I'm glad everyone enjoyed my other pictures. I spent the bulk of my trip in Australia and there I came across many more herps. My total species for Fiji and New Zealand combined was 17, and my total herp species for Australia was 160. Exactly. Not 159, not 161. Here are some pictures from Tasmania and New South Wales, which were the first two states I visited in Australia.
This is no herp, obviously. It's a platypus! Australia doesn't have anything that's quite as "Holy Grail"-esque as the tuatara, but I think the platypus is pretty close, even if it isn't a herp. I first saw the platypus at night, and could get quite close to it. During the day it was a different story. I sat for a long time by the edge of the water, but it never surfaced. This is the best picture I could get of it.
At first I thought the head of this tiger snake wasn't in the photo, and then I saw the blue eye shine in the top right of the pic. Believe it or not, that's his head. I turned a corner on an old bike track to see this guy basking on the edge of the track. Unfortunately I wasn't able to whip my camera out fast enough but I did notice how calm this snake was as it moved away from me. It didn't take off like I'm used to, just slowly and calmly slithered away. He's deadly and he knows it.
The lizard's kind of hard to see, but it's a blotched blue tongued skink, and I'm sure everybody knows what a blue tongue looks like. I found this guy on the track to Wineglass Bay (background) which is probably one of the most picturesque and touristed places in Tasmania. It's nice to know that people don't push all herps out. I actually found a blue-tongue in someone's backyard in Sydney! I noticed this blue-tongue while taking a piss. It's surprising how many herps I found while taking a piss in the bush. The must like the smell.
Pretty diamond python. There are several things about this picture I'd like to point out. The unwashed hair, unshaven-ness, and general dishevelled appearance are characteristic of backpackers. The absurdly ecstatic expression is typical of a herper who has found a herp they never thought they'd see in the wild in a million years. The strangely phallic skinny black thing is, honestly, I have no idea what.
This odd little guy is a common scaley-foot, a name which is pretty much useless in determining what the heck he is. He's actually a pygophid, a sort-of legless lizard. Though for all intensive purposes legless, pygophids have small flaps of skin (scaley feet) where their hind legs should be. Both the scaley-foot and the diamond python were found during road-cruising trips though a road that is closed off at night because the road is so good for herps that poachers (not me) were frequenting it. I decided to stay at a hostel near the road and walk as much of it as possible at night. On my first night out, I was passed by a car. When it passed me the second time, it pulled over and I found out the driver was a PhD student researching Burton's snake-lizards (another pygophid)! For the next three weeks I got to tag along as he road-cruised the road. Now how's that for luck?
This is a heathie in a tree-ie. I actually had to send crocdoc a picture of this so he would believe me. Previous to that, I was under the impression that one difference between heath monitors and the similar-looking (and much more common) lace monitors is that lacies climb trees and heathies don't. Evidently not. It does look kind of awkward though, and it didn't move to the opposite side of the tree from me, as lacies always do. This thing just froze. I'm leaning the camera against the tree for stability in this picture, and the goanna's just looking at me!
Probably the most infamous Australian snake, this is an eastern brown snake. Eastern browns have the reputation of being the most aggressive, vicious snake in Oz. This is not true, they are very shy and timid but have a terrifying defensive display when provoked. This one didn't do any type of show for me, even though I was about 2 feet from it when I noticed it. It just took off, searching for a hole in the rock wall until it found one and disappeared. Beautiful snakes.
This is a pretty common lizard within its range (though I wasn't within its range for very long.) It's a shingleback skink, are really neat lizard that's just about everything a skink shouldn't be (fat bodied, slow, etc) yet somehow still obviously a skink. I found this guy in a farmer's field near Canberra. On the same day I also found a brown snake and two red-bellied snakes, as well as numerous frogs. It was a very nice farm to work on, especially since they were rare farmers who didn't kill everything native.
I thought I'd begin and end with non-herps. This is pretty much the only decent picture I have of a macropod, which is a kangaroo-type thing. This one is a swamp wallaby. There are lots and lots of these in New South Wales. They're very cute and not to big and scary like the red kangaroos.
Unfortunately, as my camera was stolen, I have no pictures after New South Wales. It really really sucks as I have some awesome herp pictures from Queensland, including awesome ones of a gold-crowned snake doing its defensive display, a couple if different coastal carpet pythons, a slatey-grey snake, a cassowary (a big dangerous bird that was rooting through the compost heap at the research station I was staying at in Cape Tribulation) and me with some rehabilitated flying foxes.
I hope these pics measured up to your expectations...
Dan
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