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.
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.
I have inadvertently passed through many narrow gorges that were part of Mount Remarkable National Park on the road to get to Mambray Creek
Because I didn’t stop, I realise I am a bit over gorges.
Where I will camp for a few nights is near a small one, beside the partly dry Mambray Creek.
There are only a few walks short enough for me. They are mostly through native pine forests, with plenty of the amazing Wira or River Red Gums, in all stages of survival. No wonder the Nukuna people revere them so much.
This one was forming a useful bridge as an alternative to the rocks in the creek crossing.
So many of these magnificent trees had been almost split in two or burnt out, and yet they still supported a living section of tree, and all the myriads of lives that this entailed.
Much in demand by everyone, but only over-cut and over-used by settlers, the mighty gums were not appreciated and protected in the past, as they are now.
The Mount Remarkable Range is the southern Flinders Range, of 800 million year-old sandstone.
You can even see the fossilised ripples of beach sand from its time as an ocean bed.
This is the last and most gentle part of my Flinders odyssey.
Like all of the Flinders it is very rocky, and the patterns and colours of the rocks and their lichens could absorb me forever.
Along the track I passed two kangaroos, quite dark Western Greys, too involved in courtship to bother about me. From my time at the Mountain with Eastern Greys, I recognised the ritual…
On another walk, I had good views back over the range, and was delighted to see that one of the millions of bush flies here had strayed into frame at just the right time.
At the campground, almost everyone, including children, wears a black net fly hood under their hat, so groups of unidentifiable people wander about looking like aliens.
I am wearing one now, even in my van, but hatless. It makes walking awkward, as you proceed with dozens of small black flies bobbing about within an inch of your face.
From that same hill, looking west I could see the blue of Spencer Gulf across the plain.
Griselda’s Hill was overlooked by very scatty clouds as I left the weird other world around Arkaroola.
I would not be walking any more in this National Park as I realised it was too steep and rocky for my abilities these days.
It was enough to have been here and absorbed its otherwordliness.
I was heading to the western side of the Flinders, via Copley and Leigh Creek.
The Copley Road is very different, still dirt but better than that from Blinman, and far more winding, taking me through gorges and two Aboriginal settlements, Nepabunna and Iga Warta, before it became open country, bare, harsh, and dominated by sheep.
I will miss the emus, so stately in walking, so ungainly in running, and the beautiful Yellow-footed Rock Wallabies. If only I had seen a real quoll…
Some country seemed as if painted by a child, with scattered pointy trees, mostly dead.
After the long stretch of dirt road (about 130km) Copley was welcome; a tiny relic of a town, but with a great bakery/café and an obvious community vibe.
Back on the Outback Highway, the North Flinders Ranges kept me intrigued with their variety of formations and coverings.
I was curious to see Leigh Creek, knowing the town had been relocated years ago to get at the coal beneath. Echoes of Adaminaby… and Acland.
South Australia’s only coal mine, state-owned to supply coal for power, it had still been operational when I researched for Rich Land, Wasteland, but was due to close in 2015, so I didn’t get to that state.
The ’new’ town of Leigh Creek is a bit sad, as it was devastated when the mine closed, and people left in droves. The garage has a fascinating photographic exhibition of its history, which reads rather like that of the Snowy scheme.
But it is such a nice place, seemingly well-designed, with plenty of cheap empty houses, and a fabulous IGA that is as cheap as anywhere, and sells everything!
A local told me he was horrified when some perfectly good houses were recently demolished.
Where is the bureaucrat or politician with vision to restart the town and publicise these affordable houses in a housing crisis?
It had begun to drizzle, and it kept up for some hours.
I had intended to walk in Parachilna Gorge, but the weather said no.
I called in at Parachilna anyway, where the rejuvenated Prairie Hotel is on all the tourist maps and brochures,
A revelation.
There were dozens of caravans and 4WDs parked and double-parked out the back there, but the hotel, with its brewery and gourmet restaurant, is no longer an outback pub, but the city transported to the outback.
A tourist oddity.
In Port Augusta, two sights had me puzzled.
The first is what seems to be a white salt lake either side of the highway.
The second is a large wind farm just outside town where not one of the many turbines was turning, not even slowly, so I assume not commissioned or connected. There was also a solar farm there beneath them.
Given that Port Augusta was where the coal power station was, it would make sense to use its infrastructure.
(But on my way back past there a few days later, I was glad to see that all the blades were slowly turning.)
One treat was the Port Augusta Arid Lands Botanic Garden, an achievement covering all the areas of the Fiinders and beyond.
The other was the Port Augusta Vinnies’ op shop, as I had run out of reading material.
I had stayed in Quorn that night, and was headed for Melrose Showground for the next, before my final NP stay, in the Southern Flinders Ranges at Mt Remarkable.
After winding through charmingly rugged and narrow gorges, I hit farming country, with clearly higher rainfall.
The ridges bore a sheen of green and the Patersons Curse weed was more lush and widespread than I’ve ever seen it.
The bright yellow-lime of canola crops began to appear alongside the wheat fields.
I detoured to Port Germein on the Spencer Gulf, a charming old windjammer wheat port with a very long jetty (currently closed after tidal surge damage). The pub does good coffee too…
And then on to the National Park, hoping for peace and quiet. But of course I had forgotten I would be there on a weekend, the last of the South Australian school holidays, and it was not far from Port Augusta.
As the day dawns cloudy over Griselda’s Hill, I am happy to tackle this shortest walk here. Not being a national park, it does not have as much useful information re the length of the walk and what it involves.
A flock of Little Corellas gathers near my camp as I leave.
I don’t know anything about Griselda but her Hill is steep and rocky, and gets steeper and rockier as I climb.
Yet plants grow on most of the harsh hillside. Here masses of Silver Mulla Mulla bloom, in greater profusion than anywhere else I have seen it.
I almost reach the top, to the level where the Rock Grasstrees (Xanthorrhoea quadrangulata) begin.
I turn to take in the view, seeing two of the observatories in this world class Dark Sky place. They were one of my reasons for coming here, but the long weekend and school holidays mucked up my schedule.
But as I refocus on my close view, with great surprise I notice a wallaby sitting right near me.
I say hello. We look at each other for some minutes.
I praise her beautiful striped tail and ask if it ends in a point or not.
She doesn’t reply, but instead hops up higher to show me the thick end.
I later ask at the shop for any info on the animals here, but staff seem to be all backpackers, as at Wilpena.
This is, however, a Yellow-footed Rock Wallaby. I just didn’t know about that spectacular tail.
What a special meeting…
She makes me reconsider where I am. The height is now considerable, and I am not one for heights. I start to feel that pull to falling… this is beyond my comfort height.
While I am inclined to keep going, as I am so close, do I need to?
No.
I love the rocks here, but I know the trip back down will be an issue, even with my stick to help me balance.
Each step has to be weighed up, as to whether the stones to be placed under stick or foot are loose … which many are … which part of my bifocal glasses will give me the right depth perception, and how do I see what’s growing around me if I must watch my feet so closely??
Griselda, this is not really a walking track… and it is certainly not for someone whose agile mountain goat days are clearly over.
I turn back and gingerly make my way down, stopping often to take photos.
Harsh it may be, but plenty of plants have adapted to growing here.
This pretty lilac-flowering shrub is Limestone Fuchsia Bush (Eremophila freelingi).
There were lots of these: Tomato Bush, (Solanum quadriloculatum) from the same family as our domestic tomatoes and potatoes.
But I only saw one of this, which seems to have blue borage-like flowers, not purple as all the solanums do here. A mystery?
Now and then among the rocks is a shrub of surprising delicacy, the pale yellow of what I think are Elegant Wattles (Acacia victoriae).
I kept hearing and seeing Willie Wagtail birds, but they are mostly too fast for me to snap a photo.
A great deal of chattering drew me to what i think I also saw at Acraman campground in Flinders; the sociable White-browed Babbler. And they do babble…
I do reach the bottom of Griselda’s Hill, grateful not to have slipped on any loose rocks. It is only then that I notice the sign there which says ’Griselda’s Hill Climbing Track’.
Lack of info: sorry, Griselda, you never said it was a walking track…
En route I spot this shrub, which has to be Leathery Senna (Senna artemisioides subsp. coriacea), a first for me.
And I am still wondering about Griselda; a gritty girl indeed if she climbed that hill often…
With such a moon my last night at Alpana, I knew there’d not be much to see from Arkaroola’s three observatories.
Getting to Arkaroola from Blinman means 152 km of dirt road. I’d say that it had been brushed up for the long weekend as it was in good condition, if unpleasantly corrugated at times, such as after Wearing Gorge.
I was deliberately driving slowly, but quite a few convoys of 4WDs flew towards and past me, their following dust clouds betraying their approach.
The road to the Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges National Park often goes through properties, and the first flock of sheep I saw looked absolutely incongruous. They were unfamiliar, black-faced, and I had to look twice to see if they were sheep or goats.
What do they eat?
The soil became red again, with distant views of the Flinders I was leaving behind.
I stopped in the middle of the road for this emu and her stripey chick.
About 50 km from Arkaroola, I also stopped to check on a car, pulled over, with luggage being removed.
‘A puncture,’ the bloke said. It was a rental car, so who knows what state the spare would be in if he could swap it? I took his details to pass on to Arkaroola, where they were booked in.
Too many kilometres later, I realised I should have checked that they had enough drinking water, in case they were there for some hours.
I saw them later at Arkaroola, where the tyre he had managed to change had been fixed.
Arkaroola Village is a strange place, sitting as it does in the midst of the most rugged and harsh ranges you could imagine. It could well be on the moon, it is so different from anywhere else I’ve been.
It is part of the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary, but doesn’t feel like that.
It is an odd cross between a resort, with lots of accommodation and a huge licensed dining area, and a mining town (copper), with much leftover machinery from various times, and with mechanical services on hand.
It has phone reception… and fuel, at $2.45 a litre for diesel. This will be by far the most expensive yet, but as I said before, out here fuel supply is sporadic and essential, so it comes first, at whatever cost.
And of course, my timing is impeccable, and the observatories are not open, due to the full moon.
The toilets are out of order; the smell is unpleasant as workmen dig and try to fix them, but there are emus wandering through the camp and I have great views of Griselda’s Hill, which I vow to walk tomorrow.
To escape the tourist crowds on a long weekend I had chosen to hole up at Alpana Station, outside Blinman.
No reception, but a free rein on camp sites beside the dry bed of Butler’s Creek, lined with majestic old River Red Gums.
I chose to set up beside this gorgeous one, multi-trunked, with long sinuous arms snaking sideways. Their silvery markings shone like the finest silk stockings…
I had no plans to do much except rest, read, play house with the camper, cook on an open fire and catch up on posts. These I would research and then send off in reception-rich Blinman when I left on the Monday morning before I set off for Arkaroola.
I decided to walk up to the prominent Rocky Nob above the home paddocks, including Bill’s Paddock where I was camped.
The Nob had one tree on top, bravely hoisting the flag.
As the track rose, it offered views over the Flinders Ranges back to Wilpena Pound.
It also gave me some surprises, like this stunning Mallee Ringneck parrot feeding along on the ground.
I wonder what it is eating?
Alpana’s Sally Henery told me that the main green ground cover I have been seeing everywhere is Ward’s Weed, introduced around 1915. A successful invader certainly, but It is extremely useful, she says, as even when it dies the sheep find it palatable.
But the ground here is full of tiny things whose names I don’t know.
There were only a few patches of this fluffy plant (left) and similarly (right) of these tiny spots, like fish scales… a lichen or ?
As at Bimblebox in Queensland’s Desert Uplands, I felt I should be crawling along so as not to miss anything. Dryland secrets.
I saw quite a few of these straggly trees, which at times did resemble olive trees. I think they are Bullock Bush (Alectryon oleifolius) and they are grazed from below to the height of whatever creature is eating them. Emus? Amazingly, they are a remnant plant from over 10,000 years ago.
But I wandered on these rocky hills for a time, unsuccessfully seeking trail markers.
I felt I could get lost in the gullies, once the Nob or the Homestead was out of sight, and decided to return to the last found marker, and thus to the camp.
As this would mean coffee, and I was on a lazy break after all, I didn’t mind.
I’d earned my stripes bushwalking elsewhere.
As the sun prepared to set for the night, and I lit the fire for cooking… and for the sheer pleasure of watching it… I sighed with the relief of these few undemanding, peaceful days in such a setting.
Blinman, the highest town in South Australia, came into being in the 1860s, near its copper mine. Today the underground mine is long gone, but tours of its tunnels and relics are always popular. The day’s tours were fully booked out when I was there.
The copper history keeps Blinman alive, and on the 4WD touring schedule, where a stop at the Blinman Pub is mandatory. There is also a bakery; no fuel, but fresh bread?
Even worse than today, the mining practices have left indelible reminders. This is where the molten slurry from the refining process was tipped.
Apart from the tourism generated, the relics of the Blinman mine are not good: slag heaps and the introduced and now feral peppercorn trees.
I only wish the Hunter coal mines were at this stage, but their final voids and overburden mountains will not be so small…
Staying overnight out the back of the pub in their small and basic camping ground, the only one in town, I catch up on my emails.
I swap some books at the Mine Tour office, and visit the surprisingly good Flinders art exhibition in the old town hall, and have a draught Flinders lager at the pub.
But I am waiting for the next day when I can get the key to go inside this small cottage in the main street, right beside the bakery/café.
Of the regional pug and pine construction, it is different to the one at Aroona in several aspects. The ‘pug’ is made of lime and sand, and strips of hessian have been tacked over that and whitewashed. Internal walls were adzed to give a flatter surface for the hessian.
The higher mansard ceiling would have made it a bit cooler in summer, and there are fireplaces in two rooms for the winter cold. It must still have been less than comfortable!
I keep wondering why domestic buildings were not built of stone more often, as it is so readily available. Rubblestone walls would have to be less arduous than this.
As was the safety custom, with a wood-fired stove going all day, the kitchen is a separate building. Here sheets of tin… from old kero tins?… line part of the walls.
The large stove is a beauty, with a water jacket (right) and two ovens, I wish I’d had it at the Mountain!
Rose Cottage is a restored pug and pine cottage for accommodation rental in Blinman, and it does give an idea of how a fully sealed and whitewashed home must have looked like.
But the highlight of my visit was the old, unrestored 1860s home of the Williams family.
It is a bit of a mess, as many items have been dumped in here. It seems as if they need a museum as well to house the things that I assume folk have donated but which don’t belong in the cottage.
Yet as the lady who was ‘manning’ the art exhibition explained, with gold coin donation entry, they don’t have enough volunteers, so I guess that would apply to any museum.
But given the amount of tourists wandering the short street of Blinman town looking for things to see and do, surely a museum with paid entry would be patronised?
Maybe while they are waiting for the next mine tour, to know more of Blinman than its copper history…
As I drove up the Aroona Valley in cloudy weather, this flock of emus seemed ethereal in the light, high stepping their way through the onion grass flowers.
It has been suggested to me that perhaps all this onion grass came from the Afghan cameleers who used the seeds as fillers to make the packs sit better. Perhaps. Nothing eats it, so it’s spread far and wide. I can’t deny it’s pretty, but oh dear…
I guess Heysen chose only three of these slanted mountains to be able to call his painting ‘Three Sisters’, but there are serried rows of them; at least ten here in one view.
The road follows the Brachina Geological Trail, frequently signposted, and it is mind-bendingly incomprehensible to me that the rocks I look at are over 500 million years old. About 150 million years ago, these ranges were created as the earth’s horizontal layers were pushed up into a dome, which was later eroded, exposing these side shafts of rocks laid down long ago.
‘A corridor through time…’ says one sign.
‘The bare bones of the earth; said Heysen.
I call in to see the Adynamantha rock art, unusually on low rocks here, but can’t discern much without guidance: this circle stands for ‘camp’ apparently.
There is some interesting vegetation along the nearby dry creek. This bush had one lone fruit still hanging on, damaged, but I think it’s a Quandong (Santalum acuminatum), a popular fruit for both people and animals.
I like that the Bounceback signs at most stops are from the viewpoint of the feral animal or plant being targeted. Here it is a tongue-in-cheek rabbit realtor. Very effective.
I drive partway up to the ‘Great Wall of China’, and I can see why that is so named, but the track is rough and there is a long convoy of serious 4WDs following me. I pull over and let them pass, then turn around. The different stone capping of the Wall is visible for kilometres, and much visited.
Needing fuel, I turn off to Angorichina just before Blinman, without even driving in, as it looked unpleasantly touristy, full of parked 4WDs.
As I drive, the country changes from pine woodlands to a sort of mallee. Sparsely dotted gorges loom close, but at the time I think that I will be staying here and heading on to Parachilna, so will take photos later.
After 15kms of dirt road, I reach Angorichina. There is fuel, but no phone reception.
‘Ya coulda got that at Blinman’, says the shop bloke.
But Blinman no longer has fuel. Even the underground tanks have been removed, I was later told.
So, refuelled, I retrace the 15kms of dirt road to Blinman. I really need a burst of reception to clear the backlog of emails.
This is high country, and in the distance on all sides I can see the rugged outlines of the Flinders Ranges.
And yep, Blinman is still full of 4WDs. But I have four bars on my phone, so…
The shadow of Heysen looms large here; this is the view of the Range he chose to paint as the Three Sisters, and to this point he would apparently come for a sunset beer. It is much greener today than it must usually be, but the green veil is not grass.
There is a walk that roughly follows the trail between Hayward’s shepherds’ huts, using both the dry Aroona and Yuluna creeks. The views to the range over the ever-present pines are stunning.
Zooming in, I can see large holes that might be caves and I wonder who or what has used them.
These Northern White Cypress pines grow everywhere, and at the base of most is a Fragrant Saltbush; seems like a beneficial arrangement; birds like the red berries of the saltbush and sit in the tree to eat them, plus the tree would catch some shade and water.
On the flats I see more emus, flighty as usual (that’s a pun; I know they can’t fly). I now know that the very runny splats I saw at Bunyeroo are actually emu scats, as they are here too. Emus poop as they walk, which is why their scats are often on tracks.
I have seen a few of these small trees, and I think they are Eremophilas, Emu bushes, but what sort ?
I miss my experts… and I don’t mean Dr Google. ‘Eremophila’ means ‘desert-loving’, and are usually found where emus are too; apparently emus like to eat the fruit.
The galahs and cockatoos love the woody female fruit of the pines, and although these trees don’t have flowers, when the tips of the male cones at the end of the leaves trees glow golden, ready to release their pollen, you’d think they did.
But boffins, what are these shy little plants, I want to ask?
What is the ground cover that has created these fluffy seed? Eruptions in one isolated patch?
And why are the rocks on only the one slope coloured almost blue with lichen, be they in sun or shade?
Like with the River red gums, I am now addicted to taking photos of this range each time I see it from a different spot… I promise not to share them all.
On my return from the walk I found my overnight neighbours had left, which was a relief. I had thought it admirable that the father had brought three small children camping, aged maybe 4 to 7, but I hadn’t realised he had also brought a motorbike.
This morning he started it up and gave each of the kids in turn a full-on road ride sitting in front of him. Nobody was wearing helmets…
I winced at the danger to the kids, and the loud roar of the machine (I hate the things), but I held my tongue.
I wondered what their mother would say about this, if she knew.
And last question: why are there so many bush flies here? It’s impossible to walk without a fly veil or you need a spare hand for constant flyshooing…
