A slight miscalculation by Google Maps and myself meant that today’s journey was merely 78 miles but it turned out quite pleasant to have an easy day (and get the laundry done). As you can see in the photo above, there is nothing much to Cocklebiddy itself. We stayed at the Cocklebiddy Wedgetail hotel, named after the wedge-tailed eagles which soar in the skies here. The hotel has a couple of wedge-tailed eagles which had been injured and could not be released back into the wild.
What you need around here is a 4WD vehicle to explore off road, and we did not have one. Nearby is the Eyre Bird Observatory, housed in the historic Eyre Telegraph Station. There is listed a Lookout Tower which we could drive to, so decided to do that. The drive was very bumpy indeed and seemed to go on forever. When we got to the tower, it was not one you could climb up, so Lawrence sent up his drone to see what lay ahead. Much more of the same by the looks of things as we were still too far from the coast to see anything different. So, here are some photos of the environment and Lawrence at work!
Here are some shots of a majestic wedge-tailed eagle in flight, where you can see its wedge-shaped tail. I had a close-up encounter with a wedge-tailed eagle on Kangaroo Island, so more photos there.
As we drove back passed burnt scrubland, we took the opportunity to test the ability of the drone to follow a signal from within the car. There were no other cars for miles around so the track was safely ours. Now that was fun and kept us well occupied!
And then we saw a couple of kangaroos which really should have been snoozing at this time of day! They ran away quite quickly though once they had spotted us. As our eyes were now tuned in, we saw another kangaroo which stopped and stared at us for what seemed like ages. See if you can spot the kangaroo in the photo on the left below (zoomed in shot on the right).
That evening after dinner, after trying to figure out Australian Rules Football (a fixed feature on tv on Fridays and Saturdays), Lawrence played on the swings and then we watched a beautiful sunset. When I remarked to one of the staff how wonderful this was, he said it was a pretty ordinary sunset and yesterday’s had been much better!
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