A 4.30 wake-up in Newcastle meant we arrived at Sydney airport for an 8.00 check-in. Our flight was late departing but we made up time and landed in Bangkok on schedule, to be greeted by Neil and Nicola. The transfer from Suvarnabhumi International Airport to Petchaburi took longer than expected because of the motorway closure following the recent crane collapse. We managed to see a few birds to start our Thai list off before nightfall. In all we were 20 hours in transit but I awoke this morning with the sound of waves lapping on the beach and Asian Koel calling in the gardens surrounding our Chidlom Resort hotel – what could be nicer.

We went out this morning on our final birding session of our current Australia tour to see if we could mop up a few more trip ticks. First stop was a return to the coastal heath of Minimbah, looking for quail. Plenty of Brown along the sides of the approach track but then, through the thermal imager, I picked up a small heat source some 50m in front of us. Approaching with caution we eventually got good views of King Quail (body size of a tennis ball) on the deck. Our only previous sighting was of a bird flushed and then in flight for just a couple of seconds. A quick pit-stop coffee near Coolongolook yielded up a Comb-crested Jacana before heading inland to O’Sullivans Gap – a now neglected rainforest walk and picnic ground. It was very quiet but somehow Dan managed to magic up a Pale-Yellow Robin – his first at the site and a Hunter tick for me! Our final stop, with too little time to do it justice, was Mungo Brush, where we failed to see the Rose-crowned Fruit Dove (again!) but did added Black-faced Monarch to our trip list – which closes on 244 after our three week family holiday, split between Victoria and New South Wales. Tomorrow we head to Sydney airport for our flight to Thailand to meet up with Neil and Nicola and ten days leisurely birding in the south of the country.

Over the past couple of days we’ve been visiting new locations in search of trip and, perhaps more importantly, Hunter ticks. In the excitement of our Sooty Owl sighting I forgot to mention that our excursion to Lake Macquarie that morning added two much-needed Hunter ticks – Lewin’s Rail and Red-whiskered Bulbul. In the afternoon, following an afternoon browsing the Morpeth antique shops and eating ice cream, we heard and then saw Stubble Quail around Largs, another gap in my list filled. Yesterday the area around Jerrys Plains and Denman turned up trumps when we finally tracked down the recently established colony of Plum-headed Finch. Yengo National Park produce half a dozen more trip ticks this morning – taking our trip list to 239 and my overall Hunter List to 343. Tomorrow’s pelagic has unfortunately been cancelled, with a predicted swell of two and a half metres. That probably means the end of Hunter ticks for this visit – leaving me a few short to reach the Hunter Bird Observers Club ‘350’ badge.

Nobbys Point is a notable Newcastle landmark – a lighthouse and breakwater which guards the southern approach to the Hunter. In the right conditions it can be a good place for birding. Unfortunately on our first visit this trip, last Sunday, it poured with rain and we had to retreat. Yesterday the weather was better and we made it to the end of the breakwater before the high tide washed over us. Birding was quiet with only one shore bird – Sooty Oystercatcher – a handful of ‘Wedgies’ (Wedge-tailed Shearwater) and three tern species: Little, Crested and Common. The latter of course looks nothing like the Common Tern we are familiar with in Norfolk, with black bill and dark legs. I did see a presumed ‘Eastern Common Tern’ at Cley back in August 2014. The only other bird of note was a singing Blue-faced Honeyeater in the garden in Wallsend.

Yesterday was the last day of our mini road-trip to the New England tablelands. We spent most of the day in a steady descent from our lodgings at Walcha Road – over 1000m – to Port Macquarie which is, as the name suggests, at sea level. We visited several tourist attractions and birding sites in the process. We did a bit more birding along the coastal plain before finally arriving home at 20.30, eleven hours after departing our hotel – a total distance of approx 300k. We managed to add a few more birds to the list but with the temperature in the high thirties most were hiding in the shade.

Dan and Mick have been talking about the importance of TSR’s for Australian bird conservation – today we got the opportunity to visit one. TSR or ‘travelling stock reserves’ are designated parcels of public land – used in the past to move stock across the countryside. Nowadays they provided important wildlife corridors and places of sanctuary for nature – not unlike Surveyors Allotments in Britain, but on a much larger scale. This morning we visited the TSR at Torryburn – a large tract of native woodland with an abundance of birds. By the end of our birding session we’d added a couple of dozen birds to the trip list, which now stands at 205.

Following the cancellation of our trip to Broughton Island, in the wake of the cyclonic weather system off the NSW coast, we’ve travelled 31/2 hours north-west of Newcastle to the New England tablelands. This extensive high plateau straddles the Great Dividing Range and features rolling grassland plains, world heritage rainforests, dramatic gorges, unique cold-climate vegetation and significant biodiversity. On our way to our lodgings, the historic Walcha Road Hotel est. 1860, we called in at Copeland Tops for some rainforest birding – unfortunately it was raining, so we saw very little! The afternoon was spent doing the notorious bush-ranger ‘Captain Thunderbolt’ heritage trail and birding a couple of lagoons near Uralla. We have two more days sight-seeing and birding before heading home on Thursday.

I’m missing my monthly WeBS count back in Norfolk but Dan has got us involved in some Hunter Bird Observers Club surveys instead. Yesterday it was the turn for the Kooragang dykes – a monthly shorebird survey along the banks of the Hunter river. This involved going out on a boat, ably crewed by Louise and Cyrus, with Jane as recorder and me making up the numbers. We had a successful survey, adding several waders to our trip list including: Marsh & Curlew Sandpiper, Great Knot and Sooty Oystercatcher, with Terek Sandpiper and Grey-tailed Tattler added immediately after. But the undoubted highlight of the morning was Common Sandpiper – a Hunter Valley (HBOC) tick! Later, on a separate snipe survey, we added Glossy Ibis and Black-tailed Godwit.