When the water finally dries up in these little temporary waterholes, a thin layer of fine clay is left and this eventually cracks, making patterns on the surface. Even these little cracks make good homes for small creatures because its probably cool and may be a bit damp still. You can see where something has been digging in the sand here, perhaps looking for water or food.

Lots of animals who live near the river bed are nocturnal, or at least come out at dawn or dusk. But if you look around you can often see where they’ve been. This looks like wallaby droppings we learnt that you call them scats! Someone told us that you can collect samples on a ‘poo stick’ (which is a broom stick with a nail in the end). Then you can bring them back to get identified!

The dead trees you see along the river look a bit like bits of sculpture. And even though they don’t have any life left in them, they often have hollows which make good homes for all kinds of animals. People sometimes knock these down or take them away for firewood, and don’t think about whose home they have destroyed.

You have to keep your eyes open for things when you go bush walking. We almost ran into this spider web. That’s how the spider catches its prey by setting up its web so that things will run into it! You can see its food wrapped up in the web. We found out its called a Golden Orb Spider.