REGENT BOWERBIRD AT COPELAND TOPS

It's always fun to see a lifer, and this was our first sighting of the regent bowerbird - a female, as it happens. We were visiting the fabulous Copeland Tops near Gloucester NSW a couple of months back.

We were in Gloucester on business, delivering our Troopy to DRIFTA Camping and 4WD for an internal fit out. We'd given ourselves a day to relax and enjoy the area before we had to deliver the vehicle, so we decided to investigate what was beyond those amazing Bucket mountains that are so clearly visible from the township of Gloucester. 

Turns out there's there an awful lot to see in them there hills... the rainforests in Barrington Tops National Park are part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area, apparently the most extensive strip of diverse rainforest anywhere on earth. This sounded like a super impressive place to visit but given we'd had a week of constant driving,  we opted to stay closer to home base and visit the nearby Copeland Tops. The weather was very warm, as expected, but counterintuitively, we woke to heavy fog, and the drive up the mountains had an eery look and feel.

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If you prefer the quick audiovisual version of our visit to Copeland Tops, here it is in a minute and a half...

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The reward for that drive was the magnificent Copeland Tops main entrance area. Having left the main road, we wended our way along the waterside road, small settlements here and there, and then into the parking area all set with picnic facilities and amenities. And by then the fog had lifted, and the bird calls were beckoning us into the forest!

We set off up the main track - it was quite enthralling, like a green tunnel drawing us into the forest.

It wasn't long before the locals came out to check us out. The brown cuckoo-dove was the first to greet us on arrival - always a good sign!

But the star of the show was just around the corner - we heard then managed to photograph a female regent bowerbird...not as brightly coloured as her male counterpart, but still a charmer. We were chuffed.

The walk through this park is not particularly arduous and very picturesque, with meandering streams, good paths, and even some old well-marked goldmine shafts. All very interesting....and a great insight into what folks would have had to get through to extract gold from this location. But today, it houses a different sort of gold for us, and we highly recommend a visit here.