Bilyuin Pool

Bilyuin Pool was a surprise.

 Too far south for reliable summer rains, too far north for reliable winter rains and too far inland for there to be much of a river. The country was so dry I imagined a muddy puddle rather than a pool.

Mulga

The long miles heading south from Newman had been interspersed by pulling over for wide loads. It became a game to see just big - part of a R9800 excavator pulled by two trucks coupled together - and wide - a haul pack tray covering both sides of the highway - they could get. The R9800 is an 800 tonne backhoe excavator with a bucket size of 42 cubic metres!

Wide load heading north

We travelled through dry and barren country, then turned north onto the Ashburton Downs Meekatharra road. The black red gibber plains were bare apart from scattered silver grasses and short spinifex growing in company with gnarled and sparse grey mulgas. Mining trucks belted down the road raising billowing clouds of red dust.

Bilyuin Pool - believe it or not there are campers in this photo

It was along here that we found a series of pools on the headwaters of the Murchison River, probably 400km inland. Long and narrow, shaded by tall white gums and visited by numerous birds. Downstream from our campsite, a string of campers hugged the shore amid the trees. Some in transit like us, and others set up for a longer stay.

Bilyuin Pool river gum 

My bird list was very long with a variety of water birds, parrots, honeyeaters, birds of prey and colourful robins and whistlers. In the late afternoon light we were entertained by red capped and hooded robins hopping around our campsite, feeding. 

Red capped robin

Cormorants basked in the warm sunlight on the bank of a pool, while spoonbills basked higher up on the limbs of a dead tree.

Spoonbills

The morning was very cold, the dawn chorus was raucous and a beanie and gloves a necessity. Long before the sun's rays hit the grasses I watched female robins and whistlers bobbing along the ground then leaping up to peck cold insects off the silvery grasses. Crows stalked haughtily on the ground pretending to ignore the diamond doves and muddies sharing the same space. 

Bilyuin Pool at sunrise

The galahs and twenty-eight parrots squabbled over nesting hollows and from the distance came the piercing call of the whistling kites as they roved from tall tree to tall tree.

Pair of galahs

The surrounding vegetation was mainly mulgas, eremophilas and cassias. We found signs of earlier settlement here, remnant fences, posts, hand made bricks and a hearth. There were signs of even earlier inhabitants in what appeared to be stone chips of spearheads and the like. 

Cassia

It was a beautiful spot, all the more so because it was so unexpected. 

Hooded robin