Around Oz Part 18 - Derby: Mangrove Birds and Aboriginal Heritage

Aboriginal artists - Derby

After Windjana Gorge (see last post), we headed north-west to the town of Derby for a one-night stay at the ordinary and overpriced (like just about everything up this way) Kimberley Lodge Caravan Park.

Role call of indigenous prisoners

Old Derby Gaol

We visited some cultural sites and were impressed particularly by the old prison, where hundreds of Aborigines were kept in chains for years in shocking conditions for the most trivial offences in times not so long gone. And the huge, ancient boab tree that also operated as a makeshift prison, often for Aborigines who were rounded for slave labor in the pearling industry further south at Broome.

Derby Boab Gaol Tree

More pleasing was the Aboriginal art gallery and museum, where indigenous people of all ages are scattered about, working on their distinctive dot art paintings and some nice landscape captures; they are seemingly not bothered by gawking tourists.

King Sound Mangroves

I checked out the mangroves near the Derby wharf on King Sound, seeing the Kimberley (“Brown-tailed”) race of Lemon-bellied Flycatcher, Dusky Gerygone, Yellow White-eye, White-breasted Whistler and Mangrove Golden Whistler.

White-breasted Whistler male

White-breasted Whistler

The next morning I returned to the mangroves, seeing in addition to the above, Broad-billed Flycatcher and a distant Great-billed Heron feeding on the tide-line.

Great-billed Heron

Mangrove Golden Whistler female

It was interesting to compare the female of this subspecies of Mangrove Golden Whistler to the one further east, which has much more yellow on the underparts.