I have been camping in the Gibraltar Ranges National Park, off the Gwydir Highway out of Glen Innes.
It’s a fabulous time to be here, as the wildflowers are out in overwhelming profusion.
Not the famous and endangered Waratah, although I could see buds on some of the tall plants. There are now signs warning not to pick the waratahs; I think the signs should say ‘Do not pick ANY wildflowers, but especially our waratahs, which are endangered’.
This is high rugged country. I stayed in the small Boundary Falls campground first.
The walk down to these Falls is short, steeply stepped, but with a handrail all the way.
At the base of them is a rocky and secretive creek gully. The falls themselves are slight, gentle and lovely.
On the way to Mulligans Campground is the Anvil Rock walk, which takes in heathland swamp and towering rocks. It was here that I was first overwhelmed by the sheer variety and quantity of wildflowers. I did not know that we had so many native flowering shrubs and trees like the wattles.
I am not going to differentiate what I saw on which walk, and I was disappointed that there is no flora list on offer, as there used to be in national parks. A general sign is not enough.
I think I will have to go with colour…
Let’s do yellow first.
Wattles, acacias, ain’t ‘just’ wattles. I was amazed at the different varieties growing in different areas, changing as the land did.
There were broad-leaved rich yellow wattles with more leaves than blossoms, ferny-leaved golden ones, spiny-leaved ones with paler blooms, and a veritable arcade of lemon-coloured ones, backlit by the sun into a glowing spectacle.
There were many, many yellow flowering pea shrubs, some arching and graceful, others reaching high; tiny ground covers like the Hibbertia/Guinea flower species I’d not seen before; and a yellow-ish lushly flowering tree I did not know. Well, I hardly knew any of these plants!
I have been camping in Cathedral Rocks National Park. The granite rocks are indeed impressive, often looking precariously balanced.
The short Warrigal Walk from Native Dog campground takes you past this monster to the swamp where a small creek runs.
Some of the rocks invite anthropomorphic analogies, like this one…
Others gently sit on their bases and allow moss to thrive.
Few wildflowers are out yet, but the many wattles are gloriously in golden bloom.
One French tourist returned from her walk bearing armfuls; I had to tell her that in Australia it is not allowed to pick the wildflowers, and why.
She was also camped in my booked spot…
I love cooking on an open fire, and it was cold enough at night and early morning to need that warmth. Firewood is supplied in these high country national parks. As a vegetarian, I prefer to bring my own grill rack to place over the provided fireplace: all those meaty meals seem encrusted on the provided swivel plate!
But this Native Dog campground is too close to the Guyra Road; it does not feel like I am in the bush, and many casual overnight stoppers arrived late and left early, doubtless unbooked and unpaid, and there is no reception here to do it online at the last minute.
It’s been a wet week where I was farmsitting, but, being an older property, it had lots of shady trees and garden structures. The latter were especially made of rocks, as a rocky river was nearby.
Moss loves rocks.
Here it took every opportunity to decorate every surface possible, vertical or horizontal, with every variety of moss possible.
Whether round river rocks or square pavers, it managed to enhance and link them greenly into appealing patterns.
I loved the way it had taken advantage of any shaded irregularity, be it on a ridged uphill walkway or a cracked flat path.
It did its best to beautify both natural stone and man-made concrete, and the efforts were much appreciated by me!
The whales are migrating north now, and Tacking Point Lighthouse is reputedly one of the best spots on the mid north coast to see them.
But the weather has been cold and wet, with the showers unpredictable.
There are quite a few people looking out to sea for those telltale plumes of white as the whales come up for air, and ‘blow’.
And we do see some, but they are a long way out to sea.
I am impressed by the quiet and calm, as people patiently watch. Some have binoculars, some have cameras, but all are quiet.
It’s cold and windy; this requires perseverance. Not instant enough for the few kids, who quickly drag their parents away.
We scan the horizon from left to right constantly. Hoping. But any right-minded whale would stay under as long as possible; the water is warmer than the air.
A white cap? A blow? Mutterings and pointings. Heads and binoculars swivel.
To the south, along Lighthouse Beach, the weather looks more appealing… but still no whale sightings.
One man has binoculars set up on a tripod and speaks into his phone often. I guess he is alerting a whale watching boat where to go to get closer for its tourists. This is school holiday time, so lots of people are here wanting to see these ocean giants.
Maybe I need to do the tourist thing and book on a boat?
Far out, to the south, I spot a partial rainbow, but it does not bring the reward of a whale.
Dolphins swim close to our vantage point, but, charming as they are, I see them often.
For me the most impressive part of this whale watching excursion has been watching the calm patience of ‘the people watching for whales’.
It feels like they are aware of the majesty of these huge creatures on their epic journeys.
As if in the presence of the sacred, as in church, they sense the appropriateness of staying silent.
Recently I camped for a week at New Country Swamp in Mummel Gulf National Park, about 40 kilometres south of Walcha.
I was glad to be in an AWD for the 15 or so kilometres of muddy road in from the Oxley Highway.
While previously logged, it was a wet forest rapidly regrowing.
My first morning gave me a gorgeous sunrise, with the swamp glowing in many colours.
The two walks are short: one looked out between Snow Gums and over the swamp, the other over Mummel Gulf itself.
There were masses of these Banksias around the camp and through the bushland.
The tree fern regrowth was prolific, softening the forest.
My eyes kept being drawn to the mosses and lichens that thrived in this moist forest…and one rare epiphyte.
And of course there were lots of fungi, on rotting logs and on the ground. None really spectacular, but so plentifully hard at work doing their bit in the ecosystem.
I’d have to say that I most loved the alpine grass clumps, which seemed softly, shaggily cheeky!
I was there to write, so the walks were less important than the weather, although the wood being wet made my evening fires difficult.
Looking through my archived photos, I realise that one of the best aspects of living on my Mountain was that I was so close to the sky. I looked up as much as I looked down.
And the rewards were often spectacular, like this rainbow.
The sunrises and sunsets could be extraordinary.
Even when it was almost dark down here on the earth, the highest clouds to the north-east might still be able to reflect the glow of the setting sun in the west.
The higher north-east mountain range often caused a mighty cloud build-up to make a palette for these displays.
A low setting winter sun, mountain mist and filtering trees is all it took to create this occasional, and almost spiritual, sight.
On any given day, that higher range might snag clouds at different heights and let them build up into a panorama of sky architecture.
No wonder I feel rather suffocated here on the coast. I am still a mountain woman.
I have shared flora finds in Sea Acres National Park (Port Macquarie) before, but each time I walk there I see new things!
It’s not your typical rainforest, as it has pockets of eucalypts growing there too, no doubt from past weather events where trees fell and light was allowed in.
As you know, details attract me and while there are many palm strips caught on vines, this one looked so like washing hung out to dry that I had to share it.
Speaking of vines, I saw one very odd and striking vine here, that looks like lacquered and polished cane, but curving. It is apparently Flagellaria indica, Whip Vine or Supplejack.
Growing to about 15 metres, its parts had many uses amongst indigenous people, and birds love its white berries.
Right beside the boardwalk is this brightly coloured and quirkily shaped tree trunk. I looked it up in the Centre’s useful information books and it is a rainforest myrtle, Glossia bidwilii, Python Tree, so called for its blotchy markings.
The shape is not accounted for.
Now how did I miss this before?!
The main plants you notice here are the palms, and I especially love the patterns made by the fan-shaped leaves of the Cabbage Palms (Livistona australis).
Taller, and usually in groves, are the stately Bangalow Palms (Archontophoenix cunninghiamia).
Beneath them, the spent palm leaves seem to block out most other plants; an effective mulch.
At a distance in the forest (sorry about the blurry zoomed image) I could see a strange crown-of-thorns-looking growth feature halfway up a tree. It was as if two trees had been butted roots-to-roots in a grafting attempt. I could but try to imagine what had gone on here.
If only trees could talk…or at least in a language we could understand.
I was hurrying to beat the sun before it rose over the sea’s horizon and became too bright to photograph.
I failed, but Nature still gave me a spectacular display.
While the land and sea were still largely cloaked in the greys and blacks of the previous night, on either side of the hill known as Nobbys, the sun was proclaiming the day.
Within seconds, that daily wonder had risen far enough to be making its way across the water to be colouring the coast.
How come this is a free show every day? Somebody should tax it…
Maybe this is the compensation we get for the loss of such golden people as Janet Cohen, who could see both dark and sunny sides of life.
Even on less showy starts to a day, when the sunshine really is reluctant to come out from behind the clouds, we can be sure it’s there, and that the colours will return to our landscape.
I doubt the bombarded people of the Middle East would be seeing much more than the grey of the rubble that once was their home – and the red of the blood from people, friends, family.
How do they hold on to the sunny side when it is just a memory?
What side of Nature would be visible in Gaza?
As I walk home, I marvel at the extended free show, at the sunrise reflecting on the glass patio panels of an apartment block.
I vow to hang on to that sunny side of life, despite all the darkness we are seeing spread across the world, as an ignorant bully inflicts his tantrums on so many innocent people.
Here we are safe from bombs, so that in itself has to be seen as part of the sunny side, albeit clouded over. Although far away, we are certainly impacted, as felt by the $3.30 a litre I paid for diesel last time I topped up my little van.
Mere ripples from the bad-tempered stamping feet of the bully…
It would not be recognisable as a Port Macquarie skyline without the ever-present pine trees.
On this particular morning, the skies above them were my focus, as the cloud show was extraordinarily varied, in pictures and patterns, in colours and connotations, in figures and fancies.
I have often shared sunrises or sunsets, and feel obliged to do a little bit of that here, as the seascape sunrise is always a treat, but today what’s above those strips and swirls of colour are more interesting.
If you think blue skies are boring, and prefer the endless mystery of cloud shows, you might like The Cloud Appreciation Society, to which my friend and webmaster Fred Baker introduced me. Check it out.
Blue skies are made interesting by clouds, so a little bit of blue is allowed to peep through for contrast.
I kept almost tripping over as I walked about ‘with my head in the clouds’, looking up and twisting backwards in case I was missing another ephemeral wonder.
Whether the clouds were white or grey or both, they were making so many different images up there that I couldn’t keep up.
The display above Nobbys itself seemed to emanate from it, radiating like a bridal veil into the blue.
But today I think the unlimited shades and shapes of grey clouds have won me over; I almost want to delete that distracting bit of colour on the horizon…
Like here. From pearly grey to almost black, from wisps and lace to ripples and smudges, from haloes to heavy linings… I love these clouds!
I was recently reminded of my wonderful 2010 nature writing residency at Rosebank in Victoria, thanks to the Victorian Writers Centre. It was a world of mists and deciduous trees, of old gardens and evocative rocks.
The lovely old stone cottage was dwarfed by the huge oak tree at its front.
I met my first medlar tree there– a living mediaeval curio.
I saw streets lined with golden autumn leaves, as here in what I think was Lancefield, where they had a great Saturday market-in-the-mist.
I roamed all around the Macedon area, including Cobaw State Forest and its sleeping boulders.
For a fungi-lover like me, the cool high country was full of hitherto unseen treasures.
Of course I went to Hanging Rock, very early before the school hordes arrived. As I heard the pan pipes playing in my head, I can see how Miranda could have disappeared… no path was obvious…
And the Rock does not exactly hang, but is scarily wedged.
When I left, this is what I wrote in the guest book:
‘I came to Rosebank from the bush, not the city, but it has been no less a new experience – a taste of rural civilisation in this quaint cottage of honeycomb-hued stone, with only the roos and the smell of woodsmoke to remind me of home.
I take away a mind full of fresh sensory treasures to colour and flavour stories yet to be written. Many were close at hand: the awesome Oak; the crunch of its acorns underfoot; the strange sci-fi fruit with its pronged antennae that turned out to be the mediaeval Medlar; the bright yellow carpet that the Twisted Willow bestowed, after filling the lap of the last chair of summer with gold; the graceful hot pink and orange drooping of of the European Spindle bush; sunlit morning mist turning the sheep on the hill pink; the cute little mouse that grew bolder each night, and its astonishing capacity for pellet production.
‘Some were further afield and higher up: snow gums and mosses and bright fungi, including my first Fly Agaric, the archetypal white-dotted glossy red toadstool of childhood fairtytales.
Most of all, I will remember the rocks – on Cobaw and Hanging Rock and the Camel’s Hump – great rounded creatures with mottled hides, like stranded humpback whales; the pockmarked guardian pinnacles at the Rock which does not hang, but straddles; only its freckled bulbous stomach, under which I scurried, can be said to hang. If Patricia Wrightson’s Nargun lives anywhere, it’s there.
‘But this is a home I have been lent, not just a house, and domestic things have entered my head too: the unconscious game of avoiding the broken board under the carpet in the hall floor; the dear little yellow and white enamelled pot, the nest of cast iron pans, the beautifully balanced and weighted vegetable knife, the old scullery sink, the deep, deep bath that retains the water’s heat – and, not least – the BiIlby egg cup from which I ate my Lancefield market free range eggs!’
The Glass House Mountains inland from Nambour on the Queensland Sunshine Coast are spectacular volcanic plugs. Captain Cook saw them from the sea and thought they resembled the glass furnaces of his native Yorkshire.
But of course they had long been significant to the local Gubbi Gubbi and Jimbaran peoples, and while each peak has its own name, were known collectively as ‘Daki Comon’ or ‘Standing stones’ .
It rained most days of my brief visit, but I was fortunate to be shown a lovely rainforest creek and waterfalls on the private property where I camped.
Being so lush, everything was growing fast and tall, like this fig about to flower.
I was curious about this forest of tall shrubs/small trees, with unfamiliar deeply lobed leaves and prickly stems, but familiar Solanum white flowers and small round fruit. Sure enough they were, but disastrously rampant introduced members of the family, weeds, either Solanum torvum or Solanum chrisotrichum… or both!
One morning we went to a very special place for breakfast, the unique ‘Secrets on the Lake’. Its cabins and café in the rainforest were overwhelmingly artistic, every piece of timber carved with skiil and whimsy.
The café had great views from its verandah, and great food – at very reasonable prices.
There was not enough time to look at the many carved delights to be spotted, small and large. I’d need to go back; I’d love to stay in one of those cabins.
Secrets indeed!
I found it hard to believe that the owners and creators of this gorgeous place were having trouble selling it, despite the ludicrously low price. At around my age, the couple are in need of a rest; they certainly deserve it!
I’d class ‘Secrets on the Lake’ as a national treasure.
My trip to the outback of New South Wales and South Australia took a month and gave me just a taste of that vast arid flat country, edged by fantastic rocky ranges. So very different from my east coast green and wet landscapes, about which I will now stop complaining.
I mainly chose to keep those ranges in view, and I know it was an atypically ‘good season’, after rain, so I didn’t see it at its worst, but I saw plenty of the rangeless horizon-to-horizon flatnesses on the long straight roads like the Barrier Highway that were necessary to get me over there.
It was a revelation in many aspects, and its lessons will remain indelible, partly why I chose not to venture further south into ‘civilised’ South Australia, not wanting to mar the impressions of the outback.
I needed to make that trip, to lift the veil a little on my own ignorance.
1. The First People: I am overwhelmed with admiration for the indigenous people who had worked out a sustainable system of survival for tens of thousands of years in such harsh environments… until we interfered with our land grants and fences and sheep.
It had to be nomadic to follow the seasonal or ephemeral food and water sources; smart, working with the landscape not against it.
It was full of knowledge and experience, and of a spiritual history, the stories of how it all came to be.
In comparison, the ‘explorers’ and ‘pioneers’ were in reality, and with hindsight, ignorant and arrogant in their foolhardiness; the Gorder Line was a misleading tragedy. Hard to celebrate their achievements, although I know their lives would have been dreadfully hard; all the historic markers I saw related to them.
2.Ferals: I am also overwhelmed by the unfortunately highly successful feral invasions that were in such great evidence: the millions of heedless and happily breeding feral goats, too smart to become road kill, too many to ever be eliminated; the hectares of Onion Weed, and the Patersons Curse, replacing what ‘wildflowers’ may have been there before the sheep and goats ate them out.
Introduced plants like Ward’s Weed, beloved by sheep, have adapted only too well to suit. Even in national parks, they were all there, and on the more fertile edges I could see flashes of yellow from the canola crops gone rogue!
Archie Roach sang it: ’The Australian bush is losing its identity’.
I could no longer tell what was once tree-covered, albeit low trees and shrubs, and had been cleared, and what was naturally treeless.
I no longer asked what widespread plants were, as they kept turning out to be introduced weeds.
The impact of we human ferals is everywhere.
3. ROCKS: I had said that the Western Tiers in Tasmania were extremely rocky, as they were, but I can now say that the Ikara/Flinders and Vulkathanha-Gammon Ranges are ROCKY. Of every shape and size and colour and geological history, in their uncountable trillions, rocks rule here. Native plants do grow in such conditions, seemingly not needing actual soil, happy to put down a root between two rocks. Amazing.
I kept being surprised that these places had been left to their rocky wildness, kept expecting a politician to suggest a business to market these rocks; there are so many, who’d miss a few million?! I did see many abandoned, roofless fettlers’ huts built of rocks and in the towns many stone or rock buildings still stood, often empty, as the old narrow gauge railway line had ceased and so had the mines.
4.Emus: Weird and wonderful, graceful and awkward, proudly erect and hopelessly floppy. I am surprised but glad that we still have them wandering wild in our drier lands, unlike the extinct Tassie one. I will miss seeing them about.
5. River Red Gums (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) are absolutely astonishing. I had no idea of the extraordinary ways in which they survive floods and fires, struggling on with a fraction of their roots or trunks, burnt out or washed out, yet hugging the creek lines over the landscape, holding the banks, supporting a living branch or two still, providing hollows and homes still.
And they are beautiful as well as admirable! In ever-varying shapes and patterns and colours. Love them.
I read that they were cut down to be slowly burnt for charcoal to fire the smelters for the copper mines… until their true value was realised.
