Landscapes

Port peace

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Today I dared my first beach walk, after a week flu-bound indoors, basically doing nought but coughing and sleeping.

The beach was pretty empty, although several fishermen were risking the rocks.

The rocks along the Port Macquarie coast are quite harsh and unfriendly in appearance. They are not foot- or hand- friendly either. Such a contrast with the gentle continuous swell that they edge.

There are many scattered ‘rocklets’  creating lacy patterns and sinuous swirls of their own.

There were very few remnant patterns from the tide, but I don’t know the moods of this beach yet.

As this cliff and this beach are close to many flats and houses, I wonder about the content of the drips on several rock faces, where the liquid is like caramel topping, not water.

I am pleased to see a healthy banksia with candles all a-glow, but mainly the beach itself claims my attention.

I sit on the edge of a sandbank and admire the tenacious grass runners. Not much evidence of crab activity, as I was used to at Dunbogan but then I am late here today.

It’s not a dog beach. There are just a few determined walkers, doing the length and back.

I feel so relaxed I could sleep on the sand.

Trying to understand why there is such a sense of peace here, I finally get it.

There are no vehicle tracks, no 4WD scourings, just the tidemarks…

Just Nature.

Port prelude

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Well, I am finally fully moved to my new home, albeit with too many things to fit into a much smaller place. The local op shops have received a great deal of the overflow.

I had not had time to check out my nearby walks, which will often be on the coast.

Of course I was first drawn to the closest thing to a mountain: Nobby Head. I read it is only 30 metres high, but it will have to do.

Being an early riser, I hurried up the hill to catch the sunrise, always a miracle.

It wasn’t even 7am, but clearly the dog owners here are earlier risers than I am. The small Nobbys Beach where I had imagined walking was criss-crossed with paw and people prints. There were people busily walking down to it, along it and up from it. Before work, I suppose.

Some had more than one dog.

So the dog beach won’t be my beach.

And I was made aware that Port Macquarie is a much more citified town, as very few folk responded to my ‘Morning’ or my smile.

I climbed up my ‘mountain’, despite a wet and slippery track, much eroded. There is no view from the top, and it does not feel like a mountain, even a miniature one.

I saw other indications of too many people and too little respect for history or nature. The monument at the top was covered in graffiti. It was meant to commemorate Henry Gardiner, who had died in 1874 trying to save a friend’s life in the sea just below here. Both perished. 

Where was the respect for them?

The vegetation still held natives like the lilli-pilli I could see, but under so much of the invasive asparagus fern that it was almost buried.

It was all rather sad. I’ll be leaving this beach to the dogs and their dutiful owners. The mandatory and multitudinous pairings struck me as quite odd; what would an alien think of this society?

But I have found somewhere else nearby to explore… and to introduce you to next post.

Natural pinks

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The glory of a very pink sunset and its reflections in the Camden Haven River were a treat. The deep blue additions seemed like punctuation marks.

Although some of that blue cohort seemed more like questing creatures, hurrying forward against that stunning still backdrop bank of pink.

As the colour faded, their southern rush was echoed by a higher golden compatriot, aiming to leap over the blue bars.

Fanciful?  Yes, but such an ephemeral show invited fancies.  Better than facts at present…

At home the cascades of several varieties of Schlumbergera cacti were showing a fine range of pinks in their abundant flowers, from pearly pales to cyclamen deeps.

I would usually say I don’t actually like pink much, but I applaud these.

Farewell to Wayfarer

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At low tide, the rescued boat is unable to float, sitting askew on the mudflats.

It is early morning and the sky and its gentle colours and reflections take all the attention for the moment. But up close, this slanted and stranded boat offers its name as ‘Wayfarer’.  I wonder where it had journeyed as a wayfarer, and if it would again.

Its exposed underside tells me it had sat on the muddy bottom of the river for some time.

Its deck is as colourful as the sky, worthy of contributing to the reflections before the mudflats halt them.

Not that my solo heron minds the low tide; all the better for finding breakfast. 

I then learnt that Wayfarer is to be dragged ashore and broken up; she is not salvageable, having sat for about five years on the bottom. Her masts had already been taken down.

She will definitely no longer go a-wayfaring…

River residents

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My recent walk to the river boat ramp offered the surprise of a new resident: a resurrected boat, muddied and somewhat askew, plainly pulled up from a watery depth greater than it was built to inhabit.

From the mangrove edges the more usual resident ducks were heading out through the reflections and ripples, and creating their own silver trails.

As they passed the salvaged boat I thought how much better adapted they were to this   river, to water. It was crippled, useless to do aught but stay afloat: they belonged.

There were actually four of these handsome ducks; I loved the way their reflections paddled with them, double hooked.

I had expected the other inhabitants here to be solo, as was usual. My pelican was indeed the only one on the oyster stacks, but I later realised it had a companion– a shag?

Not sure why I always see solo creatures so often — mirroring me? — but here was my solo seagull, and yes, standing on one leg…

The sole watchful heron picked its delicate way through the exposed mangrove flats as it sought its tucker. And while I have seen more than one seagull or pelican elsewhere, I have not seen multiple herons.

I have taken many photos of Dooragan reflected in the river at all times of day, but to see it reflected in watery mud was new.

As I am moving from here soon, I am relishing all glimpses of the many moods of the river and the mountain…

Sandscapes

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A walk along a deserted beach where I will not swim is yet full of delights and surprises.

Here I imagine there was a full mermaid sand sculpture before the tide washed her torso and head away.

But fanciful figures aside, the tide had left many different patterns, like these mountains of the moon.

Unusually, today there were areas where fine shellgrit had been deposited, here highlighted and disrupted by a splayed kelp plant.

And how was this rippling, ruffling pattern produced?

Despite the grittier top layer, the tiny and tinier creatures who live below still made their presence obvious by the balls of sand of varying sizes.

Ephemeral patterns and pleasures for the early riser…

Double-ended drama

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I have never been able to choose between sunsets and sunrises as regards beauty and spectacle; they are so different, and each one of them is different from another.

Autumn is a great season for sunsets, as this rather fierce example shows when I look to the south-west, where the sky seems to be on fire.

But face north and that same sunset takes on more delicate hues.

Face straight ahead to Dooragan and gold lights the sky.

And burnishes the gently rippling river.

But on the same day the sun had made its entrance with great promise, if less dramatically.

It soon painted the sky and the sand with a glowing peach gold, while the land was struggling to share some of that light.

Such beauty at both ends of one day!

A free show, if we only look.

Wild weather

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With strong winds sending small branches raining down at home, I could hear the surf thundering in the distance and knew it would be a spectacle.

But I hadn’t expected the amount of sea foam that awaited me at the Tuckeroo end of Dunbogan Beach.

The creamy froth had coated the rocks and sand, transforming the usual colour and texture.

The beach itself had been transformed, the high seas cutting into the banks and forging a new rushing stream.

The stream rippled along with each wave, with the yellowish foam edging it like a fancy frill.

Flecks and lines of foam were stranded on the sand, some caught and banked by what the tide had left behind, some blown willy-nilly to roll and dance over the sand.

As soon as I entered the dense bush of Kattang to walk back to the Tuckeroo car park, the surf fell silent, and stillness replaced the wild winds.

But if the sea was all white and cream today, in this weather even the Camden Haven River sported whitecaps and waves.

Always worth venturing out in such weather to see what Nature is up to.

Wattles and wonders

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I thought I was looking at gum tree leaves, but in fact it is a wattle — Acacia implexa.

No flowers or seed pods to give me a clue, but what’s in a name with such beautiful leaves?

This decorative and dangly foliage also belongs to a wattle — Acacia vestita.

The weird and wonderful triangular leaves on this wattle caught my eye: Acacia cultriformis. New to me.

Not a wattle, but a standout in its solitude as it erupted amongst crackly lichen, is this small shrub of Western Urn Heath, Melichinus erubescens.

On the ridge top, somehow growing tall and strong amongst rocks, this tree trunk, strikingly silver and grey, presented a single elephantine foot and proud wrinkles as it branched. I am told by my knowledgeable hosts that it is a Scribbly Gum, Eucalyptus rossi.

And if a tree does not choose to have a grey or brown trunk, it can opt for green, with a little help from friendly lichen.

For here the realm of green above all belongs to the mosses and lichens, especially after a good rainy period.

They make a fabulous contrast with the bones of this country — the rocks.

Big Hill sunrise

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The short Big Hill walk is the only one here, so I head past the beach to climb that and hopefully see out to the sunrise, of which I can see delicate flushes already.

It is still half dark on the walk, and the trees arching over the track make it even dimmer. I had needed a torch when I set out.

The sea winds have shaped the cliffside forest into slanting sideways for  survival.

But then I emerge on to a side of the Hill where the sunrise can be seen through the dark trees.

There is low cloud limiting the sun’s visible rise, but it makes a beautiful bright contrasting glow with the grey sea and the dark cliff.

Before this loop walk leaves the sea to head down through the rainforest, I marvel at the rugged nature of the shore here. Steep and forbidding.

I come out the other end of the loop at the bottom of the Big Hill into brighter daylight, to find a lone Pandanus tree (Pandanus tectorius) propped on its stick legs, its unripe ‘breadfruit’ looking somehow inappropriately tropical.

Paperbarks and pandanus…

Swans and supper-singing birds…

Melaleuca moments

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At Melaleuca Campground, apart from its waterbirds, Limeburners Creek itself holds beauty in its reflections and varying channels and flows.

Not surprisingly, the Melaleucas or paperbarks were the main trees, often being embraced by what I assume were a variety of Strangler Fig.  Embraced — or throttled?

Other trees were closely held by vines, some almost as thick as the tree itself.

One tree species profusely flowering at the time was Alphitonia excelsa, Red Ash or Soap Tree.

Near the base of one was this eye-catching brightly fruiting plant, which I am told is a native mistletoe, Amylotheca dictyophleba.

Not a plant, but of an unusual colour for me, was this large Lace Monitor.  I know their colours vary, but I have never seen such yellow bands before. There were many of the familiar black and cream and spotted goannas or monitors at the camp, often four at a time lazing or waddling along the creekside or over the grass. 

They didn’t bother me, although I kept the side door of the van shut when they were about, since they climb; a panicked goanna inside the van would be no joke…

They seemed to have set times to take their turn; they would all disappear and small birds would arrive, the dainty little wrens hopping about so swiftly they seemed like leaves being blown over the grass.

Never a time without some wildlife to watch or notice; what a treat!

Creekside birds

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At the Melaleuca Campground in Limeburners Creek NP, the creek is off limits for all but viewing. It runs gently past, channelling a cool breeze from the sea, offering a range of waterbirds and attracting many fisher birds.

These stately black swans were in graceful and constant procession, only occasionally taking flight to display their white wing edges, like glimpses of a lady’s petticoat. They were more brownish-greyish than black, I thought. Their bright red bills banded with white were frequently dipped into the stream to feed, those elegant long necks bending with ease to search the deeper channels.

Often closer to the bank, in the shallower and weedy edges, Dusky Moorhens dabbled, or foraged in the grass, but they were flighty and bustled away if I came too close.

The air was full of melodious calls, I assume from several Pied Butcherbirds. This parent and child carried on a debate for some time on a nearby branch. The young one had yet to develop the crisp black and white colouring of the adult.

The adult later returned alone and sang beautifully, as well as muttering and chuckling; mimicry? I was surprised that its beak did not appear to be moving. Then it appeared close to my table, seeming to expect food as payment for its song. ‘Vegetarian, mate,’ I apologised. ‘No meat scraps here for you’.

The distinctive silhouette of a kingfisher caught my eye before it dived to catch whatever it was watching in the water. I could not see its colour well, but I think it was an Azure  Kingfisher.

And then, when I got home the day after, the same species of bird, rarely seen by me, had stunned itself in my back yard. It could hop, but was not flying, and disappeared into my laundry to hide out. Definitely an Azure Kingfisher. 

I let it be, and when I came down to check a few hours later, it had made its way towards the adjoining forest. Still hopping. I hoped no goanna would find it before it recovered fully. Such a coincidence: two sightings in two days.