Cleland Conservation Park

Another stop to visit during my stay here in Adelaide, is Cleland Wildlife Park. I used to spend an insane amount of time here, the last I was in Adelaide. Going crazy with photography and all.

This time round, I'm just taking it easy and just exploring some parts of the park.

There is no direct bus to Cleland from the city, rather, you'd need to take the 864 from Grenfel street up to the Crafer's Park N Ride. From there, you switch to a bus that takes you up to the wildlife park. On the way up, there are stops for Mount Lofty Summit, as well as the botanical gardens.

The bus that brings you up - at least on the weekends - only appears to run 3 times during the day, so you will need to plan your trip very well! I got the earliest bus which got me to Cleland about half past 10. The return buses are at 1.30pm and 4-ish. Being the oddly excited to visit Cleland yet not wanting to wear out the welcome, left with the 1.30pm bus. Actually, it was because I wanted to get to the Central Markets to get a laksa for lunch, but that's another story.

Entry is 22 for Adults, and the year pass is 55. Given that I'm likely to be up here several more times, I got the annual entry pass. My first stop was with the dingos... which appeared to be a different pack from the last time.

The feeding time appeared to be 2.30pm, which I'd forgotten, and I wasn't going to stay that long, so I headed out for the real reason I was here, to record some birdsong.

Cleland has lots of aviaries scattered around Cleland, and I visited several to record the music with the Zoom H1. I've modified the windmuff so that it stays on better, and it breaks up the wind rather well.

I'm still very new to recording nature sounds, and as far as I can tell the zoom performs great up close to the birds. I've put up one of the clips I'd recorded, in one of the outlying aviaries where people tend not to visit, or, don't stay long at all.

Just listening to the birds live whilst the recorder does its thing is great, I should figure out how to meditate and stuff like that.

Apart from that, I had a quick visit with one of the many partitioned off areas of the park with kangaroos. The roos are generally very approachable, and love to eat the pellets. Definitely something to experience once a life.

In the end, time ran out and I headed out the park. I went through the area where the Rock Wallabies were housed in, and as like 5 years ago, are always too well hidden to be seen.

Will definitely be back, but not for a few months - wanna go visit Waterfall Gully, Morialta, Hallet Cove and loads of other place to capture me some sound waves :)