There’s something about those unexpected wildlife encounters that I just love. Sure, in some of them I’m prepared for something to happen, but you just don’t know what that something might be.
On this occasion I had packed my camera up, feeling pretty chuffed all round after coming across a tea tree in full bloom, its limbs heavy with both blossoms and green carpenter bees. The air was thick with buzzing and the heady scent of nectar. Always in search of that one special encounter, I was ready to go home but a lovely Mountain Dragon (Rankinia diemensis) had other ideas.
When I wander some of my favourite paths, there’s usually some furious scuttling at my feet as Mountain Dragons scurry into the ground cover. However, this dragon was just sitting basking in the sun, so much so that my husband came to a sudden stop almost having stepped on it.
Now I don’t know about you, but any encounter with a new animal usually starts off with a few greetings. “Hello, how are you?” And often, “What exactly are you?” That kind of thing. It’s the polite thing to do.
This lizard looked up at us, not answering the questions, I should point out, and walked to the middle of the path, stretched out, licked up an ant before plonking herself down. I’m assuming it was a female as she was particularly rotund and very likely gravid and ready to lay a clutch of eggs.
I pulled out my camera again and seeing as though she was feeling particularly photogenic, plopped down in the dust with her. And that’s it right there, why I love what I do.
It was just me and my husband and this small little dragon – maybe 10-11 centimetres in total – sitting there, looking at each other surrounded by nothing but the noisy Darkes Forest bush and all the hundreds of creatures we couldn’t see but that were, right at that very moment, looking at us.
We spent maybe half an hour with her as she hunted at our feet, snatching ants mainly but any insect that strayed too close was fair game and occasionally ran right up to us, lifting a leg and waving it around, telling us what’s what.
It’s these little moments, when you can look each other in the eye, animal to animal, that remind us that we are just a very small piece of a very big picture.
Fast facts
- Mountain dragons are endemic to Australia and found in NSW, VIC and Tasmania.
- Similar in appearance to another common reptile, the Jacky Dragon, but with the addition of spikes at the base of the tail.
- They lay 2-9 eggs in a small burrow in summer.
- There are more than 100 species of dragon in Australia, including Frill-necked lizards and Thorny Devils.
