Wildlife Spotting

Thanks for that additional information! Can you also add it to the "Habitat" field so it appears with the spotting? I'm afraid I'll have to defer to my Australian colleagues and friends to weigh in further on this spotting because I am not familiar enough with the local fauna. Cheers

Good shot of a checkered one here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/euprepiosaur/5279060260/

Yes only one species. It does vary widely in colour, and can have that checkered appearance (I think it's the skin between the scales). It's also quite common and likes water as the name suggests :). But yes hard to confirm without a closer shot.

I was looking at this yesterday and I hesitated to call it Macleay's water snake, for one thing it occurs too far north. So, is there only one keelback, Tropidonophis mairii, is that right? I zoomed the image and the snake seemed to have a checkered pattern. Neither of these two snakes are strongly checkered in the images I found, but maybe there's variability?

Hard to confirm from that distance but it's most likely a keelback (freshwater snake).