Reptile Fight Club - Herping Australia Bracket

Episode Date: November 29, 2025

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Good evening, Reptile fans, and welcome to Reptile Fight Club. We've got quite a show for you tonight. Does that have a decent announcer voice? That'll tie into our topic later, but this is Justin Jolander here with you. And with me, as always, is Rob Stone. Wave to the people. Blow them kisses. Well, I am beat today.

I got beat up in water polo. We did a swim set, and I couldn't keep up with the young kids. So I'm hurting. But we've got a tournament coming up, so you've got to be ready for it. We had a little scrimmage. We went down to a master's. Like, you know, they had some masters just get together or whatever for water polo so i went down to ogden which is

our south of here and played played some polo and did all right scored a few goals it was it was a lot of fun so but that's awesome the tournament's going to be a lot of fun too that i get a play because it's not like a straight university tournament it's kind of like a master's just for fun thing so yeah cool i'm excited should be should be a good time awesome okay But, yeah, there's another team of a master's team from Idaho that's like 50 and up. Like, there's like, all of them are like as old as I am. It's kind of crazy, but they were all former collegiate players. So they're really good, even though some may not look like they're going to be that great.

There's this dude. He looks like a bowling ball, man. He's like, you know, short and round, but you can play. It's pretty, pretty insane. So I'm excited to see how we stack up against some of these other teams. Yeah, it'll be lots of fun. It'll be fun. Yeah.

Snakes are good. They're getting along. I had another pygmy decide to eat on its own, so that's good. Oh, good. I sold my last bretles python, so that was good. It's a wonder what posting an ad will do. Yeah, really great guy named Dylan snagged the last two bretles, and he's looking for more.

So I may get some. up for sale that weren't necessarily up for sale. So, but yeah, I guess, I don't know, I always have too many things, you know, like I think, oh, I'm going to do this project and I'm looking at them like, they're old enough to breed. And I just haven't really, you know, put as much into them as I probably should have. But they look like they're about the right size to breed and just need to feed them up and get them out there. They should be fine. But I'm like, ah, he's going to, he'll probably do more justice for him and give him a little bit more to eat.

eat. And so I think I can let some go to him. But good times. Yeah, absolutely. I think everybody else is doing pretty well. All the inlands are feeding. Jungles are doing great and starting to color up real nice. So now it's time to breed stuff again. It's kind of crazy. Right. See how it goes. How about you? You got stuff paired up? or you No, all my stuff is... Yours is more spring. Yeah, spring for the most part.

So, yeah, no, just, you know, starting to get cooler nights and stuff, frost, you know, on the car. And then I think we're supposed to get snow this coming week. Okay. Yeah, I saw some rain stuff or snow, whatever, depending on how high up you are. Yeah, coming into our area as well.

So we'll see how. it see how it hits never know you know it's been kind of warm this week which was nice because when i came back from texas like i left 90 degrees and then came back to like freezing temperatures i'm like this is not great kind of a shock to the to the solar and it's it's been kind of mild letting me get all my leaves raked up and all that good stuff so that fall cleaning car nonsense But, yeah, I had to get up on the roof and clear up about, you know, clear out the leaves that were stuck in the gullies or whatever in my roof. Not fun, but yeah, went well. You're still here, so if you could on you.

Yeah, exactly. Good adulting. Yeah. And the government opened up, so I have work to do again. So that's nice. I can finally communicate with the project officers and start doing some. more studies. So that's good. Okay. We'll see. See how long that lasts. I guess it's funded through January. So we'll see. But, yeah. Well, yeah, good to hear anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited to

communicate with the NIH again. And yeah, life's good. Can't complain too much. So. Okay. Cool. Yeah. Over the weekend, I was on with, uh, Michael and Dom on the Reptile Rejects. Talked to them for quite a while. Nice. That was really good. I have to check that out. Yeah, I don't think it's up. I think it was like, so they do a live broadcast. Right. It's a delay of a week or two or whatever. So I don't think it's up yet. But, and we talked about a lot and nothing.

You know, Mike was like, hey, let's talk about it was, you know, either rhinos, rhino rats or boas. And then we wound up talking about rhinos for 10 or 15 minutes. And we spent the rest of the time. I'm talking about podcasts, and I don't even know what. So there's a whole bunch in there. I listen to their show. I do enjoy their show. So it was, I had some, I just listened to Eric being on there the same day that I had gone on. And so I had some instant feedback.

So that was good. And yeah, hopefully it was taken well. And one of the topic for tonight kind of arose out of hearing him say that, you know, on that show. So that was good. Okay. Yeah, it was fun doing their show. It's been a little while since I was on there. I guess back in July.

That seems like how can that be? Time just goes by way too fast these days. I don't know. Kind of crazy. Well, and I think they're on their early to mid-20s show, and yours was what the second one, first, second, third, something like that. Yeah, it was the first one with a guest. And then, yeah, so that was, yeah, good, they're doing a great job, you know.

I thought the one that I did, I don't know if it came through, but there was a lot of technical issues. Yeah, we may mention of it and all that. Yeah, that was kind of, I think they're hoping to redo it or something at some point. Right, right. Yeah, there's, I'm trying to think what podcasts I've listened to lately. I've kind of, haven't been listening to many podcasts. I got on the beta band kick because I went to their concert and it was fantastic. It was a really good time, really great show.

And so I've been just listening to Beta Band and I don't know, maybe like Lonely Island podcast or something, but that's about it. So I need to catch up on my reptile podcasts. Well, and the real question is have you been listening to the re-releases of the early NPR? Oh, I need to. I know. You got to go hear yourself. I need to go listen. right that'll be kind of hard to listen to i'm sure but yeah i need to figure that out uh i know

eric sent sent sent a link but i need to go back and revisit that yeah thanks for putting that on the radar again i forgot about it yeah uh that's kind of crazy the funny bit with that was that and i swore as i was listening to you know because especially then those early ones i would have listened dozens of times over the course of years right and uh the initial one that's framed as the first Luke Snell one is actually the second one and then he reposted the second one so it's the same one twice. The first and the second are both actually

the second one. So I texted him and said yeah you mess that up dude and he's like okay my bad you know and he'll go presumably go fix it out but that's the only sort of complication so don't be confused folks if you listen on that but

no all good all fun and yeah sincerely appreciate you know it's really cool to go back and listen to it. So it was like the ones he talks about the short one by himself, then the one with that one, which is, it is pretty mind-blowing, right? To think about it in the context of they're having this super stilted awkward conversation. It's like, if only you knew what would be, you know, where you'd be in 14 years, you know? Right, right. It's, yeah, it's kind of a, um, I mean, just a big slice of history, you know, to go back that far and to have something so consistently

long running and just, you know, great topics. And, I mean, it's just phenomenal what they've done, you know, very impressive, despite their humble beginnings, you know, like, yeah, they kind of paved the way in a lot of ways for a lot of podcasts that I think a lot of podcasts these days kind of credit them because yeah, yeah, I mean, you had reptile radio and that kind of thing, but, you know, it didn't last. That was probably two and a half years total, something like that. And definitely, and the funny part about that now. right is how short they were and it's been the it was only like an hour hour to hour 15 hour 20

and the first half of the time they're not even talking to the guests they're talking about the random uh news of the week or whatever and it's just kind of like wow so you you went on did you go on there with them yeah yeah it was on yeah i think we were talking about geckos i might have been on with i might have been on was i on twice maybe just once but i can't remember i know i went on once but yeah this kind of it's probably only the point of that was going to be you were probably only actually on there for 25 minutes to 25 35 minutes something like that and we don't really remember it that way we didn't know any better you know it's like hey i'm going on a podcast what what's a podcast yeah kind of early days of that kind of format you know so and you know i sometimes you like

you look at one and they're like three or four hours long you're like okay you know what are they really discussing is this how much show yeah yeah yeah or if they've been on another podcast you've already heard them a couple times you're like yeah i don't know if i need to listen or i'll listen to it on 2x or something you know like it's kind of funny and and it does seem like sometimes the different podcasts will kind of hear a guest on somebody else's podcast and it'll get them on there so you hear the same guy like three or four times like on different podcast telling kind of same making the rounds you know yeah exactly And, I mean, I don't know, that's the way it goes, but there's only so many reptile people to some extent.

Sure. Yeah. It's cool to think about. I mean, we've been going for quite a while now, too. Yeah. Reptile Fight Club's been around for a little bit. I don't know. We'll keep going as long as it's fun, right?

Yeah, so we talked about that when I was talking to Michael and Dom, and, um, and I, uh, I don't know. So I just heard on, he said, well, something like, you know, the shows, one of, Dom said this show is one of his favorites, but he did say that, you know, it's sort of a bummer that it's become reptile love club and all that. But, you know, he said, no, he was just, you know, I pointed that out. And he was just like, yeah, I know, appreciative and all that. So talk through some of that stuff and kind of process, the idea is where we're going or whatever. But, yeah, super excited for him. Right. I don't think it's ever truly been repped off, I club.

I mean, one time I had to fight to get control of the show, but that's about it. I think Lucas came in hot. I think he was one of our guests that just came and swooned. Yeah. Wow. I remember. That was pretty good times. Yeah, it was fun to hear and talk about his trip and he found some good stuff and glad he had a successful trip for the limited amount of time he had to get out herping. You know, that's pretty, as we know, going out and just looking for diamonds, you know, pretty lucky to find one, especially, you know, that, you know, right off the road like that. We certainly were where he was. Yeah, yeah, looking where he looked.

And you just get lucky sometimes and sometimes you don't. Yeah, that's the beauty of herping. Well, maybe that leads us to our topic tonight. So Aspen Mayhan had a really kind of fun idea. to kind of pit different things against each other, right? Like, what's the best Python, you know, have like a bracket-style debate? And so we were talking more about, like, herping trips. Where do we want to go next, you know?

And Eric mentioned going to Australia again sooner than later. He's like, I'm not waiting until 2027. I got to go, 26, you know. So that got Rob and I thinking, you know, where do we want to go next? And where's a good place to go? So we're going to kind of pit, I guess, March Madness style, different areas of Australia against each other. So we've got eight different areas and two, you know, an east and a west bracket, I guess. And we'll see who ends up in the middle there to fight each other at the end.

So again, I mean, I'm not sure the best way to do this. We thought, I guess, as indicated by my intro there, the announcer voice, we thought maybe we'd just be unbiased. observers, but maybe Dom's feedback says we should, you know, flip a coin and take, take one and defend it and fight against the other and try to knock them out. So maybe that's what we'll do. We'll flip coins and see. So let me bring up this thing. So we've got on the left bracket, we've got Western Australia, which is a pretty large area, you know, versus the Kimberly, which is a pretty large area, but less, you know, a little smaller than the rest of Western Australia. South Australia versus Central Australia in the other bracket.

And then on the east side, we put the top end over on the east side against the Central Coast. And then we've got the Brigolo Belt and Inland Queensland versus Far North Queensland. So those are the four different brackets that we'll start with. I kind of, I guess I did a little biased ranking there, giving kind of the one seed. But that's not to say there won't be an upset. So we'll go with those matchups here. So where do we want to start? Do we want to start East Coast or West Side?

Sure. How about we start on the East Coast? Okay. Let's go Top End versus Central Coast. That's all right. We've both been to both those areas. so yeah okay uh i'll go ahead and flip and you call it tails it is heads okay yeah um i will take uh top end i uh sure well yeah we'll we'll make that apparent uh here soon but uh why don't

you get started you'll you'll take the ball out first you won the jump okay sure um well i think and certainly an advantage, depending on, and the top end obviously has a variety of different habitats that have different, where this is variably true. But in my experience, the density of particularly snakes in the central coast is probably higher than the density in the top end. Part of that may reflect the fact that it's generally there's more urbanization, which can lead to concentrations when you're in good pockets of habitat. Heck, we even see that in Darwin, right? when we're talking about the frillies that are in town and Darwin carpets, right? It's generally speaking, it's more common for people to encounter Darwin carpets in and around or Darwin suburbs than it is to find them just out in the bush, right? Over in Kakadu, something like that.

Well, and that applies to coastal carpets, too, for the most part. Absolutely. So that, you know, you can have a Central Coast trip like we did in, oh my, 23, 22, 23, whatever that. was and um yeah what in one night i think we saw eight carpets so yeah um yeah it's much better night than i've ever had over there yeah the densities can be really high really amazing and so that it's almost like kind of hoping it's something else you know it's i know we're excited for carpets and whatever but where you're just kind of like wow okay this is actually um and there is even within that there is good variety you know seeing different different looks there are definitely a couple

kind of your favorite or whatever, but it was kind of like, okay, Eric, you know, we were giving you, giving Eric, a little bit of the treatment we were giving you about the box journal, Dustin and you know, where you're just going, like, all right, okay, let's keep going. The only, the only real time, that trip certainly is the only time where I've had any inkling of the whole crap it's bit, you know, and again, listening to the early MPRs, that gets made mention several times with you guys coming off the trip and whatever. But, yeah, so I think just because it is, in general, more urbanized, that you get some in the pockets that are good, you get greater concentrations of things. So if you're just looking for a volume of particularly snakes in some ways, I think that's an easier achievement on the central coast.

Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, you do have to look to coastal carpet variety because there's not very many pythons, I guess, and where we're pet python guys. That's going to be our main focus, I think, for a lot of the topics. But, you know, you're going to see a lot of them. But again, yeah, yeah. They do very well with human habitat, you know, interruption, destruction. They do well in disturbed habitats. But other species like spotted pythons are a lot more rare of a find and more difficult to see. I guess we could probably include, like, oh, Sydney.

you know, Sydney and that, you know, the whole coast, that's central coast, right? Yeah, you pin down to Sydney, something like that. Right. And the diamonds, you know, that is pretty spectacular python. That would be pretty good. But, I mean, what, you got eight or nine species in the top end where, I'll say, we've got children's pythons. They're everywhere, right? I would say it's six pythons in the top end.

Okay. If you go down into the center, then you can add, you get it to not, you know, if you're saying the NT generally, then that's not like that. No, no, just the, just the top end. So, yeah, you've got your children's pythons, your Owen Pellys, of course, that look just like a children's. If you've seen a children's, you've seen an Owen Pelly. That's what I keep telling you. Waters, olives, blackheads. Carpet.

Yep. So, yeah, six species. Was that all six? I don't think we're missing. Yeah, that was all six. I don't think we're missing anything there. But, you know, that's a nice variety. That's, and, and like you said, the habitat diversity kind of lends to that. If you're in one area, you might see, you know, a lot of children's pythons. You move to the other area. You see a bunch of blackheads or just too many own pellies. You get sick of own pellies. Yeah. Exactly. So, you know, that's definitely got what it's got going for it. the diversity of species and i mean i guess the you know if you're in darwin proper you've got a lot of kind of that same idea of concentrated habitats and you know we well we found a carpet python at our Airbnb you know like walking around the grounds of the Airbnb we found a carpet just crawling around there so you know they they do do well in those disturbed habitats so um even if

you're staying close to the city and like we saw you know walking a along the foreshore, you know, you see all sorts of monitor lizards and, and there's people everywhere, but the monitor lizards are going strong. Like, there's just no shortage of spotted tree monitors or frilled dragons, for that matter, you know, what more iconic reptile can you get in Australia than a frilly, you know, so. And those NT ones are really pretty. Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, compared to the coastal ones. Yeah. What I was thinking with the another, you know, just the frill you know iconic lizards or whatever probably so out of that trip that we did central coast the my probably my favorite animal was that uh pagona barbata that eastern beard dragon that was like

black with silver markings you know as from a like the silver autograph sharp piece you know that's sort of a look like that thing and silver into blue on this vibrant black with the yellow mouth and it's doing the prototype behavior and all fold out beard and all this and it was just like that was probably my favorite animal that whole trip that's cool yeah my my experience with the central bearded dragon or the the coastal beard of dragons was uh one sitting on a fence post you know on a on the road side drove by and got out of the car and got it you know and i didn't dare mess with it too much because i was basically in somebody's yard so you know and so i got a few pictures of it. It didn't really display. It was just kind of letharged, just kind of sat there and

let me manipulate it or whatever. I'm like, you know, not the impressive experience that you had, but so, you know, I'll take a frilled lizard over a coastal bearded dragon, but, you know, they're both cool, but I think the frillies kind of take the cake there as far as, and they're usually, like the wild ones especially are going to display at you. They're going to throw that frill for the most part. I mean, you might get one that won't, but And then they don't stop, some of them don't stop frilling at you. They'll just sit there. And you set them down and they're coming back at you.

Yeah, yeah. The funnest is when you're filming them and they're attacking their reflection. Now the bearded dragons will do the same kind of thing. They'll see themselves. And usually if they're males, they'll go after the lens. It's kind of funny. I had one crawl, a frilled lizard crawl all the way up my body trying to attack the video camera I was holding, you know, because he could see his reflection, I assume.

But, yeah, it was kind of a fun experience. Absolutely. Accessing the frilled dragons can be a challenge sometimes. Sometimes they're up higher in the trees. You're not able to necessarily climb up and grab them. I got defeated a couple times by, you know, frillies high up in trees trying to get to them. Or if they're again, and I mean, this applies to both areas to some extent,

at least in the developed parts, but being in people's yards or being on a school grounds or something like that, chasing lizards can be, yeah, a little, you might get a talking to. Yeah, I think too, like the geckos up in the NT are amazing. Yeah, the, I mean, the ones that we saw, the different Velva geckos, Jamada and the Marmarada. velvet geckos and then the um shay eye the knob tail gecko up in cacadoo that i mean those three things just made that night pretty pretty special night that was cool yeah absolutely i guess the the other cool part um oh wait those those those might have been two different nights because i think we saw the jamaata and the marmarada on one night and then the shay eye the next or something yeah um but the uh the uh the uh the uh

sort of endemism in little pockets, like in the mountain pockets that are in the central coast is pretty cool, particularly in kind of the gecko context when you're talking about the leaf tail geckos, sultuarious, platyrus. Yeah, you could try and run that, you know, in terms of there's a whole bunch of speciation within those little pockets, and if you wanted to, you could put in, you know, could do decent work on one of those lists in not all that far distance. The access to those is variable, right? It's easier than others.

They're closer to where you're at or not. You know, it depends. If that's kind of your target, I think you could do it really well. They're not necessarily the easiest thing to just sort of, oh, and we'll just jump over to this spot. But if you wanted to do it, if you wanted to make kind of a rocket run, cool little trip to try and knock out six or eight species, you could do that. Right. I know Derek Dunlop did that, went and tried to find as many of the leaf tail geckos that he could. While I was on the Central Coast, it was the middle of the winter.

I found 15 on three hikes, you know, like they were very thick in the middle of winter, out, you know, active on the side of trees. I was shivering in my shorts and t-shirt until I found one. Then that warmed me up with the, you know, the find of the adrenaline of finding a cool lizard in its habitat. So, yeah, I definitely think that's a benefit of the coast. I think you get some points there for sure. And all the places, which are awesome, you know, it was one of those where, you know, it took, we didn't see it on our first trip, say one that had been hit. And then, yeah, on this most recent trip, what we had seen, I must have seen six within the span of a couple hours, you know, including, you know, basically walking out on top of one, where it was just, you know, unexpected. And they're just such a cool. I understand, you know, that they're not as cool as a parenti. I mean, I recognize and acknowledge that. Nevertheless, you know, it's. certainly a iconic and iconic species, right? Definitely, yeah.

And I mean, much different than a parenti, you know, they're utilizing different habitat, they have different behaviors, yeah. So definitely something you don't want to miss. But as far as monitor diversity, the top end also has a very nice diversity of monitor lizard. The question is, can you see them, right?

Some are superiors. super isolated some are just super wary you know obviously the i would say in terms of the i suppose really for me the nt fits into a box of um in some ways it reminds me a sandhill habitat where um you know the density of things is low but if you find anything it's going to be cool and some of those that's where the real cool like super unlike you know you're kind of moonshoting it but if you see them it's amazing yeah Whereas the Central Coast, I think things are, generally speaking, you're talking about stuff that's more predictable and you're likely to, you probably have a better chance of both seeing numbers and seeing the things that you're looking for, but they're not really moonshots in the same way. Right.

Yeah, that's true. I mean, there is some that, you know, especially in habitat, like you said, that are going to be next to, you know, very difficult to find. But, you know, in some areas, they're very straightforward and easy. but 16 different species of monitor, depending on how far south again you go. I mean, that's including Spencer's monitors, and they might get kind of close to top end, but not quite.

I wouldn't consider them top end. But, you know, the King Gorham are pretty fantastic and nice looking. We looked for those, didn't find any. There's got Okriatus, the Kimberly Rock monitors, in the top end are phenomenal looking. They're so nice. But again, very difficult to see, along with Glebo Palma, which would be another.

Those are the things in my mind. Right. You know, but, you know, Mertons, you're probably going to see Mertons in the top end, unless you're me, you know, on my first trip. But, yeah, we saw a few on this more recent trip. Unfortunately, the yellow spotted monitors have declined quite a bit in number, but there's still a pretty good chance. of seeing those up there as well.

I think we saw one on our trip, if I'm remembering, right? And then Mitchell, I, we had good luck there. And then Scalaris, obviously. I'm surprised Mitchells have 55 observations versus 42 for Scalaris. I mean, I think we saw 42 in one day. They were everywhere. People must just not be in on it, right? Yeah.

Or, yeah, or they're just one of those like, oh, it's common. You know, I don't need to enter it where, yeah, you're kind of skewing the numbers because there's 42 observations of bend-a-tree monitors on INAT and there's only 40 of, or I mean, there's 40 of Glebo Palma. So it makes it seem like a Glebo is as easy to see as a Scalaris, but I think people are just more excited to log their Scalaris than their, their, their Glebo than their sclerus. But anyway, yeah, and that, um, finding that, um, Acky type, the, you to be barici and now it's in salanicus the kind of lemon throat on them and you know the one we found was kind of a different looking pattern but really neat looking so that was fun to see and we also

came came across it was under cover and just the end of its tail was sticking out of the burrow and so we got to play guess the monitor before we kind of dug it up and got it out of the burrow and checked it out but that was really fun yeah that sounds great I mean that just that experience of doing it in that way is really neat right yeah but yeah i i guess you know the diversity's great but yeah finding them sometimes can be a challenge i think that's the downside of that and and how spread out everything is up there you know like i guess things are spread out on the coast too but you know you've got it just seems like you're i i think that's kind of one of the negatives for me about the central coast is just so busy and built up and you're in track

traffic jams and there's people everywhere. But at the same time, you have some pretty cool, you know, reptile parks. You've got the Australia Reptile Zoo and the Australia Zoo, Steve Irwin's spot. And, yeah, John Weigels is the, is that the, what is it, the reptiles? Yeah, Australian Reptile Park. Australian Reptile Park, yeah. And Zoo Park, yeah. You know, cool, cool spots to hit for sure.

I guess Darwin has Crocasaurus Cove, but not quite as extensive as the other two. But good stuff. You can't swim in the cage of death anywhere, but Crockasaurus Cove, it's kind of a fun little feature. And you can't get Crock Parm anyplace besides the restaurant across the street. Right. That's a fun experience as well. Yeah, I guess both a plus and a minus are the crocodiles. got to be, I mean, I guess you might get that a little further north on the coast, but not

quite as, not to the extent of the NT, like, uh, top end is like, that's crock country. You don't go by the water unless you're foolhardy, you know, you don't take chances near the water. So that can also make it difficult to herb, especially if you're looking for something like mangrove snakes or, or, you know, Mitchell's water monitors or something like that, you know, that are kind of hanging out by the coasts. Yeah, yeah, the little crab eater type, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, the other part of it, right, if we're just talking all the different considerations, the sort of relative ease, the infrastructure, all those things obviously are much easier,

particularly coming from the U.S. on any of those Central Coast places, which is the plus and the minus, right? Sure, sure. It's a lot less costly to get there. Yeah, you highlight the negative side in terms of there are more. more people. The pro is that it's, yeah, it's a lot easier, particularly to kind of get in and be doing stuff really quick. We saw on the last trip when we've gone up to the NT that that was probably kind of a worst case scenario or on the bad end of scenarios in terms of how long it took us to get there. But yeah, that can be pretty, there aren't as many flights to Darwin from

Brisbane or Sydney as he would expect on a day basis. Yeah. And that also makes rental cars more expensive fuel prices higher um you know a lot of things factor in stays or maybe more yeah seasonal closings was a big one that i learned the hard way this year is you know planning and i think jordan came up what a month after us and he didn't go to half the places we got to go to because now they're flooded and there's saltwater crocs there and so these little pools we got to swim in yeah no go for jordan and his family because they were all closed off and i didn't realize i mean i i knew they'd close in in those areas for crocs but i didn't realize like um and and we can get to this down the road but the east kimberley had the same kind of thing where um the bungle bungles or i can't

remember the aboriginal name but yeah the um that area was like totally closed down while i was there and same with uh the el questro area um which is a really cool spot so i kind of missed out on a few things there from being there in October. I would have thought that was really enough. And it's freaking hot. Like, you know, depending on the time of year you go, I've never experienced heat like I did in

the top end and the East Kimberly. Just ridiculously hot. So, factor that into and I mean, that was the part that was wild on that last trip that we had taken was that, you know, we'd gone to the NT and then came back and we're in Sydney. And it was

like in the low to mid-60s coming from you know having been in the in the 90s to low one hundreds you know out in darland particularly out in cacadu and then you know it's the low 60s and it's just going how would anything be out and well it's nothing you know some things were but it was certainly the the thing you know those diamond pythons weren't out and it was like dang it i feel like we're 10 degrees too cold which was a wild feeling coming off of coming to Darwin. Yeah. And I think my first trip, I mean, my shoes were melting.

It was so hot. Like, I just had never experienced that heat. And then I went off to, you know, Western Australia and Kanaura and some of those areas. It was just blistering. It was. And so I can see maybe why they're closing down some of those places. And there were no people out there. Like no tourist season was officially over, you know.

But, hey, that's when the reptiles are moving. So, you know, you go out when they are. I guess, yeah, that's the other thing is during the wet season, you don't go, get to go a lot of places. And then it's raining on you most of the time, you know. I guess you'll get your tropical storms along the coast as well. But you've also got the beach. I mean, when I was there for work, staying in Surfers Paradise, you know, it's pretty phenomenal beaches, great surfing. If you get up a little higher, you're going to get, you know, parts of the Great Barrier Reef and some,

nice snorkeling and things like that, which you can't really do in the top end because you might get eaten by a crocodile, although, well, that's further north, but... Yeah, we'll call that in a different bracket, but... Exactly, yeah. So I, you know, as far as, I guess, for our purposes, I would say due to the diversity, you know, the amount of cool different habitats that you can get, I would probably say it's top end. those places there is, you know, like absolutely one of my favorite, probably my favorite place, you know. So obviously I'm predisposed in that direction. I guess the question becomes if what's your context, right? Have you been, if you, have you been to Australia before, you know, particularly as someone going there from abroad? Have you been before? If the answer to that is yes, then maybe the NT holds a great deal of appeal because those kind of moonshot targets, you know, seen. Maybe worth, more. effort and you're certainly in an awesome place uh the the experience of it in terms of you know

sort of the classic prototype australia experience or whatever i to me the nt feels that way i know you kind of have framed w a is that way but um it much more is kind of the australia of our imagination necessarily than the kind of the central coast areas um which is cool but if you're as a first time out it's pretty tough it can be super tough and also the distance between like you're you're through a lot of like scrubby kind of forest versus you know i don't know i guess it seems like all the cool spots are kind of few and far between to some extent where you're wanting to go climb on the rocks or you know that kind of thing or or swim in the pools yeah yeah and then they're kind of getting and i mean i'm sure this applies to this the central coast as well but

they're getting wise to people going out during the night and so they're closing down to different areas of cacadoo so you can't go herp there at night so that kind of makes a little challenging as well although you know there's no places you can yeah yeah i mean the place we went great experiences for sure right right you had a little uh talk with a ranger up there and he was pretty cool and was understanding okay you want to see our wildlife that's fine you know and i think as long as we you know i i think the americans are much less likely to do anything wrong versus the people who are native that you know the live there yeah i think that is definitively true right so we the authorities in australia if you're listening we're gonna we're just gonna come

take pictures we're not going to try to steal anything take it home you know it's not worth it absolutely all right well do we but i think we can give it to the nt just isn't well frankly on a next one probably isn't where i would choose for either the nt would be the predilection, but just having, you know, I think there's so many cool places to go that as the next one probably isn't where I would go, but I still let it win the round for sure. Okay. Do we want to do a West Coast one now?

Sure. You want to do? The opposite corner? Yeah. Let's do WA versus Kimberly, although I've been to WA a couple times. I've been to the East Kimberly, so, you know, I guess that's kind of going to be my reference point. But let's go with that one.

So we'll flip a coin again here. See who gets to play for what team? What do you got? I'll say tails again. Hit his heads again. I'll side with the Kimberly. I'll give you the W.A. But I'll help on both sides, I think.

Yeah, absolutely. So I've planned out particularly, W.A. generally, right? Two different, as off-repeated, right? That was our, you know, March 2020, it's true, that that wasn't. And then we'd sort of rethought it relative to maybe 2021 or 22, and ultimately didn't do that either, right? It wasn't open at the time where that would make sense. So I'm certainly, we'll defer to you as to all these things, but I definitely, in terms of W.A, have lots of thoughts and ideation around the different things.

So hopefully it can do some justice to it. obviously the biggest appeal particularly to eric is the idea of going out and seeing an imricata right a southwestern carpet and it sounds like there's a ton of there is actually some habitat diversity down in sort of the perth area and then if you were to drive up to shark bay or x mouth and then over to port headland 80 mile beach there's a ton of diversity it seems like great distances infrastructure is okay It depends where you're at. Yeah, the further north you go, the less you got. When you're down by Perth, I think, you know, that infrastructure is crazy and built up and all that. And probably isn't it one of the most isolated big cities in the world? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's pretty good-sized city.

Like, I was kind of surprising. And also, you know, the habitat disruption in the south with the wheat belt. I mean, it's a belt of wheat that goes pretty far. You know, you're driving a long way going, are we still by a wheat filled? What is going on here? You know, but, you know, even within that area, there's isolated pockets of where they can't grow wheat. And so you can go find snakes and including one of my favorites, the, you know, the wheat belt Stimson's Python. Absolutely.

I will not call it a children's python, but, you know, that's. And, you know, the Stimson's pythons all throughout Western Australia are pretty nice to look at. Yeah, pretty cool. And there's a fair diversity, kind of a la the carpet pythons of the East Coast. You got your diversity of Simpsons' pythons in Western Australia. The imbricotta are pretty variable as well. Yeah. And I mean, the other cool part, obviously, if you're talking about that area down there,

if you want to make the trek further inland, is when you're going out by Calgoorli, the gold fields, you know, the shinglebacks out there, truly wild, right? and the neferrous that you can run into out that way. I think, again, you're kind of getting into the more isolated, less of an infrastructure beyond sort of the mining stuff that I'm sure exists. But, yeah, if you want to, as I'm always amazed when you go to W.A. and make these giant circuits, and I'm thinking this is not how I would do it, right?

So to me, maybe the answer is W.A. is really even W.A. versus Kimberly is sort of conflating a lot of different things. Are we talking about going up to, you know, Python pool or Kerrigini or are we talking about more like forestania out to the gold fields? Or are we talking, you know, in my mind. And you just say all of it. You say we do it all of it. Pain's fine. It's hard to, hard to not do that, you know. But I mean, I think one of my favorite places on earth is Kerrigini.

Like, it's very hard to be like as far as beauty and the reptiles that are found there. I mean, it's incredible. So, you know, I will say I was a little disappointed not to be able to go and explore some of the more southerly areas with you guys. And I was kind of like, oh, why are we going to NT? I thought we were going to WA, you know, that kind of thing. But going to W or going to NT and hitting a lot of the targets that I'd missed on my first trip was definitely worthwhile. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So that was good to get back there. And actually do it some justice because on the first trip. We went to Kakadu for one day, like it was a day trip. We left early, early in the morning and got back way late at night to our Darwin area, Airbnb. It was like quite a drive just to go out there for a day. So it was more of a touristy thing rather than an actual real herping venture, I think. Right. Yeah.

Kimberly, very remote, but it's the only place you're going to see a lot of things. They have a lot of endemics that are really, I mean, Top of the list would be the rough-scale Python and, you know, and apparently they're not too terribly difficult to find once you get to the right place and the right habitat and the right time of year. You're probably going to have a good chance, but getting there is a bear and fraught with the, oh, yeah, yeah. You've got to have a four-wheel drive for the most part, and it'd probably be a good idea to go in a group with two vehicles so you can, you know, help each other out in the sticky situations. you know, that kind of thing. So it's a lot more of an undertaking. And then, yeah, like once you get there, there's no Airbnb's.

I mean, there might be one or two. There is actually one place, but it's something like absurd, like obscene. Yeah. Yeah, like a couple grand a night or something. Maybe not quite that. Maybe not that much. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, there definitely is a tourist element, right?

I mean, there's a lot of. People do go. And the helicopter tours and all that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's, that's one negative thing that I've heard is when you're in the area looking for rough scaled, you just hear helicopters overhead, like all day, you know, in certain areas. And it just gets to be annoying because they're just coming in, looking at the waterfalls and then flying out. So it's like, oh, there's another chopper, you know, and you got to be, have that interrupt your, your peaceful area. So it's not like the John Weigel experience where you're out in the middle of nowhere and you're not going to see another human.

for a few weeks. But also, you know, all of the NT, there's a lot of crock danger in the Kimberley. So you've got to be very wary of, you know, when you're by even small pools of water, there can be good-sized crocs hidden in there. So you've got to be careful there as well. But, again, you know, the cool monitor lizards, pythons, it's pretty amazing. I mean, Wigel's group, they found. on that all of python consuming a rough scale python.

You got two python species in one go there. And luckily they rescued the rough scale and he went on to sire. Or a lot of the rough scales that are in captivity these days. So kind of insane. I guess indirectly, not necessarily sired all of them. But gave rise to many of them. Gave rise. The progenitors of the ones we have.

Pretty cool. And just the beauty. I mean, the rock escarpments in the Kimberly or second and none. I mean, Knauro was a beautiful place. I really enjoyed that area. There was some really neat habitat and just cool little towns. The gorges and spin effects, you know, covered rocky areas were pretty phenomenal up there. And lots of cool Aboriginal.

art and things like that, you can check out. We forgot to mention that as part of the NT as well. I guess some of the coastal stuff has that as well, but maybe less so and not quite as, I don't know. I think the top end Aboriginal art like around Nerlangi is some of my favorite. Yeah, pretty incredible. It's amazing. Yeah, yeah. And large galleries, like, you know, drawings after drawings, you know, it's really.

really impressive. I really like that skeletal art type that they have up in the top end. But there was a really cool crocodile Aboriginal painting up by the Big Lake Argyle up near Kondonara. Yeah, cool stuff. I think Lake Argyll has the highest concentration of freshwater crocodiles in the world. So that's kind of a neat thing. And I saw a few there. And I think Jordan even found a olive python that had consumed a freshwater crocodile juvenile. Like the shape of the lump in the olive python looked like it was a little crocodile. And he actually saw a crocodile crossing the road, you know, just made it off the road quick.

He didn't get yet to see it very close, but saw it run across the road. Like, what was that? That looked like a crocodile. So, kind of cool. That is cool. Yeah. And over in that kind of Nura area, that's, I mean, really cool, right? Yeah.

Yeah, your descriptions out of that one on the back half of the, yeah, that's crazy. And the idea of seeing Gloward Eye, the way that you did and stuff, is obviously holds a ton of appeal. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the Gloward Eye was kind of the main reason for going there. And I really just geeked out. I'd like to make it back there because, again, some of the places were closed. It was probably a little later in the season than I'd want to go. It was very hot and very uncomfortable.

I tried to sleep out in a tent a couple nights. And most nights I just slept in the car because it was just so unbearable. I'm like, what's the point of even setting up a tent? I'm not going to be able to sleep. It's just too hot. If I sleep in the car, if I wake up, and it's too hot, I can turn on the AC for a few minutes and try to get back to sleep. But, yeah, that was the downside.

Trying to tent that time of year was a no-go. But, yeah. Sure. I don't know. Also, I guess, yeah, the cost and the accessibility is the downside, but the diversity and the beauty and the one-offs and all of that. I mean, I think it certainly strikes me that. It's the, I would say, I guess, the Kimberly, particularly the Western Kimberly, less so, you know, kind of nora and that sort of stuff, but is a must go, but probably sort of a, it's the sort of big venture, right? It's the grand adventure.

It's not a regular thing, whereas just you could, you know, as you have done, what you've been to W.A., you know, meaning kind of the southern stuff or even the route three times, four times? Twice, yeah. Twice, okay. So, my own, they just seem to such a grand adventure. I wish, yeah. I mean, that's a big, that's a lot of area to cover. But yeah, we did that, that loop twice in two years. Right. Yeah. I mean, so that is, it seems pretty, pretty doable. And particularly then, if you took that into offshoots and said, hey, we're going to do more like the southeast running into Goldfields doing really focusing imbricotta stuff, you know, or as I say, up to try and see Blackheads and Walmart, you know, get into the, get into the curve to try and do that over time. Garagini with Millstream,

Chichester, you know, although there's plenty of, plenty of list things for me in all those spots. So I guess that's how it would fit for me is absolutely, particularly the West Kimberly

got to do it as the Grand Adventure. But it is such, the logistical constraints means like it's a have to do but I probably only do once and try and do it right, you know, especially coming from here.

Right. As long as you can find a rough scale pipe, on, you know, I think the other things you can probably find closer. But, I mean, there are a lot of cool endemics up there. There's a really cool over there, too, right? Yeah. We're talking about that one.

Felicit Pota, right? Yeah, really weird and kind of cool-looking thing. The cave geckos and things up there also are pretty impressive. I mean, East Kimberly has a pretty good monotiversity, but WA has a crazy monitor. diversity yeah i'm thinking with the uh east kimberley that that's a little bit it almost splits into how doable it is right in terms of running down from darwin or what you could almost fit that in just as you did as a top end sort of bit not you know um and that's probably a more accessible way to do that and i wouldn't cabinet so much as saying oh well you're only

going to do it once as the grand adventure whereas the west kimberley i think is yeah you're you want to hit that in it in that uh yeah singular grand adventure try and just try and make sure you turn it up yeah i mean it's it's a solid day of driving from oh yeah from the darwin to to uh kind of took me pretty much all day leaving fairly early in the morning i i think i made it down to like uh just north of katherine um that night that i dropped you guys off and then i finished the following morning you know all the way i think i got there kind of on sunset so it's kind of you know a full day of driving from darwin area but doable you know not too terrible and there's great herping on the way like katherine and and edith falls that kind of

area is really cool yeah yeah i mean two two olives and a d-or olive and then a blackhead the blackheads are really nice down there south of katherine as well really bold banded i don't know that you're going to beat a western australia blackheaded just so nice looking and that oh i was i was looking at um the ones that i'm raising up that are a couple of years old now and oh my goodness they were just black and white like they something was they were just glowing they must have shed out recently but just really just that black was nice and shiny and crisp and the white was yeah it was pretty awesome so i i i still need to see a western australian blackheaded Python. I've only seen a D-O-R up there. Okay. I mean, I got a WOMA, uh, WOMA one on one of the

trips, but, um, yeah, for some reason. Like, I know Nick and Ryan went up there and they were finding Blackhead after Blackhead. I don't know if they turned up a WOMA. I don't think so. Yeah. Um, and they didn't turn up a carpet either. So like, you know, it's hit and miss. Like, you're going to see what you're going to see. And they saw a ton of multifaciatta, too. And I've only seen multi-facietta just hit on the road there like barely still twitching kind of thing that drives me knots i guess a couple have been like crispy critter the outside of the road like pancakes but um the gurney are fantastic up there like you got the yeah yeah occipitalis have you seen i forget i haven't i've only seen that occipitalis as well yeah there was we've we went to this

tin site uh that our friend from south australia sent us to and yeah And then we didn't see any on the Central Australia trip, no blue tongues except for Krispy Critter. I think Jason and Dale saw one on the way down from the top end, and it was just flattened pancakes. Right. Jason says it still counts. A Jason tick, as we call it. So, yeah, I guess I can count that Western Blackhead then. if we're going by Jason rules.

I don't think we are. No, no. I definitely want to go back and see one of those 80-mile beach blackheads. They're just really cool. Or a Pilbara, Blackhead would be fantastic as well. That's where I saw the DOR was in the Pilbara, and it was beautiful. Like, even as a dead animal, it was just fantastic looking. Both kind of infrastructurally challenged, though, right?

More so than certainly compared to the Central Coast, maybe even compared to the NT. Like when you're saying to the philbra and stuff, how is that? Is that kind of akin to being out in Kakadu in terms of the services that are there? Is it even less? Is it more dispersed? What does it look like? I mean, it seems like there's reasonably spaced roadhouses, you know, where you can get a shower,

you can get a meal, you can get, you know, gas and all that kind of stuff. So it's not too bad, but if you see expensive gas, that means. there's not gas for a long ways. So you better fill up, yeah. And we found a little bit of that, you know. But, you know, the further south you go along the coast, the more, you know, regular that you're going to hit, you know, servos and that kind of thing. So, but yeah, I don't know about the Kimberly.

I don't think there's many options for filling up in the Kimberly. But, you know, I need to do some research and find that out. Well, that's part of the time. There's got to be places. Yeah. Absolutely, there have to be places. But, yeah, it just gives a, it seems like that's, you know, the highest level. Highest level difficulty.

Right, right. Making sure you got all that stuff straight. Not just, you don't just turn up and do that one. Yeah, the most grand adventure you're going to find, you know, these days, I think, over there. You know, although certain areas of Western Australia are definitely that way. Or even what, the kind of northwest, northwest, South Australian, stuff, you can be, you can be out there. Right. Jordan, part of the presentation we gave at the Texas Carpet Fest, he took a spot in W.A.

And like it had like this, an area the side, I think he said the size of Texas, an area had like less observations than his yard. You know, like there's less records in an area the size of 10. So, you know, very little accessibility in some of the areas out there. But, you know, the places you can go, I mean, yeah, I was going to say the gurnia. in W.A. It's pretty phenomenal. Like, there's a bunch of different species, cool looks. Really fun to find those. The monitors, like the big old panopties, rudibibibus, rubidus, rudibus. I think it should be rubid, I would think. Yeah. Rudy. Yeah, red. Is that what Rudy is? But, yeah, they're really fun to see and pretty common, you know, out there. I guess the can't

Hodes haven't taken them out yet. Hopefully that won't happen. Try enough. Yeah. Yeah. So really cool lizards and just, you know, the death adders, those well's eye with the blackheads are pretty impressive. Yeah, I don't know. This is a hard one.

I think the Kimberly may be a little more hard herping as well, like whereas in the W.A. You're probably going to see a ton of stuff, you know, there's a lot. Yeah. more diversity in a lot of ways more accessibility a lot of different habitats so you've got you know places with standing water and a lot of drier areas as well you know straight straight desert and i love deserts so i don't know i think i'd prefer deserts to the tropics i think also in the tropics you're dealing with vines and trying to get through thickets and all that kind of stuff there's not a lot of trails to to walk along to go look for rough-scale python so you know, you're kind of limited in where you can go easily without just wearing yourself out in the tropical heat, you know? So, and I think mosquitoes, I mean, W.A. has flies, but they're pretty innocuous. They just annoy you. They don't buy it or anything. They're just flying and landing on you. And there's some areas where, like, it's insane. You'll get out of the car. You've been driving, you know, 60 miles an hour.

You stop, get out of the car. And immediately, almost, you're covered with flies. It's incredible. like where are they just hanging out where are they you know yeah and i and you know i it's worse than the antique for floss i mean yeah some of the spots we were in it was like almost to the point of insanity where like leave me alone quit landing in my nose you know like just kind of crazy and you're breathing them in and they're they're pretty thick and i think i don't think i it probably depends on the time of year you're there um but we wore headnets a lot more in W.A. than we did in NT. The NT, you've got the mosquitoes and, you know, especially during certain times a year, during the wetter times a year, you're going to have a lot of mosquitoes and

that's going to be a little rough. And there's some tropical diseases up there that are transmitted by mosquitoes. And it's not to say you won't get that out in the W.A. as well. But, yeah. Oh, and W.A. has a reef off the west coast, X-Mouth. Fantastic. Yeah, the Ningaloo Reef is amazing. We did some manta ray dives you can do whale shark during kind of the winter months yeah but the manterey tour was fantastic swimming with mantras was pretty cool bucket list item to do and just seeing and and i mean compared to the east coast you can just walk off the beach and you're on the reef in the east coast you have to charter a boat you know you know pay pay to get out there whereas the west coast you just drive up park get out jump in the reef it's pretty sweet there's

even a spot where you can where it's like current pulls you along so you're just the water just pulls you along and you just have to get out at the right spot or you're going to float over to China or something so just be careful there okay fair enough when there's that pink lake right yeah yeah kind of an interesting thing and i mean knob tails are thick as can be around that that area, shark bay and, some other areas up further north along the coast, the occipitalis,

or not occipitalis, occidentalis, nottale geckos, the subspecies of levis are thick and diverse, kind of like the coastal carpets of eastern coast. But I, yeah, I think I'd give this one to W.A.

I just, I don't know. I think, the diversity and but i mean you're also talking about a bigger area yeah much bigger much greater diversity um but yeah i think that's kind of the way that it fits i think the west kambulary in particular would be a as i say is a must go uh but probably as a singular grand adventure w a seems like it would have to win this one sort of as a you know reliable multiple options multiple trips that sort of deal yeah yeah and more infrastructure you know it's going to be a

less expensive. He can just rent a we didn't have a four-wheel drive on either of the trips we were on. We actually had kind of smaller cars or small SUV and they did just fine. Some of the roads into Caragini were a little rough on a rental car. I was

afraid we were going to damage it to the point where we're going to have to pay a lot more for it, but we just made a big mess in the car and they were like, this is too messy. We're going to charge you a fee. We're like, no, you're not. Okay, we won't. We got out of that kind of luckily but all right we'll give that one to w a you'll win you win that one

let's go uh brigolo belt inland queensland and versus far north queensland does that sound good yeah yeah see if you can get the coin toss this time i'll go tails again just keep riding it out it's heads again man we are uh hey tell me it was the funny heads coin yeah the double head sited coin. All right. Well, I've had a little less experience in the Brigelow Bell, but I've learned a little bit about that.

I'll take that one. If you want to take F and Q. F and Q. All right. F and Q. Okay. You've been to Cans. So, yeah, yeah.

I've been to Cans, yeah. Cans down to Mission Beach, that's sort of well and then obviously further south from there but you know then we're kind of getting into the central coast aspect of it but yeah i mean that's uh the idea of going to see uh green trees it certainly holds a ton of appeal right and then uh keith horneye uh obviously very cool as well you i forget exactly the tale you saw the backside of one you certainly saw a dead one and then you you saw a um functionally a black the australian black tree monitor i guess What they call them canopy goannas or whatever.

And then the idea that there's what, Indicus there, that's kind of wild. That are really not, and Dorianus, I believe, too. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. The Indicists are actually, they're the chlorostigma. Yeah, yeah. I think they gave them a different scientific name. They're really cool looking.

There's some that are just so blue and, you know, crazy or yellows or oranges or some crazy look to them. The mixture, right? Yeah. I think, yeah, the yellows and blues and stuff. But certainly, I mean, and scrub pythons, but, you know, haven't seen those, you know, around Kans and above it. And even, heck, the Daintry area, you know, very cool. And then even, well, what else gets included if you're talking about that is you're talking about,

you know, Cooktown and the idea of trying for SemiramX again probably even more reliably. And the pygmy band of python, C&A spotted python, Um, there's a ton of, uh, ton of cool stuff up there, right? And yeah, it seems like the infrastructure is decent, depending on the time of year, uh, to do it. It seems pretty reliable that you can go. And I guess that's sort of the, the vision that it strikes is saying like it is a little bit, it's a slight, slightly more challenging than some of the other things that you could do being, you know, certainly compared to just being around Brisbane or Sydney, um, probably the central coast stuff. entirely, but at the same time, it seems pretty reliable if you turn up and put in the time. Right, right. Brigolo Belt has a really, I mean, it's more inland, more deserty than kind of the coastal areas. Obviously, for me, I would go there to find an inland carpet, Python, you know, I guess Briglo Belt and further further south.

Yeah, yeah, we're talking about kind of that whole inland desert area. WOMA's Inland Northern North New South Wales Up through You know Yeah kind of the southern third Right Of Queensland

Inland southern third Something like that Yeah And so I mean I guess Yeah You'd include You know the Asper

The Crickley knobbtail geckos Pretty Pretty cool looking Diversity of those You know jet black Some are white And some are banded Black and white

So You know a lot of cool species that would definitely hold my interest um you do have a kind of an intergrade zone between inland carpets and coastal carpets and in kind of the area where you have the dip in the the the mountain range there the great dividing range is that the great dividing range right is the mountain range there along the yeah and the southern yeah yeah but uh just kind of a um i guess the the there's also, you know, the Stimson's pythons or children I, maybe those might be children I, yeah, and pygmy banded pythons, you can find kind of at the top end of what we might consider

kind of that inland desert, even though you can see them in F&Q as well. At least on the way, right? Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. A little bit of diversity of pythons down there. Yeah. I think to you, right, we were talking about kind of Nura in terms of what the, what it entails

the distance that sort of, you know, you were saying, oh, well, you know, it's kind of a solid day's drive, at least. My impression, again, you can speak to it, haven't done it, but, you know, just from scoping it out or whatever, that's probably basically the task relative to, you'd say it's a little bit more work, you're going to fly to Sydney or Brisbane, and then you're going to fly up to Cairns, and then it's, what, about 10 and a half, 10 and a half, 11 hour drive, something like that from that. Yeah, it's, it's a good drive.

I'm trying to remember the exact amount, but it was, it was pretty, It was a decent drive. I guess I can look it up while we're talking, but yeah, we were, we kind of drove it overnight, so a lot of the drive was done during the dark.

And so, you know, we rode, cruised a blackheaded python on the way up, and we'd stop and like go off just into the, off the side of the road. And we found some really nice velvet gecko's the castle nowi that looked really kind of unique and different. And I'm like, is this a different species?

You know, because there's so much diversity in O-E-Durr already. So it's like, yeah, it could be. But I didn't even know where we were, you know. We're just like stopping somewhere between cans and iron range. You know, they turn off to cook down and iron range. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, that's, I guess part of that is the adventure and kind of that idea of getting out on it, driving on a dirt road for, you know, 10 hours to get to where you're going.

on, so it's kind of cool. Yeah, absolutely. And then the idea of Santa Contra, I mean, that is sort of that one, it's pretty clear what you're trying to do between the Gwana stuff and the Condros. I mean, that's really kind of the focal point of the trip. I think in some ways, right, particularly compared to other things that we've talked about. There's a little, it seems a little more homogenous. Right.

A little less diverse. Maybe you can be into a spot of getting more quantity, depending on what it is, right? certainly, and variably time of year, right? So that can be habitat that's super thick and hard to see stuff, I'd imagine. And the idea was, you know, I know at least the idea expressed by Nick was, oh, you want to go try and see a conundra when it's green, you know, when the foliage is alive and whatever. And seemingly, that's not necessarily the case, whether you want to be on the back end

or the front end of the seasonality, maybe not having it be lush and, you know, full of lush green leaves makes it actually easier to see. the thing that's vibrant green right well i and i think too accessibility is the biggest thing you can't go there most of the year you know or or you can go there it's just very difficult to get there because the roads you know there there's a lot of water crossings that are uh unpassable during most of the year you know during the wet season especially and uh i mean we we had we struggled a little bit getting across the the water crossings during the dry time you know so okay you Yeah, that was kind of the, the, so I guess if you took a boat up there or you flew up there or something and then, you know, what car are you going to rent, you know, up there?

There's, there's like one little small Aboriginal outpost. You might be able to get a car there. I don't know. But so that kind of infrastructure like we were talking about with the Kimberly applies there. Very small. That's the Lockhart River is the little town there. There's a grocery store. so you can get food and stuff up up there, but it's pretty slim-picking. There's even stays that don't seem terribly expensive, but there aren't that many spot, you know, spots. Yeah, they're few and far between. But yeah, if you're going kind of off-season of the touristy season, maybe that's okay. But I don't think we saw many people there in October when we were up there. But that's kind of the end of the dry. You're risking a little bit of, you know,

if things are going to be passable. It'll start to rain kind of late October, November. We started getting the first cup. We got rained on a little bit up there, but not terribly. And that seemed to bring out the green trees, you know. One of them was pretty poor shape looking for a meal, you know. But I don't know, people go up in the middle of the winter and see plenty of them. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, the other part of it, I suppose, the thing that jump to mind as we're talking about that right if you're in a if the task uh requires you know kind of the driver you're and you're a little bit weather reliant i guess the nice thing about kind of potentially an fnq trip is you could audible out of cans and go instead inland or you know you could go southwest from there you could go you know more like atherton mariba you could go to chill to go. You could go down to maybe even to Winton. You know, you could turn it in something like that. You probably wouldn't want to go to Mount Issa, but, you know, that'd be a ways. But you could, you could actually fly into Cairns. There are still plenty of directions you can go. If you look at it and say, you know, the feedback is, yeah, it's surprisingly impossible, you know, a month earlier than you would think or whatever. You're not really stuck in the same way. If you're talking West Kimberley, I mean, I guess you, depending on which way you went, right? It means you're hanging out and cunning around. kind of do that stuff, or if you were coming from room, then you just kind of stay that way and you just kind of, you write it off or whatever.

Whereas I think if you're saying, okay, the plan is to head up to Iron Range that you could at least then, you know, there are still options and things that you're kind of in context and in area to do. It's not so much, well, there goes the whole plan. What are we going to do now? Yeah. Yeah, the drive to Iron Range from Cairns is 10 hours. and only 755 kilometers, so about 300 and something miles.

Which tells you a lot, right? Which, yeah, you're not going fast. The same way. Yeah, like, is probably even, is even more exaggerated of that, right? Yeah. And there is a flight up to Lockhart River, but it's like $700 to fly from cans. Yeah, right. Then you're kind of, yeah, walking.

I mean, if you can get to Iron Range, I guess somebody could probably drive you there and you could camp out and just walk the road. I mean, if you're there to see green tree pythons, there's kind of a limited area where you're covering because where the road goes through rainforest is kind of where most people see them. Yeah. And so, you know, you can hike into the forest and stuff.

Like, I know I've seen videos of them just, you know, roadcress, literally roadcruing, not in a, oh, looking out the side of the car, but where they're just crossing the road. Right. Yeah, you'll get that occasionally. And, you know, I mean, a flight up there sounds kind of nice after driving 10 hours on a dirt road for the most part. It was kind of funny because there are short sections that are paved intermediately. And so you'll be driving along.

And then all of a sudden you got the pavement. You're like, oh, that's so nice to not have any bumps. You know, you're not jarring around. Yeah, no washboard and stuff. But I guess if you can find the right speed. Well, that's what I was going to say. How much of that do you think was probably? going too slow.

Right. Yeah, it could have been. Could have been. So the vehicles we were in were pretty, pretty decent. But, yeah, maybe we weren't going fast enough for to make that. Smooth it out a little bit. Yeah. Brigolo has some cool species for sure.

You can see Parenti's there and you've got the Spencer's monitors, which are pretty cool. Yeah, depending on how high up or down you go. right or further inland like there yeah they're kind of over on the west side I guess yeah I guess if you're talking like Cameron corner and things like that kind of the where yeah Queensland meets South Australia yeah yeah a little further further west than that but that's kind of getting into South Australia territory South Australia Central Australia depends how you count it right right yeah but yeah that kind of inland and then you know

you know, if you're, if you're looking for the most venomous snake in Australia, you know, you got your inland tight ends out there as well. Again, you know, depending on what you're counting, but, um, really, uh, like true Brigolo, right? Kind of where, yeah, where I'm saying like St. George, um, you know, the, it, at least the infrastructure is pretty good, at least out to Roma or whatever, you can get out there pretty easily. And then, then you can wind up being, you know, isolated and whatever. it's a different feeling, right, for sure, in terms of what the habitat type is and all those

things, probably not as naturally aesthetic, depending on your taste. Right, right. Yeah, some kind of flatter, featureless areas, a lot of that. But also some really kind of cool, cool areas for sure. There's, you know, chance of seeing six different pythons out there. You got your inland carpets, children's, or. stimpsons however you want to look at those you can see spotted pythons um olives womas blackheads today i ever say it's blackheads and womas um but yeah kind of a cool

i always kind of geek out when i'm on i nat and i search for all of pythons because my pictures used as the icon for all the pythons yeah that's like that's the one i found in or we found in darwin on my first trip in 2011 so kind of funny i guess one of the earlier ones ones because they're using as the example, but it's kind of fun. But yeah, so diversity of pythons, diversity of monitors, diversity of elapids, you know, you got some and some crazy gecko diversity, a little more accessible, a lot more towns, you know, they just kind of dot. I guess the further west you go, the less you get as far as infrastructure. But, I mean, there are quite a few fairly good-sized towns out kind of inland. When I went in 2016, I went with my kids,

but unfortunately we spent most of our time driving through inner Queensland, kind of just driving rather than, I mean, we were going from Sydney to Cairns, which was way too ambitious for a trip. That is definitely not a Rob trip. But I mean, we stopped in some really cool areas that we're really neat to see. So what's the Canarvan National Park was really amazing spot. We stopped at. We camped in the campground there and like in the middle of the night we got fruit bats coming back to Roost about 4 a.m. or something and just squabbling and making lots of noise, but that was kind of a fun adventure.

canarvan had really cool aboriginal art big galleries that you know stretched 30 40 50 feet and pretty thick you know drawings there so that was a neat spot that we went to kind of in that inner inland area um we went through like emerald and things like that went out to georgetown that's getting i guess into f and q a little bit georgetown but it's still kind of that you know more desert western side versus the tropical north far north queensland ideal you know like you think about but so different different habitat completely um probably more accessible in large part other than around cans in that area even into the um the dain tree it's pretty thick and you don't have to deal with leeches and mosquitoes and crocodiles and all that kind of stuff in the interior. I went with, in 2016, we went out to Green Island in Cairns and the week after we got back, somebody had reported a saltwater crocodile that was hanging out around Green Island, like just, you know, off the coast a little bit. Yeah, where you could have swam and seen it, you know, like, oh, I'm getting out of here, you know. So still a risk even out that far out.

I mean, it takes an hour to drive a boat out to Green Island. So pretty incredible that a saltwater crocodile is just hanging out there. That's a lot of open, open water to swim across. And again, you've got the reef and, you know, that kind of thing. Green Island was fantastic out there. So that was neat. That's cool. Yeah, I guess F and Q, how many pythons are up there?

You've got waters and jungles, scrubs. You've got kind of the two types of scrubs if you're going up. On the way, anyway. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I've only seen the southern one. Yeah, that's all. I haven't seen the Iron Range one either, even though we were up there. We missed out on that one.

but yeah so scrub the two scrubs arguably right a variety

carpet looks greens spotts waters blackheads children's um the pigby banded

so yeah you got quite a quite a few up there too pretty good python diversity I think the elapid diversity

of the Grigolo and the inland area is pretty impressive. I mean, you've got all sorts of stuff. You've got mulgues and, of course, and a lot of the brown snakes, eastern straps-snouted, some of the whip snakes, a couple different species. You've got your inland typans. Collets, black snake. I mean, the collets are pretty amazing. A couple different species of death adder.

Yeah, the list goes on. I think there's around about over 30 species of elapids. So, you know, some more impressive than others. But, yeah, very high diversity of venomous snakes, if you're into that scene. Absolutely. Yeah. I, I don't know, since, you know, it's hard to say since I've been there, but what are you thinking here? I'd like to get out to this area, and I definitely need to go find an inland carpet.

Absolutely. I think it kind of falls, it feels similar, although nowhere near the Grand Adventure of the West Kimberly. It sort of feels similar to that last bracket to me in terms of saying a place to go and absolutely, you know, big ticket item, not that it says rare, but to find an inly carpet, to see potentially a WOMA. um you know there would be you know not reliable but amazing um you can get shinglebacks and things you know in a way that you can in fnq but um i think it's probably if we're talking about again herpers from rod coming the the idea of now the next time i go it'll have been five times and i haven't yet gone to fnq it's going to be like what are you doing dude where you know when are you going to mix that in um right although maybe it's already that way with w a as well so at some

point you know you just stacks the way it does after what you've done but um that's i guess i would probably put it into the same sort of categorization of saying i think from in a broad perspective fnq is probably the winner here for me although with a definite have to go you know to the brigolo slash inland new south wail northern new south wales slash yeah southern queensland something like that too many good places but you know you made these tough these brackets are Yeah, and yeah, I guess, you know, I'm not a huge fan of forests and, you know, I'm a desert rat, so, you know, I'm kind of leaning in that way, but it is, it is pretty iconic to get up to the tropical, you know, seeing the Boyd's Forest Dragons or a, or a cassowary. I mean, you're not going to get that anywhere else. I'm the oldest forests on Earth, you know, up in the F&Q and to see a green tree python that far south, you know, that's pretty. pretty incredible leeches scorpions you know right right it's it's a it's a it's a it's kind of a toss-up

this is a close one i think but yeah i can i can side with the f and q on this one you've got the the reef too and you know hanging out on the beach that way although you crock danger yeah i don't know the kind of appeal to me but right yeah i guess just in terms of if he said, you know, you got to do it. Right. Like, you know, it's what's, what is the ranking or prioritization, but viewed through the lens of like, as an abroad, as I say, coming from abroad, like, I think it's one of those you just have to do it.

So if you do that lens, I mean, shoot, we actually consider going to the Brigolo on our very first trip. So obviously it holds appeal to me. I think there's a ton there that makes sense. But it also strikes as being a little bit hit or miss, right? I think kind of you're going out there looking for some things that can be difficult to turn up. Oh, sure. Yeah. I think it's not as reliable either. Yeah. Yeah. And it's harsh. I mean, it's pretty rough. You know, you're not getting a lot of shade or whatever in a lot of those areas.

And it's pretty dry and, yeah, a little miserable. Probably flies out there, too. I don't know. So, you know, the tropics, you're wet and it's rainy. But it's also warm. You know, warm rain is. not the same as a cold rain. Not nearly so bad. Yeah. And I can handle being out walking through the rainforest and getting wet as long as they can dry off at some point, you know, during the night. Don't have to sleep wet. But yeah. Right. Yeah. So, yeah, I think, I think we got to give this one to F&Q. But we may be biased because that's where we've been, you know, to some extent. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll, we'll. We'll call it for that.

All right. The kind of last beginning bracket is South Australia versus Central. Yeah, I'm curious. Yeah. I, uh, yeah, this one, this one's, okay, let's go ahead and do the coin toss. Oh, there goes the coin. Okay, call it on the ground. I'm going to say heads just to test your trick coin.

Oh, my. my goodness, you should have stuck with tails. Well, that's sort of what I wanted to see if I could do it. Right. All right. Well, I guess you've been to neither of these places, right? No. So that's why.

Yeah, take your pick, although. Yeah. I have to go to Central Australia. I mean, that was kind of the whole reason I wanted to go to Australia. It has my favorite, favorite animals there. And so, and I guess the habitat. That was kind of what drew me in a lot of ways as well. So I think I still go back to that picture of bretles, you know,

sitting on the cliff as kind of one of my go-to images that really drew me to Central Australia. But just the fact that it's desert, there's Prenties, there's bretles, you know, there's all sorts of cool stuff out there. That's what draws me. And then, of course, you know, the iconic Uluru and. And Kattajuda down in the more southern area of central northern territory is iconic. I mean, that's, you know, when a lot of people think of Australia, they think of Uluru and the big rock, you know, out in the middle of the desert. So pretty fantastic.

But I will say, you know, in regards to South Australia, I was not really looking forward to it. I was thinking, you know, this is going to be hard herping. And it was hard herping. I mean, we only saw two snakes on the whole trip. So that was a little rough. But, man, it was incredible, like the scenery, the landscape, the diversity of lizards, you know. So, yeah, there's a lot to say about South Australia as well. So, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the thing that jumps out, right, as you said, it's not particularly Python diverse, but you do have some very special carpets, you know, a shot at WOMA's children's pythons, right? That's what they would be coming down. So, yeah, I mean, there's, what I think there's maybe four total, but just the idea that if you look up Squamata in South Australia, that the number one find is a shingle back. Right.

Yeah. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. I mean, we saw, we saw about 40 of them out there. You know, they were, they were everywhere in October. So, yeah, if you're, if you want to see a shingle back, it's hard not to see one in South Australia in October. So, yeah, we were pretty pleased. And I mean, it was kind of, you kind of got into the realm of the crappets where, you know, the guys we were with that were from South Australia, we're like, come on, guys, it's just another shingle back.

We're going to see a lot of those. I'm like, I don't care. It's a shingle back. I'm going to stop. and enjoy it and look at it and take a picture of it, you know. So, yeah, they put up with us until they left. And then we kept looking at all the shingle backs, even if we'd seen 20 already. So, yeah, really cool species, iconic Australian.

But in Central Australia, you've got two species of Blue Tongues skink. You've got your Centrelian Blue Tongues and your Western Blue Tongues. and one of the few areas kind of where they overlap, and you can see both species. And they're both probably the nicest example of those species, in my opinion. You know, the nicest Westerns and the nicest Centralians you're going to see are going to be in Central Australia. They're just, I mean, the Westerns are just clean, brown and white banded, and the Centralians are just that nice red color, whereas in different parts of their range, they're not quite as nice. Like South Australian, Western Blue Tongues tend to be a little more muddy, little darker, you know, more black on them, things like that, which can be a cool look. But for my taste, I'd go with the Central Australian ones.

But that said, you can see both shinglebacks and Western Blue Tongues down in South Australia. There might be some Centralians that peaked down into that area, too. Maybe just if you're, yeah. Yeah. Some cool nefaris, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Definitely. And I mean, Central Australia has its share of cool enough for us, too.

You've got the, I mean, Amy A, probably my favorite knobtail gecko. And they're just that red, orange color, and just gorgeous. We got to see two on the last trip. Yeah, which is wild. Yeah. And you've got Neferos Levis, Levis, Levis, the kind of common knobtail. And then the Levisimus, which is that really fine scale, like almost the smooth knobtail deck of, yeah, of the sand dunes. I mean, and the sand dunes are phenomenal, just that red color.

And, of course, the WOMAs down there, yeah, hard to beat as far as looks. I mean, they're the nicest WOMAs. I mean, Shark Bay WOMAs probably rival them, but, yeah. Yeah, it's, I don't know. That's hard to be, I think. Yeah, monitors, you've got Parenthes, Gil and I, which are really cool. What else we got down there? We got Ackis.

And lots of Tristus, right? Tristus, really nice-looking Tristus. Yeah. So, yeah. Well, you got the Heath monitors, the Rosenberg guy, in South Australia, which is cool. I guess that would apply to in the Perth area and then, you know, if we call Sydney the Central Coast or whatever, you're kind of hitting up into that. But, you know, another more like a lacy sort of side, you know, just under that sort of size. So it would be a real kind of big robust lizard, which would be super neat too, you know, to check that on the list.

Yeah, and it looks like the Centrelian Blue Tong doesn't make it down to South Australia for the most part. Yeah. It's just the, you do see a lot of the eastern blue tongues down there as well. So you do get three species. We actually found the shingle back, eastern, and a western all in one spot of 10, but the western was dead for some reason. So that was a frustrating thing. You could have seen all three species in one spot, like in one area, which is, yeah, kind of crazy to think about. Maybe that's why the Western was dead. The other two kills. it or something. Kind of crazy. So I guess, you know, maybe the Toliquid diversity is a little higher by one species in South Australia. And, you know, the Gurney are pretty cool down there, too. You got the Gidgees. I guess you got some, I don't know if the Gigi's make it up to Central Australia.

Let us see. Thorny Devils in both. Yeah. Yeah, you do see the thorny devils down in South Australia, but they're a little thicker in Central Australia, I guess, and it's kind of the southern extent of their range into the peninsula there. But, yeah. Yeah, there's no egernia species in Central Australia.

So, it's far, yeah, up that far north, whereas in South Australia you get a few species of believe you get your tree skinks and you got the um giggies of course and then there's a couple other uh other egernia or egernia like species um they're further east we should have mentioned those with the inland or the east coast yeah um but you do you do get imbracotta into south australia um they come in you know into the peninsula there um so not bad having a couple really cool carpet pythons within a few hours drive of each other um i mean real right on the ground yeah they're there the if they're there they're there probably yeah exactly and i guess i mean it applies to central australia too i mean bretles are maybe more commonly found

than the imbrata and the gammon flinders ranges carpets down there but not by much i don't know that they're found there and and probably because they're isolated to a few different canyons whereas i don't know maybe it's the same for for both types but yeah you spend a lot of time looking looking at gum trees looking for both of them so i don't know what which has the win there but, I mean, bretles are, for me, they're just completely iconic. I just love my bretles, really cool snakes. And seeing that one in the wild was just next level. That was fantastic.

But I imagine I'd feel equally excited about seeing a gammon's or even an imbricotta in South Australia. So, yeah, it's a hard, that's a toss-up, I think, for me. I don't know that I can pick one over the other. It's hard. Yeah. Yeah. What else we got out there? We mentioned the monitors, the pythons, all the cool stuff, the big skinks, you know.

But, yeah, also like the desert skinks in Central Australia are pretty cool. There may be some as well. But I think the dragon diversity definitely goes to South Australia. So many different kinds of dragon-type lizards. the bearded dragons are very thick down there. Although, I guess, depending on the time of year, they can be very thick in Alice Springs as well. I mean, on my first trip, we saw more than I can count. And now on the second trip, we saw one DOR, you know, so it was like the dragon inland bearded

of dragons were kind of far and few between. But on the South Australia trip in October, they were all over the place. and also in Central Australia. So, but yeah, you're small like endemic South Australian dragons, really cool. Red Bard dragons are phenomenal looking. Look those up if you haven't seen those. There's a lot of different species of Tenoferus down there. That starts with a C, C.T.

Tenophores. Really cool. Like, you know, your central net of dragons, you'll get in Central Australia. But their relatives are much more diverse down in South Australia. So it's kind of a fun, fun group of lizards for sure. Brightly colored males. I don't know. Just looking at the monitors in Central Australia, though, the idea of Acanthyrus, Gilae, arremias, crevacotta.

I mean, and obviously parentis, but. And Flavis are, yeah, the gold, yeah, they're everywhere. Really cool. The little odatria. Yeah. That's a pretty amazing assemblage, although I'm sure. Difficult to find. Yeah.

I'm sure they are. I did see Eremius, but they don't stick around long for pictures. Like, they were out of there, you know. I even saw a few on this last trip, I think. I'm pretty sure they were Eremius, but they could have been something else, too. I tried to get pictures or video or whatever, but they just zip between the different bushes. And, oh, man, it was kind of a pain. And I was alone, too.

We'd kind of split up and gone looking at different places. And I wish I would have had somebody with me to kind of corner it and see if we could get either a picture or get one in hand or something. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be cool. But yeah, the monitor diversity is very high in Central Australia. Beautiful place.

I guess the accessibility. I mean, Adelaide is a pretty good-sized town. bigger than Alice Springs. And so you're probably going to find a cheaper rental in Adelaide versus Alice. Flights in are more common, probably to Adelaide than Alice Springs. So the accessibility, you've got an advantage in... At least in terms of getting to the area generally. Yeah, yeah.

And, yeah, getting into the main, I guess, starter city. because yeah it is i know like you really have to pay attention if you're renting a car in alice springs if you want to go anywhere you've got to get a car with unlimited miles if you're going to herp it just because you're driving a lot of places um and that they can often charge by the mile past like a really low and not far amount yeah not far amount if you want to go to ulleroo if you want to see kind of the big rock in the middle of the of central Australia, you've got to have unlimited miles or else you're going to have to stay for two weeks just to drive there. Yeah, right.

And I mean, you can take a bus tour or something, but you're not going to get out herping around that area at night or anything. I guess the other side, like they do close down Uluru, and I've heard of people being escorted out of the park after dark. So they'll, we didn't have that problem. We did kind of traverse through that area, but we were headed out of the park. You know, so we were outside the park boundaries when we were camping or whatever. But, you know, there's that possibility to kind of get kicked out of.

Especially as such a known area. Yeah. You know, it's the downside of her being a spot that is so internationally renowned. Yeah. And busy. I mean, there's quite a few people. Ulara can be expensive, but you can get a burger or something, you know, out in the middle of Australia. There's a lot of buses going through there.

And so, you know, you'll see DOR, yeah, DOR flabbies everywhere, you know, the Goli-E-E-E-type monitors. And there's all, you know, D-O-R thorny devils like I saw probably. I haven't seen a live thorny devil in Central Australia. I've seen like five or six DORs, which is really hard to see. Yeah, it's terrible. At least you've seen him over in W.A. But yeah. Yeah, and South Australia.

But, yeah, I'd still love to see a Central Australian thorny devil. But same thing with the Taliquah, like within probably 100 feet. You could probably see them from each other. a DOR Centralian Blue Tongue and a DOR Western Blue Tongue over by Uluru. And it's like, come on, people were, you know, you're in that, there's wildlife around, and people are coming there not just to see the rock. They also want to see the wildlife. But, you know, the rock, Cat of Judah is a really amazing area, cool to hike through.

Same with Uluru. You know, so I don't know, the gorges of the West McDonald's. are fantastic, hard to beat. So I'd have to give it to Central Australia, the debate here. But I just love that area. Yeah, fair enough. If that's, if that's all right. I think, you know, there's definitely, I would like to get back to Central or to South

Australia to try to find those carpets again. I might go about it a little differently this time, but, you know, it's interesting. when you're planning a trip and you haven't been to a place, you know, what you do differently the second time you're there. And I had that opportunity with Central Australia. So I would like to take that with South Australia again. So I do want to go back. And I would recommend it to anybody who, you know, likes cool lizards and, you know,

shingle bags and all sorts of stuff. The interesting thing is kind of for both, but particularly for, you know, and I was thinking, how would I, you know, what would the winner be on this for me or whatever, is at least relative to doing it sooner, because you guys went and had such great success, I almost don't want to go there right now because it's almost invariably there's going to be some comparative nature to the whole thing. And I don't doubt the answers we'd turn up some of those things, but not all those things. Right.

Probably some of the things you didn't. Or different things. Yeah. But I think with experience. I'm learning that like, okay, actually, you know, my own predilection would be to avoid those sort of super clean comparisons where it's like, oh, you guys last year. It's like, no, give it some time. Absolutely, we've got to go. But that would not be where I would choose as a next spot just because of that context.

Right, right, for sure. You know, it's that is, that is tricky because, you know, where you guys went to, I went with you to Northern Territory. I'm like, hey, I'm going with the guys that found the, you know, the Owen Peli. on there. Well, yeah, if you went, that's a little bit of a different deal. But I'm saying, I wouldn't just be like, oh, you know, Miss Dr. Jay's birthday, you know, and now, but we'll still turn up there or whatever on the very next go. I don't think, yeah, that's not what I would choose. So it actually is helpful. Yeah, I think, I mean, that is, you know, also if you're going to somewhere, somebody just went that you're friends with and you don't find the things that they found, you're like, I feel like cheated almost. Like, I feel like I should find those because I'm going to the same places. But. Right. Yeah, it is, it is difficult. I think, too, like, I want to emphasize the gecko of both spots. Like, the gecko diversity is pretty...

Just lizards generally, but geckos in particular. Yeah, yeah. And I think also in Central Australia, I know Jordan told me a count. I think it was over 30 geckos that... So he started in South Australia. with Nick and then drove up to to Central Australia from there and yeah he said they

it looks like we've got logged he's got logged 25 species between South Australia and Central Australia it's pretty impressive you know that's a lot of different diversity of geckos and to get that kind of count you know just from one trip is pretty cool. Absolutely. Yeah.

So I would like to go back to both. I would love to go back to Central Australia again. But I do think I'd, again, you know, where you do so well, you know, between the two trips I've been there, I felt like I've covered a lot of area, you know, and seen a lot of good stuff. So maybe my times and money is better spent exploring areas. I haven't been to. A couple years or something. Yeah, yeah. But I would like to go back with my wife or kids or something like that, you know, get back out there.

Or my dad again, if you can make the trip. Yeah, that'd be cool. Because that's who I went with my first trip. And Jordan's law, I mean, this is, I think this is just reptiles, 162 species between South Australia and Central Australia. So pretty crazy. That's pretty wild. It's a pretty neat place. both those spots

All right Now we've got the difficult ones The final four here Between Western Australia and Central Australia That's a Sophie's choice for me I don't know I don't know that we need to rehash anything

But I I don't know that I could decide that one I mean Based on what you've heard me talk about what would you pick, I guess, to say I'd want to go here. And, you know, I guess it would be biased by what you're maybe looking for or wanting to see. But I don't know, what would you choose?

I think getting to Western Australia is, you know, double the flight from the East Coast. Sure. So the expense is going to be a little more. Although I would imagine that there are more flights to Perth than Alice, right? Just like a sort of day-to-day basis or whatever. It might be the same price to fly, you know, to Perth versus Alice, you know, just because of the frequency. Right, exactly right. The sort of infrastructure and costs and things are probably cheaper in W.A.

If you're close to Per, you know, if you're kind of in what we're talking about in that southern bit, as you get further north, then it's probably more akin to sort of the Alice, Alice all over, right? Right. Alice sounds like a really cool, weird town, right? that book from the you know whatever the 50s or city a town call alice or whatever that yeah kind of a lot of a lot of vibes and a lot of a lot you know so um yeah definitely both mandatories for sure um as i say if if it's a function of next then for me uh i would go w a of those two um although i think central australia is a is a must do you know for sure yeah it's it's iconic i mean I guess, you know, when people think about Australia, they probably think more about, you know, Central Australia, especially with Uluru and the center and things like that. But at the same time, it's just they don't have sense for Kerrigini and, you know. Right, right.

It's just not as known. Most people have never heard of that, yeah, Pilbara, you know, those areas. I mean, yeah, it's definitely hard to beat. And I think if I had to choose between Karagini and the West Max, I don't know if I I could make that decision. I love those gorges in Central Australia. Like, I just, it's so fun and just such a cool place. But Carragini is equally amazing, you know.

I guess to me, and, you know, I guess I would just define it of central Australia feels more homogenous, whereas Western Australia, because we're including such a wide swine, so many different, so much different variety and stuff that, and unless we're taking one of your circuits, you know, you're not. not really taking full advantage of that, but maybe that's sort of a fundamental distinction, too, whereas the feel of Central Australia is that sort of it's, as I say, kind of a homogenous mix of basically all the stuff you could see is you're probably mostly in range for most of the time if you're kind of in a constrained area, whereas W.A. it's entirely going to vary based on where you're at and what you're trying to do. Right. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. That's a tricky one. And I guess, you know, Maybe because of the area covers more diversity, maybe the wind goes to W.A., but, yeah, that would be, I can't admit that in public.

I have to give this one a tie. I think that's the way I would call it. I think, you know, it's an overtime buzzer reader, right? Right, right. To W.A. based on the variety as opposed to the, yeah. You've got the reef, so you've also got some snorkeling and go see a turtle or a, or a, I love the ocean as well. well, you know, seeing that kind of stuff is pretty cool. So, yeah, I guess I can be okay given W.A. The win there. Right. I don't know. You know, I'm too much of a squabata bro. I don't know

if you, you know, how do the birds fit into any of this and how to the? Yeah. I mean, how that's, that's a toss up too. I mean, there's really cool stuff in both areas. Yeah. I mean, probably South Australia takes takes the cake for for bird life as far as diversity of different parrots and number of birds. I think I saw more in South Australia than I did. But WA is so busy not seeing the tracks, though. I know. Yeah, that's true.

Like, you're focusing more on the birds when you're seeing less reptiles. And in WA, you're seeing reptiles pretty frequently. But, you know, again, big stretches between, I guess, you know, yeah, let's give it to WA for this one. But just by a whisker. Just buy a whisker. And as far as top-in and F&Q, that's another tricky one as well. That's hard.

I think F&Q is a little more comfortable, if that makes sense. There's more accommodations. There's more, you know, it's more luxuries. Not quite as hot. It's not going to be not on the surface of a sign. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The extremes aren't as extreme.

I guess you've got crock danger in both spots Yeah The Python diversity is pretty similar I think is Monitor diversity go to NT I would think so To the top end Versus

Again it depends how far down you're counting Right right Yeah But definitely I mean, an escarpment, glowerdye, whatever you want to call that. Right. I think, you know, that's hard to beat those, yeah. That is hard to beat, man.

For sure. You know, Merton's Mitchell, yeah, plus the acetypes primordius. Yeah, I would, again, it's kind of what's your context? If the context is where would I go next, it probably wouldn't be the antique. Then again, the only place my favorite place to go is the antique. Yeah. I don't know. I think, I mean, I would love to get back up to the Iron Range again.

So, you know, I might side because I've only been there once and I've been the NT twice. But, man, I really want to find that own Pelly Python. So that would be a little. I was looking at those earlier. It seems like there was one that was sitting out over the winter, right? Where we were at, if you pull that up, the thing that it prompted me to look was you had mentioned you're all of being the banner image. So I was looking, because for a period of time, the O'Npelli was the banner image. Now it's the Nictafil of Python, don't love it, banner image, but it's not the actual O'NPeli image at this point.

But I was looking at that, and there were three or four records from this year over our summer. And three of those look to be, so again, getting into the same conversations we have, two of them look like they're probably from the same day. But three of them that are shown at different months, and who knows, maybe it's the end of July and the beginning of August. But it looks like the same snakes sitting in the same tree during the day. Really? all folded up pretzled on itself um that's crazy you know and taken by either a burger or certainly someone who just labeled it as a python right not you know um but um it's crazy um it look yeah the nt does does win out in terms of monitor lizards um there's 11 species

in f and q and about 14 and the nt and just again two of the it i guess you know it's those long-tailed atatria are really the ones that do it for me and yeah those two but as you say you know again it's it's a question of um what are you trying to do and I haven't been to the FNQ I mean I've been to cans and

cans and surrounds but I haven't been to iron range right and in the as I say if the question is where would you be most likely to go next then I would agree with you that it'd be FNQ for me so yeah I well I don't know I'm that that draw

to go find an Owen Pelley's pretty strong, but yeah, I think, yeah, go next, probably back to, well, and I was, I was in F&Q in, you know, a couple of years ago in 2023, 2024, 2024, so, all the way up in Iron Range or? Yeah, we went out, no, not at Iron Range, but we did go to Cairns. Yeah, I flew into Cairns with my two daughters on my work trip. out there so we were on the central coast and went up there it wasn't you know

definitely not a herp trip by any stretch but you know we went out to Green Island and we did do a little bit of herping but it was pretty I mean it was May so not not great herping yeah gosh that's a that's another tough one I don't know

I think yeah I can I can go with FNQ especially if it's go to next because Yeah, that top end trip beat me up pretty good, but I did really enjoy it, and I do really want to get back and find that O.P., but that's a tall order. I doubt that it'll be my favorite place. You know, again, it's just a function of what's the evaluation, right? And I guess for me, you know, given the context, as a next, then it wouldn't be the next.

And so that's why I'm happy to another overtime by a whisker. But if it is like going by favorite spots or. Or most recommended to go herping, it would be top end? Well, so I haven't been to Iron Ranch, so I can't speak as cleanly to that part. If you were to go on a first trip and your focus was less on finding the coolest thing, it was about finding a thing. I would probably say, F&Q, including cans, you know, I do think there's something to say for the sort of the quantity, the potential quantity of stuff that you can find relative reliability. there's something to that um but in terms of the the atmosphere of the whole thing and the that really feeling very australia feeling that experience then yeah to me the nt is the place

yeah i i think i think i would agree i think i'd take top end over f and q as far as places i enjoyed herping more but uh just by a whisker just by a slight margin it's another kind of thinking tie yeah yeah exactly in the final four that makes the championship game right right but if you know if if if you hadn't been at all and considering all the species you know you could see on either spot the practicalities and doing that i think a the average interested person if not herper would probably choose fnq so that's why i would say that That's probably the answer. Okay.

But with a cultured taste, I would say the top end is the place. Right, right. Oh, okay, are we giving it to F&Q? All right. Far North Queensland, you are advancing to the, what is it called? The finals? They don't give it a special name. Because you got the lead eight, the final four,

and then just the final. I think, yeah, championship for the final. Yeah. They need to give it like the tippy, tippy top two. All right. Okay, well. W.A. and F and Q. Yeah, W.A. and F and Q.

And I think, I mean, I think, like you said, you know, F&Q has kind of more of a reputation. Like, it's more of a touristy area. It's more built up, more infrastructure. More accessible. easier to get to. But in terms of herping, I take W.A. any day. Like, just the diversity and the, again, I mean, it's a bigger area,

but the amount of different habitats and things and the accessibility of the reef compared to the, you know, the East Coast or you've got to charter a boat. Yeah, I'd have a hard time choosing F&Q over WA. I'd have to give the win there, but that's just my opinion. All this data spring me right back on the thing that was already the problem. This is where I thought I was, and this hasn't solved any problems for me. Gosh, even the, I don't know. I think if gun to my head, they said, what's your favorite carpet python?

I really love jungle carpets, but I don't know. I guess, I don't know. I might have to go with bretles these days. but imbracotta is very hard to share you know i was pretty lucky to see some uh two really nice individuals um better than most i've seen that are in captivity and things like that you know like i've seen some of the captive specimens like no yeah i don't yeah but some of the wild stuff i've seen or you know pictures of of wild specimens are just out of this world so i would like to see more embracotta down the road.

But where I've been, you know, kind of two big herping trips to W.A., you know, I wouldn't mind seeing a green tree python again or getting back up there and trying to see some of the stuff we didn't see up there. You know, the giant tree geckos that they have were pretty neat looking. We missed out on those and the scrubs and Iron Range. Some of those things would be neat to see. But I think if somebody said, you can only go one more time to Australia, where are you going to go? I'd pick W.A.

Yeah, I think that's fair. All right. Are we giving the big win to W.A? I think so. Man, that's a hard about a battle. In a little bit of an upset, at least relative to me. Right, right, right. Yeah. No, I mean, I, again, it's like choosing which is your favorite child.

You have it easy. You can make that easy. That's the same thing with the top end. There's only one. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you guys had such a phenomenal first trip there. Like, you know, if our roles were reversed. Sure. Because like, honestly, I was like, I don't know if I need to go back to then. to you, except to find stuff that I didn't find. You know, that was kind of the driver. But, like, I was, it was cool.

Like, I love seeing Kakadu and all the Aboriginal art. But other than that, I was like, you know, kind of nonpluss because it was kind of a little bit of a letdown. We didn't even see a children's python for crying out loud, you know. And so getting back and kind of doing a little more research and having a little more control over where we went made a huge difference. and staying longer in Cacadoo and things like that just made all the difference. So, you know, the company on both trips was fantastic. You know, it was great to go on trips with Rico and Peter Birch. And, you know, but, yeah, and you guys, it was really fun to, that was our first Australia trip together.

So that was hard to beat that NT trip. so the top end yeah hard but it's the infrastructure still really good and you know it's not you know it's it's not the grand adventure but it is pushing yourself right right and i think there's there's grand adventure aspects of both f and q and w a you know you can you can stay close to the city and you can stay you know you can do a touristy thing and i mean i even forgot to mention rottenest island uh yeah off of perth You know, that was kind of a touristy thing, but it was fantastic, and there's a lot of cool endemic, you know, reptiles that you're just, you know, the rottenest island shinglebacks. And there's some Dougites out there that are unique and the king's skinks and stuff like that. So pretty cool spot. And it's gorgeous, like absolutely gorgeous. I mean, I don't think I've seen more beautiful beaches in my life than in W.A. Like, they are fantastic. Like, 80 mile beach, forget about it. Like, that was like a. a ooh and awe moment when we drove, you know, and got caught sight of the beach.

It was like, oh, my goodness, this is phenomenal. So, yeah, I don't know. I didn't even mention the Pilbara rock monitors and the Hammers, the Ances, such cool. Barron's olives, you know. Yeah, yeah, Barron and I would be, I still need to see those. So another reason to go back. And, of course, the Tlequah, I got to get a freaking multifaciata. And in some sense, right, it's the joy of everything being new for me, you know, in terms of as a place to go.

So everything being a new exposure, but all familiar, you know, having so much, having only seen the box version, you know. Right, right. Something to that that maybe is is really cool. And it's been a little bit since I've had that. Right. And I think, too, going like going back to an area is a little risky because you risk disappointment. like, oh, that wasn't as good as my last trip out there. Maybe I wasted my time.

I should have gone to a different area, you know. And so, you know, I almost think it's kind of, you know, we, I don't know that we had that necessarily with my two W.A. trips because that was one where I did it year, you know, one year and then the next year, you know. And we kind of went a little later the second trip than the first trip. And we actually saw less numbers, but maybe more diversity. We saw some things that we didn't see on the first. trip on the second trip you know so it was but we also saw a lot of the same stuff so it was kind of like sixes i mean i think if i was if i was going to say which was my favorite was the first one

because it was with my wife and you know we saw a lot of cool stuff and just had a great experience and first time when you go to an area second time you know you know what to expect a little better you can avoid some areas and do you know more time in in other areas and i mean i guess Jordan kind of had that advantage in South Australia where he spent some time. And, you know, he was with his family. So maybe he was a little more limited. He's not going to go sleep in a tent out in the middle of the gammon ranges like we did. But, you know, he, so, but he found the carpet, you know. You got the target. It still worked out, you know, even though we weren't herping. He wasn't herping hard like we were. He still put in some good time with his family. So I don't know. It's, it is, it is nice to get back to an area, kind of have that familiar. like feel a little more confident like okay I know where I'm going I know what I'm doing I know the drill all I have to do is put in the time and hopefully I get lucky you know that's kind of the idea there and and also maybe looking at the place in a different time a year I mean that was our central Australia trip this last time was completely different time more of a fall time compared to the spring time that I did on my first trip first trip was the wettest year on record so lots of main second trip was very hot and dry not much rain except the you know a few showers uh here and there and uh i mean both were very successful we saw lots of stuff but completely different um right diversity on on both trips so going to a place at a different time of year can be

kind of cool that way too um i were i would worry about going to f and q like in june because you might see 15 green tree pythons, but that might be all you see. You know, you might not see anything else. And so, you know, going kind of in October might have a better draw because, yeah, you'll still have a chance at seeing a green tree python, but you'll probably see a lot more diversity that way. At least that's what it seems. I don't know. That's how it feels. Yeah. I have to look at like Matt's trip report again. Oh, and Matt said he'd come on the podcast and talk about finding all the Australian python. So that'd be cool. Wow, absolutely. Oh, man, we're up over two hours. That's a long show for Reptile Fight Club. Yeah, I mean, it is fun to talk about going to Australia. Fun to talk about and think about. Yeah.

Yeah. And if you're considering a trip, hopefully this helps you kind of push you in a direction or another, depending on what you're interested in or excited about. Or even the paradigm for approaching this problem, right? Right. And again, the downside of not going to a list or at least a clearly defined list where you've already ticked off a lot of things is saying like, which is where I'm out more than you, you know, but you could be looking at it saying, okay, I'm trying to do the rest of the Toliqua or whatever. And then maybe it's a little bit narrower for you and you can say, you know, that kind of picks it picks it for you. But again, even that, there's several of those places where it could work.

It's, oh, I want the real pretty ones from the central, you know. Yeah, right. depends how you approach it yeah there's definitely probably easier areas to find some of the taliqua but you know are they going to be have the look you want or whatever you know those those w a taliqua are really nice too pretty good yeah yeah you can get both westerns and centralians in w a as well so yeah good stuff good stuff well well now just get some time and some money and go back. That's the next goal, I suppose.

Yeah. Absolutely. I have to get back there. All right. Well, this has been fun. I enjoyed the topic. Thanks, Aspen, for suggesting this. Yeah.

Cool idea. We'll have to do with some other stuff. Maybe different species or groups of, you know, types, pythons versus. You get some real fighting going. Exactly. Bring on some guests to fight their favorite group of reptiles. All right.

Well, it's been fun listening to Eric and Owen. They've really stepped it up. Yeah, yeah, Eric's got a kind of revitalization after a little bit of a slow period there with some health concerns. But, yeah, he's putting out a lot of good stuff. So check out Merlea Python Radio. The new and old. Yeah, yeah. Check out the originals as well as the latest stuff.

I really enjoyed listening to talk to Steve. even cats. I think I might have mentioned that last time, but I'm looking forward to listening to their latest one. I haven't had a chance yet. But yeah, look into that. All right. Well, we'll thank them and appreciate their support of our show here. And thanks for listening to us. And we'll catch you again next week for Ripped Off Fight Club.