Ravenswood Bats

Arrive in campground of the old mining town of Ravenswood to see a massive bat population in the trees on one side. The cacaphony of squeaking and squealing is audible far away. 

6.30pm on the dot is bat takeoff, hundreds and hundreds of twittering, whirling black shapes swirling past.

Our neighbour from Bendigo strolls over with his boxer/staffie mix, called bobby socks, says the flying bats leave presents all over the vehicles if we aren't under shade.

Smaller bats fly around me beneath the big bat armada sailing above the creek into the night stippled with hundreds of dark, moving shapes. For us it is an amazing spectacle, but the locals want to move the colony elsewhere. It seems a similar colony in Charters Towers has resisted fireworks, water jets, hawks and anything else used to dislodge them only temporarily from their favourite roosts before they come back to the town centre park.

In the morning, we wander over to the side of the campground where the bat colony squeaks and squabbles in the rising heat. Bats flap languidly in a cooling breeze, wrapping their wings around them like an umbella.