Miners’ mini walk

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At the southern end of Shelly Beach at Port Macquarie, the Coast Walk continues to wind its way towards Tacking Point. But today I am only checking out the very short (600m) part that leads from Shelly to Miners Beach.  

The track rises at once, and looking back along Shellys I can see Port’s ubiquitous pine trees.

But very soon the native coastal vegetation asserts itself, wind-combed and shaped.

This walk passes through several delightful greenery ‘tunnels’, a favourite brief fairytale fancy of mine.

It also passes an accessible small rocky cove and beach, where the subtropical vegetation thrives despite the salty position.

The very odd-looking Pandanus tectorius or Screw Pines are a major feature here, although they‘re not pines or palms; their distinctive aerial roots prop them against the sea winds. They are so called as their saw-tooth-edged leaves grow in a spiral or screw-like fashion.

Those leaves are used in weaving for a multitude of purposes in many cultures, including our Indigenous one.

On one tree I spy a single large pineapple-looking fruit. Hard and fibrous, they do not invite a bite, but can be edible with the right treatment, or at least their seeds can.

More easily eaten, beloved by many birds, albeit not so tasty for humans, are the fruits of the small Port Jackson Figs (Ficus rubiginosa) growing beside the track. 

So are the berries of the Common Lilly Pilly (Acmena smithii) growing near the Figs.

This being summer, the time of fruits rather than flowers, I see few plants in bloom. This late Swamp Lilly (Crinum pedunculatum) is large and showy, demanding attention. Its neighbour sports the fruit, which is definitely not edible, as it is toxic to humans.

I am almost at Miners Beach, but I have to stop to watch sky and sea combining to create spectacular ephemeral pictures.

Once known as the nudist beach, Miners is hardly secluded anymore, and if clothes are optional, it is not so officially!

But well worth walking to nevertheless…

Our Sunburnt Country

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I have just read this powerful yet accessible book and my copy is bristling with post-it notes, marking lines I want to quote or recall, to tell others.

Dr. Anika Molesworth is not only a farmer with lived experiences of climate change impacts, but a highly qualified doctorate scientist and well-recognised agricultural researcher. The former drove the latter. 

She writes clearly, authoritatively and passionately. Her book deals with all the well-known aspects of climate change, but her perspective on food systems as critical, as both impacted, and offering solutions, is unusual. I found her discussions of food systems both insightful and fascinating, drawing on many examples worldwide.

Anika has included wonderful quotes by others at the start of each chapter, but her own text comes up with plenty to note, such as  ‘It’s not game over, but it IS game on.’ She pulls no punches, yet manages to keep constructive, to encourage bold and courageous thinking and to inspire action.

As its blurb says, ‘Beautifully written and full of hope…’

Michael Mann suggests ‘Read this book and be inspired.’ And don’t we all need that!

I highly recommend this book (Pan Macmillan):  find it here and for the audiobook here.

Carabeen walk

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If you like tree ferns as I do, there were so many on the drive into Cobcroft picnic area in Werrikimbe National Park that it was a treat.

At the car parking area, this yellow flowering small tree/shrub was new to me; I’d assumed it would be a yellow version of the white Ozothmanus that was plentiful in the area. But the boffins tell me it’s actually Cassinia telfordii.

The short Carabeen Walk takes me through a lush forest of eucalypts like Blue Gums, and tree ferns.

There are two sorts of tree ferns, the rough (Cyathea australis) and the soft (Dicksonia antarctica), both present in this forest. This spectacular old trunk is so decorated with mosses that I can only assume it is a rough trunked one underneath. I love the little rabbit’s foot pads on its trunk.

The walk is named for the Yellow Carabeen trees that dominate the wetter areas of its scope.

The sinuous buttresses of this species can extend from two to five metres up its trunks.

Vines and clinging ferns climbing up the trees are common.

The track has become narrow, and is not always easily distinguishable, with many fallen branches that I climb over or skirt around.

Hoary-footed old trees are a reminder that these slow-growing Carabeens have been making this forest for a very long time.

The young ones seem slender in comparison.

And it wouldn’t be a typical rainforest post for me without at least one sprinkling of fungi.

For the first time I also collected some leeches on this walk; as they were mainly on my hands, perhaps they got aboard when I hung on to fallen branches as I clambered over them. I react badly to them – physically – so the bites refreshed my memories of that walk for a week afterwards!

But the walk was worth it.

Seeking the shy platypus

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From Mooraback campground in Werrikimbe National Park I take the walk to follow the little creek to seek platypuses/platypi in its larger pools.

But it is a very hot day and this walk passes through open paddock flat land before it reaches the first rocky hill. You can see the little creek at the base of those rocks.

From the 1830s until it became a National Park in 1975, this land was farmed, often for dairy cattle. A succession of families tried to make a go of it and the introduced trees, remnant orchards and paddocks remain obvious signs of settlement.

A few kangaroos keep watch as I trudge past, heading for the shade of that hill and its trees, where it has been too hard and rocky to clear or cultivate.

Telltale green denotes domestic survivors; I spot apple and plum trees.

I keep an eye on the creek wherever the walk takes me near it, but the water is murky and the sun is high. I am not here at the preferred ends of the day where a shy platypus might be out and about.

On the way I see some plants I don’t recognise, like this sole bush with its red stems and pretty white raggedy blossoms. The boffins tell me it is Prostanthera lasianthos.

I had been bypassing the many small lilac flowers in the grass by the track, appreciative, but dismissing them as the familiar Wahlenbergia. But then I realised that the flowers on these clumps were different — a single pendant lilac petal with a white eye.

The boffins sent me to PlantNet where I learn it is Slender Violet-bush (Hybanthus monopetalus). ‘Monopetalus’: one petal!

A lilac flower I do recognise is this Purple Flag (Patersonia occidentalis). They are as shy as a platypus, and daintily disposed amongst the tough grasses on this stony hill.

After my last walk and post, I now know the Grass Trigger-plant, of which there are plenty here, but am delighted to spot this caterpillar. I wonder what it will become?

I reach the mid-point of the Platypus walk, and the larger pools, but see no platypus. It is almost noon; too hot to venture out: ‘mad dogs and Englishmen’ as Noel Coward sang… and me … but not the smarter platypus.

On the way back I see one plant with which I am very familar, as it surprised me (and Ludwig Leichhardt, incidentally) at my Mountain with its beauty: the Pink Hyacinth Orchid (Dipodium variegatum). Showing no leaves, no sign of its existence, most of the time, when it would suddenly send up its thick stem, usually in summer, it was always a treat for me. And then the showy burgundy-speckled pink flower!

So while I didn’t see a platypus, probably due to my poor timing, I did see some special plants.

But the main impression of this walk was a sadness, brought on by the remnants of its settlement time; all those families striving to beat this high and often harsh climate, making a life for their families for a time, and then having to move on. I don’t know if they cleared the paddocks or if they were natural, with the bracken-covered slopes above them more likely, so I won’t blame them for that; I can only empathise with those lives of hard work.

Yet I am determined to see a platypus, so I will return and set out on that walk at a sensible time!

Mooraback Spring

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The Mooraback campground in Werrikimbe National Park is surrounded by blossom-laden Tea Trees (Leptospermum polygalifolium) at present.

They make as pretty a show as any introduced plant like May Bush (Spirea).

On the shortest walk near the camp, the mown grass track leads past many other white flowering bushes, which I was calling Rice Flowers, but which the experts tell me is Ozothamnus diosmilfolius.

Some were as tall as small trees.

Edging the path in some places, like guards of honour, were multitudes of these pink Grass Trigger-plants (Stylidium graminifolium).

The path led me through mysterious groves of low and spreading trees like these…

…to come out on to such grandeur as here, with a view across the damp Tree Fern gully to Messmate (E. obliqua, Snow Gum (E. pauciflora), Wattle-leaved Peppermint (E. acaciformis) and Manna Gums (E.nobilis).

A large Manna Gum rose in front of me, estimated to be about 150 years old.

This was a delightfully varied and easy stroll, looping back to the equally delightful grassy campground.

Mooraback is a long drive off the Oxley Highway, but worth it!

Gentle Boorganna

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If you’ve never been up to the Comboyne Plateau, you have a treat in store. It’s high and green and often wet; I have never forgotten being told as a child that it got six feet of rain a year. At the time I lived on the Central Coast and I knew we got four feet of rain a year, so that was a vivid comparison for me.

I have now been there many times, noting the sign to Boorganna Nature Reserve, but never stopping to investigate it.

Now I have.

Boorganna is a gentle, special place, long ago put aside for us to wander down through its rainforest, along its leafy, rock-edged paths. There are plenty of informative signs on the way, about the forest, its buttressed and giant trees, and its inhabitants.

Most life goes on above us, green and lush and multi-storied, with twisting vines and clinging creepers and giant bird’s nest ferns all competing for the light.

When this forest giant fell, the path was sensibly cut into its girth. reinforcing its size in the minds of us small humans.

Not all the giants have fallen; this Brush Box is estimated to be as much as a thousand years old.

From the foot-stand slits in some of the big stumps, other giants were not so lucky to survive.

I reach the Rawson Falls Lookout, but decide not to continue to the base of the Falls, mindful that while it has all been a gentle wander downhill, the way back uphill will not feel so gentle on my knees.

As always, my eye is taken by details: I love that the fence at the Lookout is as spotted and bearded with lichen as the nearby trees.

I can look down more safely going uphill, and see delights I missed, like this absolute cornucopia of pale fungi.

Or these few strange papery cup fungi … and is that tiny stem in front a baby one?

There are many logs bedecked with fungi imitating fallen leaves … or potato crisps? I love that Nature does not restrict their artistic licence in design.

But of course, being a rainforest, green and ground matters dominate.

Boorganna offers the lot.

Where rocks rule

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Cathedral Rocks National Park is of course a mecca for rock lovers.

But rocks ain’t just rocks, impressive though they be; they are also habitat, as here, for mosses and lichen and orchids.

Individual rocks – or should I call such big ones ‘boulders’? — exhibit very particular features, like this one, which sports a kind of centurion helmet.

The majority of them sit calmly in credible piles, moss-capped and comfortably non-threatening.

Other clumps are incredible in their composition; now how or why does that rock balance as it does?

My hesitancy in climbing higher towards the summit of Cathedral Rocks is not helped by having to pass so close to huge boulders so precariously perched above me. The balance has to give at some point… erosion may be slow, but it’d be just my luck to be there when it reaches that tipping point.

I can see the Woolpack Rocks in the distance, and I know I managed to get to the top of those on another trip, from a different campground.

But here I give up at this point, while my more intrepid friend continues. I am not a rock-climber — a crevasse bridger, a knee scraper, a leg stretcher — and this is enough of a view for me.

It is more the closeup subtleties of the rocks and their accompanying plants that I am most interested in. I just wish I could read the distinct hieroglyphs that the moss and lichen form. Can’t be random…

Occasionally, I can; I mean this is clearly a heart, right?

And even if the plants don’t speak to me, the boulders give me an ephemeral treat in providing a canvas for shadow play — which would not have been evident amongst the undergrowth otherwise.

Thanks, for so many reasons, for rocks!

Spring colour

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On the rising slopes above the campground, many surprising spring shows were tucked amongst the rocks. Some, like these White Everlastings or Paper Daisies (Coronidium elatum), only appeared in a few places.

Overall, white, yellow and purple seemed to be the chosen colour palette.

The swamp below the rocks was dotted with hundreds of these shrubs, their delicate creamy blossoms looking like garden escapees, too pretty to be growing wild. But they are Small-fruited Hakea (Hakea microcarpa), which like sub-alpine swamps.

Much less common, to the extent that this was the only one I saw, was another white flowering plant, Coral Heath (Epacris microphylla), with its unusual stems, clasped by dozens of tiny leaves.

I had noticed these shy lilac buds the day before, but next day they were blooming and blue; Thelymitra ixioides, a single-stalked ground orchid that likes to open on warm sunny days.

I saw very few other orchids, such as these Donkeys’ Ears ones, but they had no chance in the major claims to yellow.

The slopes were carpeted with shrubs of the sort we always called ‘Eggs-and-bacon’ as kids, pea flower families, of which there are hundreds of types. There were three discernible sorts here, some prickly, some not and some with more red in their centres (more tomato sauce, as we’d say).

Some were threaded through with purple Hardenbergia.

With all these flowers to see, it was hard to watch my feet on the rocky tracks, let alone look up to the stunning rocks. But I did stop to look up, so rocks and giant boulders will be my next post. So, so much to see!

Cool camp flora

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In Cathedral Rocks National Park, the Barokee campground alone would be enough to keep me returning. Fascinating flora, and fabulously abundant birdsong.

This charming little alpine creek runs through the nearby swamp, its cushioned grassy edges soft and inviting, the fresh water cold, but still inviting.

Being a swamp, it has varieties of rushes, but this stripey one especially caught my eye. I am told it is a species of Baloskion. Maybe tetraphyllum?

My wayward eye was also taken by this quirky baby bracken frond, questioning life before it commits to unfurling.

Unmissable was this small group of plants that the boffins at NSW Plants I.D. say is Tasmannia stipitata, or Tasmanian Pepper Berry. I later saw many such plants higher up, but not in flower, and without the red colourations.

Brilliant red new growths always take my attention, and here at camp these were spectacular, ranging from orange-red to burgundy, some even as part of a quite large shrub/tree.  

Throughout the walks and climbs I was later to see many examples, mostly small and isolated – Trochocarpa montana, or Mountain Tree Heath, native to this high country, from the Barringtons to the Dorrigo region.

One more unknown species flashing red by the campground turned out to be Polyscias sambucifolia, or Elderberry panax. A native, its purple berries are edible, but not related to the European Elderberry.

All new to me, and thanks to the NSW Native Plants I.D. Facebook group, now given names and background information.

But I did eventually leave the campground and climb up amongst the rocks, finding more plants to share with you next post.

High country Nature

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I greatly enjoyed the recent Dorrigo Bluegrass and Folk Festival, but afterwards I needed a quiet bush break.

As it was so close, I headed for Cathedral Rocks National Park, but stopped in at the refurbished Ebor Falls Lookout, just off the main road.

Fitted out with new cliff-skirting concrete paths and metal railings, it would gladden the heart of any OHS observer. And yes, I know the paths were aimed to be wheelchair- and walker-friendly.

In a way, the tourist-oriented features detracted from the wildness whose viewing they facilitated.

But not much, once I looked over those railings. In fact, they emphasised that wildness by that very contrast.

For me the best part of any falls is always the point where a calm stream becomes the dramatic drop that we all goggle at. Here a fisherman is trying his luck just upstream from that point.

And dramatic they are!

The organ pipe rock formations of the cliffs are equally stunning. Formed around 19 million years ago, when the cooling lava from the Ebor Volcano created these vertical contraction cracks, they are part of the ancient Demon Fault Line.

At the base of those cliffs was a very noticeable localised group of bright green, which has been identified as Tree Ferns, likely Dicksonia antarctica. Great to see them recovering after the fires here.

The imposing Upper Falls are followed downstream by the narrower Lower Falls.

Beyond them the creek heads into the wonderful rugged wilderness of this high country.

I think its wild expanse is why I love it so much. 

Here be dragons…

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My new place has families of Eastern Water Dragons (Intellagama lesueurii lesueurii).

They mainly sunbake, even in the middle of the road, or perch on raised plantings in the garden.

Liking water, they do swim; I have seen one here jump into a bucket half-full of water– incidentally scaring the daylights out of me!

Often mistaken for a Frill-necked Lizard, they are beautifully patterned, with the most elegant long toes and fingers. Their heads are always up, questing, curious?

Last week a visiting friend, Jane, seemed to have special appeal as the largest Dragon, the male I assume, came up onto the verandah where we were sitting. He was almost under our chairs, pointing his spade-shaped head this way and that. 

They are mainly insectivorous, but like all sorts of delicacies as they mature, so maybe he thought we had cake — we didn’t, just coffee.

While unafraid, these Dragons are wary, so I wasn’t game to get up to fetch my camera. But Jane had her phone camera, so took these great pictures.

I am very grateful to have them as my resident wildlife.

Dromedary dilemma

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For years I have driven past the Port Macquarie paddocks (opposite the golf course) where a herd of camels live, and wondered each time about their ability to cope with this most non-desert/green/high rainfall region.

Finally I stopped and took a closer look.

These camels are used for tourist rides, rather ludicrously called ‘Safaris’, on Lighthouse Beach.

They look out of place, as you can see, but they appear contented. They retain all the facial features useful to keep sand out of their eyes and mouth and nose, but here there is no need.

I learn that Australian camels, now a feral pest in northern parts, are Dromedaries, most suited to the Middle East … and Australia; 94 per cent of the world’s camels are such one-humped Dromedaries.

The humps hold fat, not water, as I’d always believed.

Most of this herd of about eleven camels were leisurely chewing their cuds, yet managing to look quite aristocratic as they did so.

There is something about the elevated angle at which they hold their heads that commands respect.

I noted that many stood with their back legs splayed. Unlike with horses, this did not appear to signal urination.

And then I noticed that most had a piercing, a camel nose peg, I learnt it is called, mainly made of timber. They did not all seem to have one, and it seems such pegs are mainly used to control bull camels, or to link camels in a ’string’.

I investigated, and yes, it is painful to have done, in that sensitive nose or mouth area, and should be done by a vet.

Here I confess I do not even have my ears pierced.

However, I invite you to check out what the RSPCA has to say about the practice.

I am impressed by these strange and noble creatures, with their googly eyes and mobile cleft lips, their spinal ridges of fur and their surprisingly wavy tails.

I hope they have no memory of endless desert sands… or that the 20 minute ‘Safaris’ on Lighthouse Beach fulfil some small part of the genetic yearning they must have.