. Who's on the radio? Turn on the radio guys come in we got a parenti someone get over here come on it was who's on the radio turn on the radios and no one was responding so we're like well we're gonna at least enjoy this guy so we get out of the car and uh he he doesn't react he kind of walks off the road and we get to where Justin is on the tail end on the road and I'm in the spin effects on the side of the hill and Justin will have all his photos up so he he had the cool end I had the photogenic end so he posted up probably not two feet off the road in a nice shady little spot and just let us shoot away for maybe 10-15 minutes. He couldn't have been less bothered by us. Right. And Justin saw some really cool behavior while we

were photographing him. Yeah, so this was my view of after he went over kind of the berm off the road, he just sat right there and and I got within probably five or 10 feet of him. And when I would get too close for comfort, I assume, he would start moving that yellow, twitching the yellow part of his tail, just rattling it basically in the dry grass there. And it was, I didn't know, you know, monitors would do that. I assume he was trying to take

the focus off of the body and put it back on the tail you know because he was holding completely still otherwise except that tail rattle I actually just posted a video of it on YouTube on as a short under my YouTube account JGJewlander so if you want to see that video, you can check it out there. But really cool behavior. I was excited to see that and just excited that he just hung out and let us get within a few feet of him. Aspen was on the other side taking photos and I was on behind him taking photos. And, you know, we moved around and he just sat there. And then probably 10 or 15 minutes, nobody was, I kept going back to the car and getting on the radio guys, come in, come in, you know?

And so then he had enough or got warm or something and just started to walk away. And then, so Aspen was kind of following on this, on the other side of him, and I was following on this side. And as he walked and we're taking pictures and videos and such, and then eventually he kind of like, okay, I've had enough of you two, you're getting too close or I'm getting a little nervous. And he just bolted and just took off. Aspen kind of tried to follow it follow along but he just jumped off of a cliff you know maybe what a 15 foot yeah hit the ground and then turned around and entered a burrow at the base of the cliff just he knew

right where he was oh yeah and in the blink of an eye it was crazy so I love an experience for a lifer monitor the first wild monitor and it's a central ranges, you know, for empty. Uh, I was, yeah, that was, that was pretty, that's a pretty cool, uh, first monitor lizard to see in the wild. So yeah, I was, I won't complain. I was very happy to see that. And then, so finally Jordan and Nick show up on the scene and we're like, why? And like, oh, the Jordan, we were about to consolidate cars. I think Jordan was busy getting the car sorted for a couple of extra bodies. So I sort of felt a bit bad that he missed that one.

So I was really, really hoping that because we were the ones jumping in the car. So I was really hoping he had a chance of another shot at one later in the trip. Yeah, I'll blame you rather than me not turning on the radio. That sounds fantastic. I'll take this one for the team. Yeah. Dang it, I can't find that song. the the They had another song, didn't they? Like, oh yeah, is that on here? No. Okay. It's probably cause I've overplayed them

for years and years, you know, on various road trips. So I got to keep it interesting, get a new, I put together a new playlist for this one. So it was a lot of songs that I didn't know very well or artists at least. So I really liked the songs, but I couldn't name the artists for most of them. So, but I do remember King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. They're, they're an Australian band, have

some really kind of strange songs, but one of them is Rattlesnake and Gila Monster. So kind of funny, but anyway, yeah, we, we headed back. Uh, that was the day you had to turn in your car, right, Jason? So we consolidated vehicles. Jason joined our car and Dale joined Jordan's vehicle. So and we let's see, we went back back to Alice Springs. And we I guess we had to stay again. And where do we sleep that night? Do you guys remember? I think we went as we went north.

Oh, that's right. That's right. We went up to some sandy country looking for Womas, right? That's right. So one of the most beautiful dirt roads I've ever driven on. The first time that anyway. Yeah. Yeah. At least the first part. You get skateboard on it. Yeah. Yeah, it was so nice. I'm like thinking, man, we're gonna have some good fortune up here. But yeah, we pulled into this area and it was a great birding spot, I will give it that.

And I mean, there were tracks all around for different snakes and monitor lizards and things like that, but man, the bird life was incredible there. I think one of the birds I was really hoping to see was one that we were able to see there. So that was really exciting. Let's see. I think you had a picture of that, didn't you, in here? Maybe not. but I think I did. Yeah. Okay. Let me pull that up if I can. It's all in in I know my reptile names, but I don't know the the bird name so so much but

So yeah, we were hanging out by this Bird spot and there was a little bird bath there just I mean countless zebra finches and parakeets and all sorts of stuff and then these guys flew in Rob you want to throw up that photo 126 yeah the pink cockatoo or major mitchell's major mitchell must be in a butthole because they changed the name to pink cockatoo so I don don't know what he did, but he offended somebody. So anyway, these guys flew in really cool looking little parrots and kind of a flat angular head until they throw up that crest. And then it's just like this flash of red and really cool species.

So I think that's a pretty sweet picture. I don't know how did you guys get some good shots of these guys? the the the the the the the the the

the the the the the out there. And so it was nice to add a lifer for me with this, this, this guy. And I guess everybody else got their lifer as well. I don't think anybody had anybody seen the species before. Maybe Dale. Yeah, I've seen it plenty, but it's just it's probably worth noting that, you know,

a lot of people sort of think these deserts are these sort of devoid of life, but just you can see how much life they sustain. Like even when you got, you know, flocks of hundreds of budgies and, you know, major Mitchell's and all the parrots and, and the ring parrots and everything, they're just thousands of birds and reptiles around. So it's, it's really amazing how much life the, this sort of habitat has the capability of sustaining. Right.

So yeah, we, we enjoyed the birds for a bit and it was kind of getting onto dark. the the More of a guy pop. Yeah Come on the first half yeah, yeah second half was a little sketch It just kept getting the the plant life kept getting closer and closer, you know, and pretty soon You're just like pushing through Vegetation to get through and some of us Yeah overgrown up above the car and it was it was pretty impressive I'll say that and I think you used to phrase desert pinstripes about nine times as a Reaching went down the side of the car Yeah, you just hear this scrape as you pass through and I'm thinking oh, no, how much is this gonna cost me?

You know like it was crazy But we made our way out and then all of a sudden there's this that the the the the Yeah, the next morning. That was that was that was that on the way. That was the very beginning of that trip or that road. Yeah, it was it was in pieces and it had been eaten by some bird or something. We called it the Lego Aki because you could put the pieces back together and form a full Aki. So, yeah, not that not the way you want to see an Aki, but I guess they're around that area. So but we didn't get lucky enough enough to see one on this trip.

But. And before we hit that fence, we had that owl. Was it, was that the next day? That was later that, that was the next day. Yeah. All right, sorry, I'll wait for that. You're on. Yeah.

So we did eventually get out of thick growth and there was this sanctuary fence basically keeping cats and other invasives out, foxes and such. And there were some native species in there and you catch a glimpse of them every once in a while. A bilby would come kind of jumping over towards the fence and that was pretty neat to see. And we thought, oh, maybe the fence will kind of serve as a barrier. So things will come up on the road and kind of have to crawl along the fence, that was pretty neat to see. And we thought, oh, maybe the fence will kind of serve as a barrier. So things will come up on the road and kind of have to crawl along the fence, like a

drift fence type scenario. So drove along there for a while and we had another, I think we saw Gecko or two, but, and then we had another radio snafu where Jordan and Nick and Dale were in the, the Is this the MOLGA? Yeah, yeah, the MOLGA. Yeah, so we sort of cast our eyes ahead of the dash and we saw Justin sort of bushwhacking through the scrub about 300 or 400 meters ahead of us. And then all of a sudden, we saw this beautiful sort of MOLGA, had that sort of a greenish sheen as some of them have. So that sort of fired out across the road.

We had a fence on one side. So we all managed to quickly get out of there and get out of the car and tried to get some some good shots. But as you know, with some of these elapids, they they're so, you know, keyed in and they're very hard to sort of set still. So Nick managed to corral a little bit, which gave us a little bit extra time, which was pretty, pretty good. We managed to get a, you know, a couple little short clips, but it was very, very challenging to sort of get it. We were trying to, at the same time, we were trying to call out to, to Justin and Jason Aspen in the car ahead to come back. They wouldn't have been able to do a U-turn

because the track wouldn't have allowed to, but we're trying to get their attention to get back. Yeah, we spent a few minutes trying to corral this MOLGA, but we didn't manage to get it done. I'm not sure if anyone wants to provide any more detail. I'm not sure if anyone wants to provide any more detail, but. Yeah. Well, we, yeah, we, so we, we missed the first small again and that seemed to be a running theme for Aspen. He always seemed to be in the wrong car at the wrong time. Does he?

Yeah. I don't even like to talk about that. It seems like the only thing I was really wanting to see are the, the Lapids and every time they're like, oh man, I can't believe you didn't see us flashing our lights or we called you on the radio or right after you took that turn it came out in the road every time. Yeah and then we get back to service or something and all of a sudden all these messages would start appearing, Moga, Moga, come quick, come back, you know, like ah crap. I mean we skipped over the Mangdonite the wanted to see what was down this road. You're not going to believe this. Beautiful. And that was the next night.

I imposed for us and yeah. Oh, that was, you're right. I'm skipping ahead. I'm sorry. Well, and, uh, I think we went for a drive and I think we only found, uh, some of the rink, you know, Dura or nada, the little fine. We saw a couple of those guys up there. And then, uh, you, you and Jason went for a little walk instead. the and I kind of were falling asleep in the car anyway. So we, we kind of volunteered to take a hike instead.

Cause that was the trick we figured out. I think all of us that when you're falling asleep at driving, just get out and walk for a while. So we did that and, uh, We, we hiked down, uh, the same action, the, cause the trail, the road we went down, the hilltop trail, the first part of it near the campsite was beautiful. And it had all these burrows in it. So we went back and hike that. And, um, retrospectively from the, the last night when I actually had my UV light again, I think a lot of the burrows we were seeing were actually big, uh, tarantula burrows.

But there was a ton of burrows along that road. So Aspen, I thought that'd be a great idea to hike that. So we hiked it and I think we had given up and turn around and went back towards camp. We just turned around. And spotted just a little tiny yearling Stimson's on the side of the road, coiled up size of a silver dollar, just laying there and got some great photos of that. And then I think we went back to camp and came back out and you had your find? Yes, we did because we saw them pull in and then they drove away again.

We were working our way back to the camp to see you guys because we had no clue where you'd been. And then we decided, well, it's already, it's, it's not late enough. Let's go and do the walk again. And that's when we, uh, found a strophyrus in a bush and I went up. That was the first strophyrus of the trip. Yeah. For us at least. You're just up in a bush. That was the first or first of the trip. Yeah, for us

at least. Yeah, he was just up in a bush. That's cool. Yeah. Luckily, he was still there and we got to check him out as well. Yeah, you guys pulled back into camp and we we told you and we went right back and there he was still. Yeah. And I think when we anyway when we when we were out driving, I think we saw a new owl species, the Boo Book owl. So that was kind of cool to see. But yeah, it was nice that we got to see the Strophorus and then we all kind of hit the

hay and the next morning we... Well, I think a key point of hitting the hay and all these things that you're relieving out, which is kind of important for how exhaustive you were, is it was always two to three o'clock the the had like a two. It was 35. Yeah, 33 to 35. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. The last picture I have in that area is a two and it was like some random picture of my tent. The full of my dance. So must have just had my camera in my hand or something. But yeah, and then the next picture after that is at 6 a.m. So I went to bed at two and got up at six.

Yeah, and Aspen I think couldn't sleep either and so we walked up the road a bit and walked up on a hillside, did a little looking up there see if we can get. Yeah, we got a good sunrise out of that. Yeah, it was beautiful up there. Didn't find the yakis, but we saw several birds. We did get a new lizard species.

Um, the military dragon that was along the road, those really pretty patterned lizards. They looked really cool. Um, so we got a few photos of those and, um, saw lots of monitor tracks. Aspen spotted a monitor that ran off the road and we, uh, saw its tail in the burrow, but weren't able to see much more of it than that. So, but yeah, cool, cool spot. Um, we drove out of there. I, well, I was just looking at the time and we've been recording for an hour and 41 minutes and I think we're on day three or four. So we might want to speed up a little bit unless we were going to be here till all hours of the night but or or day for our Australian friends.

But on the drive out we got some central netted dragons that were actually hanging out on the net. So that was fitting for their name. And then a big sand monitor across the road. And so we all jumped out of the car and ran up a tree. And Nick, being young and energetic, jumped up the tree after it and scared it. And it jumped out of the tree right into Jason's hands. And we got to... Right onto the side of the tree trunk and just hung there. Yeah.

So we were able to get a closer look at the monitor, but yeah, really cool. Sandy, let's see. Yeah, there's a picture of it, number 141 there. Martin, did you get a photo of the one we saw right before that? If you do. With a really orange head, it had a really, really orange head.

Because there was one just before that was like, and it was funny because before we met you guys, we had seen a Sandy on the road that had been squashed and Jordan was like convinced it was an ackee. And I thought it or no, it was a it was one before that was convinced it was an ackee or something that got off the road. And then we saw another one and there were just these beautiful, like bright orange sand monitors in this area. And we did see one of those before, before this. Or was it, maybe it was an Arrhenius cause or, uh, didn't you see a small one that ran off into a burrow? That was, that could have been an Arrhenius,

but the one that we saw before was like juvenile sand monitor size. it moved like a sand monitor and but it was like bright red. And then we saw a pancaked one that was also bright red. And that kind of confirmed that it was just a really, really nice looking Sandy. Gotcha. Oh, I skipped over the owl. If you want to go back to 135 there, this was kind of a weird experience. Who wants to tell this story? Well, I'll start it off because you guys, the the guys were in the middle of saying some so I didn't want to interrupt and I'm just kind of like looking at it going what the what is that thing? And you guys all spun around and got the the camera cannons out and have at it.

Yeah. It was a really weird occurrence. Right past us and landed in the road. Yeah, it was close. Yeah, look at this for a few seconds and then flew to a close bush and then sat there for a few more and And that's a great shot, Jordan, flying straight towards us. So better. My more. Yeah. Well, we got back into Alice area and headed back into the West Max. And as Aspen mentioned earlier, the guys got a really nice Western Brown. Beautiful. That was like the ideal form that everybody wanted to

see so yeah we were bummed out we were in the the other car but glad that they got some nice shots of it and I mean that red eye is just really cool hey we could have found a bread lie while we were there that's true yeah although I think this one might have been a little harder to wrangle. Why don't you tell the story? Yeah. Jordan or Nick or yeah. So first of all, I'll say that we when we pulled up to the turnoff to the gap, and you guys turn up the gap, we were like right on your tail. So rather than driving very slowly, I was like, well, we'll just turn left here, we'll go up a mile or so to where we

get kind of near the rocks, and we'll turn around and come behind you. So the intention was just to give you guys enough breathing space that we weren't right on your tail. But soon as we started driving, you know, we got a little ways down there, and we're talking and Dale's sharing some of his vast knowledge of the area. and we just see this bright orange snake on the road and as you can see in the picture here it's it was beautiful. It never slowed down enough that I could get a good picture of the body but it just had like

red herringbone pattern on an orange body and the red on it was just incredible. And then, of course, that black head and the red eye that you see there. But I'd seen Eastern Browns before, but this is my first Western, my first Mangdonite. And I was super impressed with how keyed in this animal was. It never stopped, but it was never defensive, never aggressive. It just knew it had the weaponry, it had its own agenda, and it was not bothering anybody,

but it also was not going to put up with being bothered with. So we gave it space, tried to just by standing around it, try to get it to crowd enough that we could get a photo of it before it disappeared into the field. And some locals came up in their vehicle and, What are you guys doing? And, Oh, we're just looking at a brown snake here. And they, Oh, yeah, there's tons of them here. And then they drove off and everyone was happy. But I was, I was very, you know, I've been around a lot of reptiles in the wild. And I've never really seen anything quite as alert, responsive, just as I keep saying keyed in is the only phrase that keeps coming to me. It just knew exactly what was going on. It

knew where it was. It knew that it wasn't going to be messed with. It was really an honor and pleasure to be in this animal's space and to observe it in the wild. It was really incredible. the Yeah, and then the, and yeah, they don't allow the CB radios because generally their line of sight, right? So yeah, it's a really stop that signal. Right. Yeah, well that that same gorge where you saw the main deny there was some, you know, more really nice geckos that another sink that was just gorgeous. And then we all started kind of walking along, you know, the wash and Aspen had a fun little tracking moment. Why don't you tell that? Yeah, yeah. Happen to be walking in a wash and come across a snake track. And I thought, well, the next obvious thing to do is follow it right. So I start following it for 30 or 40 yards and it's just cruising along this dry wash and

it cuts a hard ride across this dry hard packed grassland. I'm like, crap, well, I guess I'll pick the angle and start following it. So I start following it again, another 25 yards and it drops into another wash that probably drops down a foot and a half two feet down a slope bank. So I dropped down. and I take my torch, I shine it left and I don't see anything. I shine it right. And probably three feet away is a good two and a half foot, three foot. Moga. Like, holy crap, this snake is a moga.

With this point, I'm thrilled because it's my first to laugh at there. Right. Yeah, that's all I'm all about it. And Justin comes run over. He's like, Oh, yeah, that's a moga. That's a moga. And it starts to slip off into the grass. And obviously, I missed the shot. I even have my camera out takes off into the grass up the slope. It was definitely not an ideal spot to get a hold of the snake or photograph it. And it's gone. It's in this big dense clump of grass. Justin's like,

well, that sucks and walks away and I'm like, no, I'm going to get this snake. I start stomping around listening for it. Look, which is the best thing to do is stop and knee high grass for a mullet. Right. I'm determined. I'm hell bound on getting this snake. And finally I see it. It's holding still. It's perfect. I've got the last tiny little bit of the third end. Like it's the perfect spot to just slide him out, get the photograph. Ever so carefully I reach down, I get the last third, like just right on the tail, and I'm like, I've got him. I can't believe he's not doing anything. I've just got to move him and get him to where I can photograph him. And it was a stick. the that

that that that that that that that that Right. Okay. So then we got a call on the radio and Nick had found our what right Nick found it or Jason Who got this one? Yeah, it was it was just it was just in the wash It was it was definitely weird. I it was probably asleep

But when I looked over it was just cruising across a pile of sticks on this little tiny baby Tristis, I mean freshly hatched like Like within the way, yeah, Yeah it still had a belly button. I mean making dumb decisions like sleeping out in the middle of a wash and all sorts of juvenile behaviors there but we were very happy to to be able to see it so that was cool. Neat little lizard but just tiny, you know. So I think, uh, we saw, you know, a few other geckos and, um, yeah, this thing was the, I mean, you can see the ant there. That was not a very large ant necessarily. This is a very tiny gecko. Yeah. So that was a nice little, uh,

uh, wash to check out and saw some really cool stuff out there. Let's see, where are we at next? We went further west and out kind of more into the West Max and we're really excited for some of the gorges out there Drill through in the day got to see it You know during the the nice time and you guys rolled up on this beauty Who wants to take this one yeah, I'll take it we yeah pulling into this gorge As we're driving down the road I could just see it looked like a big branch or something right in the middle of the road. And it wasn't until we got close enough I could see the white and black netting on its neck and knew immediately what it was.

And man, I was, my heart was racing. I was so jealous of your guys' sighting in the East Max. To see this big boy just chilling there, looking at us was really neat. So we stopped and just get the long lenses out and take him whatever pictures we could. He did not give us very long. He was not as patient as yours was. Yeah. He just started to trot away,

but every step he just doubled his speed and until he was about five steps away he was at full full run and just banished. Yeah. I'm really stoked to be able to get a couple of photos of him, but just beautiful, beautiful, magnificent animal. Right. Yeah, fantastic. So yeah, that was a good sign that we were gonna see some good stuff and got some... We came the We were fairly fortunate when we pulled up, we sort of made a quick decision not to jump out of the car and go towards it. We sort of just swung the doors open, which was a bit of a vantage point for the guys to get some photos, because I think you would have started galloping away a lot quicker if we darted out there. Yeah. Well, the first night in this area, we had we saw, I guess, I I mean we were in some beautiful habitat. We saw probably

I think we saw 10 Stimsoni in a night like they were all over the place and that was really exciting to see. Got a few new species. I don't remember. I don't think I saw this one. Who got the Brachiorophus? That was that was us. Yeah, Nick, Nick and I, and Dale, I think you were in the vehicle with us, right? Yeah, that's right. I think Nick was pretty excited.

First, when we were running towards it, we thought maybe it was a Farina, but then we had a closer look and it was the Brachiorophus. So I think it was pretty stoked. That one's probably special for Nick, right? Yeah. Being a fan of rostrally adapted, phosphorial snakes, I, yeah, being able to compare the Australian shovel nose to our American shovel nose

was, was pretty fun experience. Well, it was a big topic of conversation for Nick and I the entire way up. And we've had several conversations even prior to this trip about them. Cause I had seen a Stralis several times before and knowing that we were going to be in range of a couple of new species, I was pretty excited to see, uh, instinct is here and, uh, drawn a blank on the other one. Um, but, uh, we talked about it quite a bit. So it was really cool to, when we saw it to be like, Brachiorophus, yes, we finally about it quite a bit. So it was really cool when we saw it to be like, Brack your office. Yes, we finally got it.

Yeah. The only bigger than mine was Nix. That was really cool. Only and it's just really cool. Obviously, there's tons of diminutive phosphoryl colubridides, well, colubrides out there. But it's just really cool with the Australian ones specifically that for whatever reason

they, you know, it's not the same type of variance that you get in the within species variants that we get in our Chionactus, but just having individuals that are banded, patternless, you know, some of them have a neck band, some of them have a headband, like it's just it's remarkable that that these two ecologically similar snakes also have pretty similar pattern diversity. Right. And I think Jordan, you saw the Fraschilardus, didn't you, when you're up north? Was that over, that was in the previous trip, the narrow banded? No, I have no, that might have been me, I might have seen that in westerns. Oh, that might have been you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry, yep. the we saw there was a duck that was just walking along the riverbank and I basically petted it a little bit and let it go on its way. It was hiding in the grass of the embankment and slept in the campground.

Did we see the DOR whip snake as well? That was the first night I think. Oh yeah sorry. But yeah bummer to see it that state instead of alive and well, but. We did see the furina right after the Bracchia orifice though. That's right. So we did see that. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep. Then the, the next day, unfortunately Dale had to leave. And so we, we did go to a few gorges and, you know, swam in some, you know, some nice swimming holes nice swimming holes and that was a fun time for a bit until all the school children showed up and got a little noisier but really a cool, really good size swimming hole. How deep was that place, Dale? The Ellery Bigger Hole. I think they get to like the those ruckles in them in the McDonald's. Wow. Yeah, that way it holds a lot of cool weather. Like even though it was like, you know, 43 or 110,

the water was probably sort of that 22, 23 Celsius. So it was, you know, it was very nice. You know, what's that equivalent to probably, you know, probably just low 70s or something. Yeah, low 70s. Yep, yeah, the water was nice and cool. It felt refreshing to jump in there. And we spent kind of the heat of the day, at least, Nick and Aspen and I and Jordan and Jason drove Dale back to the airport for him to fly out. Just in time, right? So, we had good vibes for you guys. I was, uh, we almost manifested it, I think,

but we appreciate the, uh, we appreciate the sacrifice of leaving the trip early. So, um, that night we were cruising along and, you know, finding Gahira and stuff in the washes. And then Jordan and I were within, you know, talking distance and, and Jordan saw this really nice tree and he said, this, this is the tree, we're going to find a bread lie in this tree. And I said, no, no, the one over in front of me, this is the tree I'm going to find it in because it's just too perfect of a tree. And unfortunately, neither of those trees had a bread lie in it. But the very next tree that Jordan walked up to had a really nice surprise for us. So, it was, it was kind of cool. This was actually after we'd been enjoying it.

Yeah, go ahead to that other shot there, Rob. And no, sorry. Well, there it is. Yeah. In all its glory. And basically this is what Jordan walked up on. So why don't you kind of share that moment? Because it's freaking incredible.

So you know, one of the, I'd say the, if there is a disappointment I had on this trip, it was that I didn't get to spend more time with you, Justin. You know, I just really enjoy your B-side music as Jason was with these sides and great conversations we have so much we appreciate similarly and so it's really nice for us to kind of walk off this is I think one of the few times that we were within voice range as we were walking up this gorge like you say and but yeah as I walk up a little bit disappointed that my last tree hadn't produced as I predicted. But, you know, we'd put in a lot of time looking for these guys. And, and it's so hot and so dry. And when I

look up, and it's just above my, well, just above my head. And so this picture that we're showing now, that's actually after it crawled up high up into the tree. But when you first came up on it, it was perfect to photograph. I mean, it was just like right at eye level. But in that gray and silvery trees, and then you just got a little bit of green of the leaves like you see there,

and then just to have this fire orange, the prettiest bread light I've ever seen. And look, I keep and breed them. I've been around them my whole life and always loved them from the very first pictures I saw, Casey Lasek's animals, decades ago. I've just always been super impressed by the species. And this animal was second to absolutely none. And

to see that in your headlamp when you've been staring at gray and with little bits of green here and there in this wash for hours. And then yeah, I think what I said is I got one. Yeah. You got one what? And I said, what else would I say? I got one. I sprinted across that. Oh my gosh, I was so excited. And I think, I mean, yeah, it was like the biggest find,

I think that we could have had in that area. I was so happy. I'm like, you got one? Really? Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of celebration there. That was pretty, pretty freaking cool. So yeah, and I mean, I just felt the pressure lift, you know,

it's like, okay, if we find nothing else, this animal made the trip, you know, for sure, even though Jason had his trip already made after he saw that the Panoptis tripod that see it for me. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, this was Python number two for central Australia and probably the hardest, you know, to find Python. So yeah, I was just over the moon as everybody else was as well. So yeah, after a nice photo shoot and just, you know, appreciating the animal, we, we got to watch it climb up high into the branches. If you go to pictures

on that picture, yeah, I mean, incredible. 176. I just love that. You know, the, the full body shot is just such, and I mean, you just see like there's, we might even call that like what a hypo stonewash or something in the hobby just and this is just the wild type, right? So yeah, as we watched it climb up into the branches, if you go to 178, I noticed something kind of waving in the wind. And if you look close, you can see kind of in the center top of the shot, there's a shed skin right there, right next to a hollow so

pretty much looked like this bretelite came out of that hollow shed its skin and then dropped down to eye level basically where we could see it you know just just a very polite nice snake making the trip for us so yeah i'd like to choose to believe that my small sacrifice helped manifest that snake as well. My exhaustion, I decided to leave my camera gear at the car. I thought there's no, we haven't seen anything yet and worst-case scenario, I'll run back to the car and I ended up running back to the car in the sand to get my camera gear. Yeah. I imagine your, uh, exhaustion left a little bit after you. Oh, I was wide awake.

It was only a three mile round trip from what I heard. No big deal for me. Just running purely on adrenaline as well. In the sand. Yeah. It's not fun to run in sand, but yeah, such, it's such a, just magical moment. You know, the He was, you know, saying his goodbyes and I, you know, postulating, well, you guys, you know, should be looking a little bit further from the gorges themselves and some of the washes and stuff. So when we got back out there, that's kind of why I told Jordan, Hey, let's, let's hit this wash.

We, we've done the, the gorge. Let's like Dale was just saying, let's walk this wash out here and see what we can find here. And, uh, you guys had gone left. I went right. And obviously left was right. the and he was the one that sort of also suggested look there you find a more down in the To wash out parts of the creek why there well you occasionally may seem in the gorges it's it's you know, obviously we've all seen that sort of a magical shot of the The readily over Trophina gorge, but I think most the time And you're more likely to see him on the on the washouts in the in the in the gum trees So I was like, yeah, obviously I was

pretty stoked for you guys. It would have been great to be there, but you know, who knows if circumstances changed, you know, you might not have seen us. I much, much more prefer that you guys got to see it. So it was great. Yeah, that was the only disappointing part of it is Dale wasn't there to enjoy it with us. So would have made it even better but we appreciate your sacrifice because as soon as somebody leaves or can't be there on time you know that's what happens for some reason. It's happened to me I was late on a trip and missed a pair of uh mountain king snakes mating in the trail you know like the guys are like hey guess what we just found because you're not here. Thank you

So thank you day always the way see this beautiful snake. No Obviously, it's closer for me to go back so I can uh, I can head back there Yeah, a little bit easier than you guys. So i'll uh, i'll definitely be have another crack. Yeah Well and and two I mean, um The at the same time we're like, okay Let, okay, let's keep this party going because it just fueled that adrenaline after it crawled up into the tree. We're like, now let's go find the next stop, the next thing. And so you guys, we drove ahead and you guys found this, right?

A nice size Molga, really beautiful snake. Yeah, and a patient one. right? The nice size Molga really beautiful snake. Yeah. And a patient one. Yeah. It was just kind of bluffing and hold his ground. Yeah. And, uh, yeah. So we were, we were excited and figured maybe we could get Aspen back here to see it. So I don't know if you saw in the comments, Jordan on Facebook, Aspen thought the Australian guys was holding that for them, for him, all by their, their, their own goodwill. I was unaware of the true story.

Yeah. Jason was posted up there for an hour and a half, you know, pushing back with the Wedgetail Eagles trying to nail it just for Aspen's photo pleasure. He gave the wrong people the glory there. Yeah, but they did kind of hold their place while they came to let us know. Now we had gone for a different target. I had missed and really wanted to see the Centralian Knobtail gecko on the first AMIA. And so we were driving into where, you know, pretty good records for them and a nice spot,

like sandy area, driving through there, you look at the habitat and you're like, yeah, they'd be in this rocky area. And I see, you know, kind of a little rocky looking thing on the side of the road. And I'm like, that looked a little, you know, off. And so somebody said, oh, it's just a rock. And I'm like, I'm going to check it out. And I look at it and it was an ABA and I'm like, yes, you know,

this night just can't, can't, you know, just got better. I can't, can't believe we, we had so much luck to see, you know, those two in the same night. So I was just over the moon. Big, big targets for this area. Probably these two, the bread lie and the centralian knob tail were at the top of my list. So to see them both in the same night was just incredible. And then we're photographing this guy. And of course, my pictures aren't half that good.

But yeah, Jordan and the rest drove up and said, Oh, we've got a, we've got a Molga for you. So Aspen and I headed back and took pictures of the Molga and stuff. So Justin graciously cut his, uh, AMA time in half for my Molga time. Yeah. But we were actually, uh, graced with another AMA the next night. So it was, it was all right. But, you know, they were both juveniles, which was kind of weird. That was kind of a theme of the trip was juvenile

geckos. So very nice to see, but a really small, I was still hoping to see maybe a really good sized AMA. But so next we moved a little bit further south down kind of the Kings Canyon area Wotarka National Park and we were staying in a place down there So we checked in and then went out looking and hit some rocky areas and found the next Oedura species the Larica What's the common name here guys anybody? Marini Marini

Velvet Gecko What's the common name here, guys? Anybody? Marini. Marini. Velvet Gecko. I'm not sure where Marini comes from. La Recha is named after the people that inhabit that area, but. Marini is the town that's just north of that jump up right there. Okay. Okay. I don't know if you'd call it a town, but it's on the map.

On the map it's Marini. Yeah. It might be an Aboriginal community, maybe. Maybe. Yeah. But man, look at that just color and I mean, it was purple for crying out loud. It's just a really cool looking gecko, purple and yellow and just gorgeous. And what you found it, I think what Nick and Jordan found it within or Aspen. Yeah. Yeah. It was me and Nick, we were biking around. We were trying to flash it with our lights as soon as you guys started to pull away.

We walked right on it. Yeah, yeah, not not a hard find there. Yeah, that was that was very cool. This was another one that was really exciting for me to see. So we saw several of them. We saw three or four that that at that spot and then another one Jason found in another spot. So yeah, I got to see a little bit of a diversity of those very cool velvet geckos. I think Rob mentioned this on our Darwin trip because we found a couple really nice oe duras and he's like,

maybe I need to find all the oe duras in the in the country so that was kind of stuck in my head a little bit but yeah. We continued road cruising and things, saw some you know nice other stuff the of course these the spiny tailed geckos were out, uh, a bit. And then we did run into kind of a, I guess I wouldn't say they're rare within Alice Springs. We found out everybody was saying, Oh, these big named herpetologists had never seen the species. And then what we found three of them in, in one or two nights, they were

really a kind of a cool snake. The monk snake or parasuit of Manacas. Really neat looking little elapid. Anybody want to tell the fun story of this one? No, very good. Yeah, but we got yelled at for for disturbing the wildlife. This thing was found like it was right across the street from the resort place we were staying and one of the Karens that worked at the the diner came and yelled at us for disturbing the wildlife because we were using a flash to take a picture of a snake.

So anyway, we we didn't have too high image of that guy. But anyway, he left and we continued with our photo shoot. But cool to see, you know, add that species to the list. So nice. Then round where we found the second Aimee, we got this legless lizard Just out on this on the road. So that was cool to to see very common and you know in Australia, but Really cool. That was a huge target for me though, like on the the the side Side quest sort of thing that was Burton's was definitely something I wanted to see That was just a massive like, okay. I, that wasn't, I wasn't targeting that in my head.

Like it's something I had to see, but that was definitely like super high on my want list. Yeah. Yeah. It was cool. Um, and then a couple more, you know, gecko species, uh, another Reinkio dura, um, we saw quite a few of these on the trip overall. They were fairly prevalent, so that was neat.

And then this bug. What was it called? It's this is our battle beetle or battle weevil. The battle weevil. It's like a wide, wide something weevil. But yeah, it's a giant weevil. Pretty cool looking, but those spikes and just the detail from your shot here, pretty incredible.

So fun stuff. And then yeah, spiders, different species of spiders, huntsman's, those, I don't know the different kinds of spiders. So some spider expert will you know, those, I don't know the different kinds of spiders. So some spider expert will have to correct me. But yeah, yeah, this is a badge huntsman. Okay. Really a cool thing. All right. And then I don't know, did I miss anything else? We saw a few more Stimpsons. We saw some other, including a juvenile Stimpsons, some praying mantises on a gum tree that were kind of neat looking. Yeah, and that's huge.

Eurydakis, the big scorpion, black scorpion. Oh yeah, yeah, with the big old pincers. And we did a hike in Wetarca National Park and saw some of the Slater's ring-tailed dragons there. They were about the only thing moving. It was brutally hot. So we spent a lot of the hike just kind of sitting in the shade and chatting about things

and sharing photos and things. So good group bonding times when it was so hot that all you could do is sit in the shade. But yeah, really, really a cool area. That Kings Canyon area is neat. Then we headed down to the Big Rock. We stopped at a little gas station to grab an ice cream or something.

Anybody wanna tell that one? I think you should, cause you're the one who chased it. No, yeah. So we were eating our ice cream out under a bowery or whatever and just enjoying the shade and waiting for the heat to pass through. Yeah, somebody spotted it, but a little sand monitor just walked through past the table along the wall. I think it was Aspen that had something goofy to say. the stuttered it and everybody is looking at me like I'm a moron. Finally someone picked up on it. I think. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, I kind of followed it along taking some videos and pictures and got it.

It was drinking the water from the air conditioner that was, you know, dripping out of the air conditioner. So stop for a little drink. And so it was kind of fun to see. And then I heard a noise across the lawn a little bit and there was another Sandy there. There were two or three just right in that little area and cruising around. So it was kind of fun to see those and get a picture of some of the urban sand monitors.

And the guy that ran the place, he was an interesting fellow. Was he wearing overalls or something? Kind of a, yeah, interesting guy. But he was saying there were what? 10 dozen or so that were living in the area. It was a sleeveless vest. I believe he was wearing rather impressive handlebar mustache.

Yeah. But yeah, I said they were, they were all over the place. So he said there was a was a tube of some sort where they were mating just a couple of weeks ago or something. Oh yeah, yeah, they'd hang out in the drainage pipes or something, and yeah, pretty cool. And they also, he had the collection

of specimens inside as well. Oh yeah, preserved snakes and things, so we got to see some of the stuff the an account in his life list. I told him he could just go to a zoo and you know see him that way too. We call that a fill count I believe right Rob? So anyway we were down in Uluru area, nice beautiful sandy area, did a little road cruising, found you know more geckos and we came across this you know, more geckos. And we came across this Western brown snake on the road. And unfortunately, it had been clipped, but it was still active and alert and kind of responsive to us. But yeah, it wasn't doing great. To be fair, there was what the big problem is there was one car in an hour, right? Going the opposite direction, which was a semi. That's what hit this guy. Like the one, the one car.

Yeah. And, uh, you know, it was, it was interesting to see, but, uh, you know, got our hopes up that maybe snakes were moving and then we drove further down that road and sure enough, a really nice snake was right in the middle of the road and flashed the other guys, you know, flashing the flashlights doing the happy dance and got our central Woma pretty exciting Yeah, but apparently I was blinding Pissing him off and he was really unhappy until he figured out there was a woman. He was like, all right, that's allowed Yeah, it's funny early on the trip when the fifth and we were sort of chatting with one of the guys and, oh have you found much? He goes, oh not really, oh we did find an AMEA and then we're chatting a bit longer and he just seemed sort of nonchalant and then

after about three or four minutes he goes, oh yeah no we got a woman near Uluru, he goes, but I'm more of a carpet piping guy so he sort of just dismissed it right. So it gave us all a bit of confidence that your Eelish gonna be in fire and range. Yeah, that they were on the move and active and such. So, but yeah, again, another just huge find that we were very excited about and just a great, great species for sure. So I don't know, another celebratory moment, you know, great. What else can you say? I mean, just to see that snake and photograph it in the red. And again, just another incredible specimen of the species too, right? It could have been

any one of the various looks they can have. And it was just a stunner. It was everything I could ask for. Right. And I think a lot of the, I mean, I wasn't, unfortunately, wasn't there for the, for the wyman, but one of the observations that you guys probably noticed as well, that every sort of snake we saw was in fantastic condition, right? Like obviously it was the tail end of the wet season, so there was going to be plenty of, plenty of food around, but there was, there were no scrawny snakes.

They're not, you know, they were all just robust Very healthy. So, you know in the middle of the desert so it was fantastic to see that as well yeah, what a what a sight and you know, I I guess maybe this one would be a good time to maybe chat a little bit about photography because we spent a bit of time, you know, photographing this snake and, and, uh, Justin, maybe we hold off. We'll save the time. Okay. You guys have been great. We'll save the topic. Yeah.

Hit that another time. Cause, uh, yeah, I think the recap's gonna, yeah, Rob's anxious to get to get back to two and a half hours. No, I'm all good. It's not bad. It's that it's a great topic and hey man, we always got to save the content and you guys have done great with this. Okay, so yeah just over the moon to find the Aspidites and Ramsey, really a cool specimen and the next day we took a look at the Catajuda, the Olgas, and then hit Uluru, looked around there a bit. And then the next night we, well, actually we just looked at the Olgas and then we went to the sand dunes

on the other side of the park and were able to go find another nephorus, which was this little levis on the sand dunes. It was, you know, I think this was the second species we found. If you want to go to 251, this was another big target for me because I hadn't seen them. This one actually looks like a levis. It confused me because I thought we found two levis and two levisimus, but this was actually one of the levisimus, the smooth knob tails. And you can just see that smooth skin. There's no, no bumps, but in the levis there, they're a little more bumpy. And Jordan, Jordan figured that out before I did. So I'm a little embarrassed to the nephuris guy. I didn't figure out which one was a levis

and which one was a levisimus. So this is the levisomus. The other one's the levis, but, um, so we, yeah, we got to the dune. We got out of the car, everybody's getting their camera gear and everything. I walked up the dune, uh, maybe 10 feet and I said, Oh, there's one. So we found the levisomus just right off the bat. And then, um, shortly after and about maybe 30 feet from the levisomus was that levis. And, uh, so that was pretty cool. We went to another dune, um, got another couple of isomus there. Um, and then this guy, who,

who was it? Was it Aspen that found this one? I think Nick found this one. Nick, that was Nick who got him. Tell us about this one? Nick found this one. Nick. Yeah, that was Nick. I've got him. Tell us about this one. Nick. Yeah, it was interesting because my experience with Pygopods have mostly been road cruising before, but both of the western hooded scaly foots that we saw on this trip were while walking and looking for nephros, the one down in Pernadine and then this one. But yeah, just walking down a little track and looked down and looked like a snake, had to look real close before I grabbed it and yeah.

It was really cool. It had these weird, I don't know if they were scars, they didn't look like there was any scale damage, but you can kinda see almost what would be considered like paradox markings. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, very cool. Interesting look to the scales. It probably was like just a very old animal

cause it looked kind of old, didn't it? I mean, it looked kind of ancient and just kind of went about its way. It wasn't very hyper active. It was pretty slow moving and seemed like an old animal. But anyway, yeah, cool stuff. Saw a few more Ranquidura and some of the conspicu-

conspicu-latus, the fat tail geckos. And then the next day this guy was crossing the road. Um, so that was pretty cool to see, uh, just, I love this shot by the way, Jordan. It's really a cool shot. Uh, this little sand monitor, um, but he kind of hung out in the bushes and let us get some pictures of them and stuff after he crossed the road. So that was pretty fun. Um, and then yeah, I, uh, was this that, that night after we, let's see, were we headed

back and into Alice at this point? I think so, yes. Okay. And saw this guy closer to Alice, the Jordan's favorite snake, um, Suda Suda. And then, so on the last, last night, after we, we done a little bit more in Alice area, we went out to the West Max again after we got back from Uluru area. And so, thought, oh, you know, Jordan's like, hey, why don't we go for the Grand Slam and head up, if we head up an hour and a half north, we can potentially see a black headed Python.

So we're thinking, yeah, why not? You know, it was Jordan's birthday. So we thought, let's let him make the call here. So yeah, we headed out and, you know, why don't you take it away from there, Jordan? Yeah. I remember stories that Casey had told me about doing some herping in the center, and one of the places he mentioned wasn't too far from us. And I knew he'd seen a black kid there, and there's a couple of other records there. And it wasn't too far from us. So I was, like you said, I just said,

hey, we've got three for three for the pythons in the area, but we could just go a little bit north. And Jason already has his blackhead under his belt, but we can maybe get one more python for the rest of us. And so we get up there and the road that I thought we could travel on looked like it was, well, it didn't look like it was. It was barricaded off. We couldn't get down heading east. And there was a road that went west that looked pretty good. And I'm looking at the map, looking at Google Earth and kind of the transition zones.

And I'm like, well, maybe we do here, maybe we do there. And the light was failing us, and it was kind of blustery. And you could see there's a storm on the horizon. And so I was getting pretty excited. I knew that, you know, didn't know what for sure we'd see. But after the heat and the dry, that just some change in the barometric pressure, some more humidity coming in, and a little bit of storming, had all the makings for an interesting night. And so yeah, we got out, we walked a stream bed for a while

and finding some little skinks and geckos and more of the same, but hadn't found anything too exciting. So we get back on the road as the winds picked up and came across this, another Western Brown, just a beautiful one of the pale headed specimens, was really neat to spend time with it. And then, yeah, as we drive up a little farther, stretched across the road, Jason and I are in the lead car and this beautiful blackheads just cruising across the red sand and yeah I was pretty excited you know it's my birthday turned 50 that day and you know and

had called the shots and hey let's go up there and let's go find a blackhead and that's what we did so it's really really cool experience for me. A great way to bring in my half century of circling the sun and excited to share it with such a great group of guys. It was really neat. Especially for our last night as a group, right? All together.

Right, yep, yep. And capping it off with a birthday blackhead and the fourth Python species that is, that you can find in the area. So yeah, just capped off a really really nice trip there Yeah, we we made our way back. I think we found a couple more Stimson's on the way out. This one was the Yeah, this one had some neck damage some scarring on the neck and it was the only Stimson actually the only Python on the trip that even tried to strike or was you know? Defensive at all all the other pythons, you know, none of them tried to strike or bite or anything it was really kind of a cool thing and

This one must have had some trauma or something because that was some pretty gnarly neck damage. I'm not sure what would have done that to it. Probably some predator or another, but so. And then we headed back to Alice Springs the next day. We Aspen and Jason and I flew out and Jordan and Nick headed back down south and got a few more cool species along the way. This one's a which which species of this one? Yeah, this is an eastern. Okay. Hooded scaly foot and this one was down. So we we went south to back down to Coober to see if we could try her hand one more time at a Taipan. And more Suda and more Diplodactylus. And as we went farther south into the Arab basin, came across this beautiful critter.

And I've seen them before in Queensland, larger ones, but I was real excited to add one more gecko species to the trip. I believe this was 25 or 26 for Nick and I. Wow. And then, yeah, then we went up into the Flinders. We had one last night and Nick had not had a chance to be up in the Flinders and he'd hurt the base and the basin around near that area.

So I said, well, let's go up there. And we did and found this under woodasaurus. So there's potentially two other species of Gahira that we might have got. We'd have to key it out, maybe get some people weigh in on it. But of species that I'm sure about the idea on, I've got 26 species listed that we that we got on this trip, Nick and I and then with you guys. So this was number 26 for us.

Wow. Yeah, really, really incredible gecko numbers, you know, was a little bit bittersweet for me because my family trip a couple of months ago, my daughter's big into geckos and I really, really wanted to see some nephuris. Wanted to see some of these big geckos, odura. We did get one odura syncta in Queensland, but they just don't have the yellows, or at least the one we saw did not have the same beauty that the ones that we saw in the central, in the Red Desert. But we struck out on the first but man, we sure knocked it out of the park on this trip. It just goes everywhere. And then of course, my favorite thing about the Flinders is in those river red gum gums

through the Flinders ranges, these Oconia huntsman spiders, the Flinders Huntsman, were just all over the place and they're huge and just such neat animals to photograph. But this was a recurring theme. If you look closely at this picture, a lot of the invertebrates that we photographed had these mites, these velvet mites. And it's interesting as we post, as I posted some of these to INAB to have some of the

invertebrate guys go on. Wow, those are cool. You know, you should post, make a separate post for the mites. But I've not noticed that in any of my photos from previous Huntsman macro photos I've done, but they were all over everything. Interesting. Oh, well, yeah, quite the quite the adventure. And it was really great to spend spend the time with you guys. And I definitely hurt with all of you again.

It was fantastic trip. I don't know that it could have gotten much better than it did. Maybe to leak that would have been nice to see some of the blue tongues, but I guess that's another reason. And a thorny devil will do it again. Yeah, there you go. There's no reasons to go back. I jinxed, I put the thorny devil on the shirt. So we didn't see a thorny devil, but I commemorated

the trip with this shirt. So I've got the four python species and yes. Yeah. And for you guys to nail the Aimee, the Womer and the Bredli all on the same trip, I mean, they're pretty good. And obviously, just saying, obviously, I'm pretty passionate about them as well. But to sort of see all your guys enthusiasm and passion for it it sort of made it made an easy trip to it to be and there was never a dull moment there was never never nothing to talk about so everyone sort of got on fantastic and it was it was a great trip and uh even your your trip planning Justin you're pretty much nodded as as well, both the sort of around the habitat we got to see and the species range.

So it was a good all-around trip for sure. It's always nice when it pays off, you know, because you spend so much time planning and looking at maps and all sorts of different databases and things trying to figure out and then you just want it to work out. And there's definitely no guarantee. I mean, Jordan and I know that in our trip to South Australia was, I mean, we saw a lot of cool stuff but missed out on all the main targets that I had anyway.

So he had to go back on other trips to find all those targets, but we won't mention it. And even when we talk to one of the Rangers, Jordan and I and Nick were talking one of the Rangers the just shows you that he'd been there living in that area for seven months and obviously in the habitat and he hadn't seen it broadly. So for you guys to nail it in that couple of nights was pretty good. Yeah, it was fantastic. Oh, we've neglected to mention we went over to the Alice Springs Reptile Park as well and visited with the folks there. It was really cool. I got to catch up with Rex and Belle and some of the other folks that work there and so that was cool to

catch up with Rex and meet Belle and you know kind of share stories with them as well. Really great people and really cool place. So yeah fun stuff. Yeah for sure it's a nice little spot there. So it's definitely worth checking out for sure. Yeah, Rick's pulled out a bunch of molgars and brown snakes and just kind of put them on the floor and let us dance around them and stuff. And people were there like walking through like,

oh, can you move against the wall, please? And, oh, don't let those kids in, you know, keep them out while I've got these out and stuff it was it was pretty crazy but yeah really fun what a fun guy so good times good times uh excited for the next one um so yeah i guess we didn't get to our uh debate topic and we'll have to have you guys back again or you know a representative group or something the the and I'm going to be a big fan of you guys. And I'm going to be a big fan of you guys. And I'm going to be a big fan of you guys. And I'm going to be a big fan of you guys. And I'm going to be a big fan of you guys. And I'm going to be a big fan of you guys.

And I'm going to be a big fan of you guys. And I'm going to be a big fan of you guys. And I'm going to be a big fan of you guys. And I'm going to be a big fan of you guys. And I'm going to be a big fan of you guys. And I'm going to be a big fan of you guys. And I'm going to be a big fan of you guys. And it was just always positive things to say. It was fantastic to have you along.

So we really appreciate you coming along. That was great. Just wish you no worries. All the time. Yeah. Yeah. Like any of those trips, as you know, when you sleep deprived, you know, you probably haven't had a shower in a few days and things again. It's bloody stinking hot. The only thing that you can sort of bring, you know, that everyone can maintain is a good, good sense of positivity. Right. So as long as everyone maintains that, that Magic. Yeah. Magic. Yeah. Cheese.

We had a great group of personalities and we all played off each other pretty well, I think. There was nobody too over the top or too under and nobody too negative and the positivity was great. So. Yeah. It could have turned out a lot worse. I mean, when I put an open invitation to people to to come to Australia with me, you know

I was like, oh this could this could go south, you know in some ways But I think it worked out about as best as it could So thank you guys for making just amazing trip and it was fantastic to have you all there Well, I definitely thank you for the invite because I don't think I would have ever made a trip to Australia without somebody being a bad influence or good influencer. Happy to be that.

Yeah. All right, well, Rob, you got anything to add? No, really just jealousy. You guys, I do think this is really cool. For a decade now, a decade plus, we've been listening to podcasts where people come on and talk about the trip and too often it gets short shrift relative to both the fines and the work that went into it

and all that stuff. So honestly, yeah, you're saying, oh, I'm thinking it's going too long. No, I think this is perfect. I didn't want to dilute it with talking, trying to get into that fight that we can chat about separately or whatever. the a good night. Yeah. Yeah, I was just just adding to that sleep thing. We some of those nights we hit the hit the high at 4am. And it was pretty warm at that stage. We I mean, I think Jordan and I were we and Nick, we were right, we were actually road the the Yeah, yeah. Not as glad as we are. I didn't want to have to tell your mom. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I gotta say it.

I think the trick to a successful trip like this where you're spending that much time hiking and camping is your attitudes got to be as good as your body odor is bad. And we had a lot of good attitudes. And I think, you know, I couldn't have imagined taking a bitter hodgepodge of people and making it work. I mean, we just, we hit our goals. We had a great attitude. We made a bunch of new friendships or deepened kind of surface friendships

that we had previously. You know, I know this was Justin's birthday bash, but coinciding with my 50th, I just got to say guys, I mean, you just really, uh, made it special for me and I, I can't imagine sharing it with a better group of people. So thank you. Yeah. Oh, definitely my pleasure.

I was really glad you were turning 50. I mean, it was kind of one of those fun things where, you know, we'd, we'd herped on a couple trips and then, you know, making those connections like, wait, I'm turning 50. I'm turning 50. When are you turning like, oh, like a week apart or two weeks apart? You know, it was really a cool coincidence and just, yeah, that was great. Really glad you came. That was really cool.

And the fact that you got to celebrate your 50th on the trip, you know, I didn't do that. I didn't plan it for that. Well, I had a work trip. So I got home from Australia and three days later, I had to drive to Vegas and this, you know, seven hour drive down there and with my wife and we hung out in Vegas for a week for a work trip. And then, so I've just been back in town for, you know, this week is all, so it's a lot of catching up. just been back in town for, you know, this week is all so it's a lot of catching up. Well, it's funny because I actually drove my car, my truck for the first time yesterday. So after spending a month driving in November and December with my family, and I live kind of in the country and work from home, so I have only drove

like three or four times before going back to Australia for three weeks and driving another 10,000 kilometers. And then been home for a week and a half and I drove to meet a friend for dinner the other night or last night. And I will tell you that was pretty sketchy driving in the US after spending that much time driving in Australia. I was, I kept every time I had to turn left or right, I was like, where am I? What am I supposed to be on the road? Yeah, that's true. I never thought I would feel that way about the US.

You spend that much time driving in Australia and then you come back. It just doesn't translate well. You turned the windshield wipers on there, Jordan. What are you talking about? Yeah, that was bad. It was windshield wipers the whole time And I you know, I hadn't had that struggle coming back to the US except for this time like after this trip I'm like wait, which side of there which way am I to you know, I almost turned, you know wrong And I'm yeah, he's like, what are you doing? I'm like, oh, sorry. It's never been like this, you know And I'm hitting the windshield wipers instead of the blinker. Yeah, it's it's crazy the the asked me how it was and everything should. Well, you're turning 50 next year. Where are you gonna go? You should go somewhere. I'm like, well, if you insist, I guess.

I gotta figure out something. Costa Rica or something. Yeah, it's a fun way to do it. Yeah, but it's her idea. I like it. Yeah. Yeah, Heidi's turning 50 next year. So she's like, oh, where are you taking me?

Where are we going? You know, here's where I want to go. I'm like, fair enough. Yeah. It's 31 too soon. Yeah, yeah, you'll have to know. I guess every year you can celebrate every year. I know. I'm sorry. I'm just thrilled. I just wanted to say I'm thrilled to have been able to make it as a late edition. Like, you know, having been over here for a year and a half and not so much as, I mean, gone on a little trip, but it was truly like, I can say pretty confidently that this trip

changed me. Yeah. I think we can all say that. That was a pretty transformative thing. It was amazing. Yeah. Good times. Well, I guess all that's left is the hugging

and the handshakes. So as they say. All right, anything else you guys wanna throw out there? And I guess we can close up shop and thank you for listening. Hopefully you enjoyed the recap and we'll have to fight about photography another day, but, um, it was just a, uh, the perfect trip and, um, great group of guys and I couldn't have asked for a better thing.

Um, I, that's the other thing we kind of joked about was, you know, we could thank Jordan and my parents for, parents for having us in March so we could plan the trip to be in March and see all this great stuff. So thanks, mom and dad. All right. Well, thanks for listening and we'll catch you again next time for Reptile Fight Club.