The Extraordinary

Sunrise 26th — a meditation

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A sliver of a moon was still hanging high in the sky over Oxley Beach at Port Macquarie as people drifted to the grassy sward above the motionless Aboriginal flag.  They’d risen early to be here at 5.45 on 26th January 2025, and after the Voice disappointment, there were hundreds here to show support for our Indigenous Australians.

There were old people like me, young families, the in-betweens, of all colours – and lots of dogs!

With a very inadequately amplified microphone, the Birpai’s Aunty Rhonda spoke of community and connection, with no hint of anger or frustration, no harangue – as would have been warranted. Impressive, an example to us all.

We knew we were there to honour and pay respect to the First Peoples of this country, so intimately connected to its land, sky and waterways.

She invited us all to consider where we are as a nation and how we build a society free from violence, racism and discrimination.  And for a long time the gathered people did seem to do this, as they sat in silence, an unusual stillness for an Australian ‘audience’, when even the children were quiet. 

The solemnity, the significance of this day as evinced here, was palpable.

While we sat, the sun peeped over the horizon, with the clouds lifting just a little to assure us that this amazing daily event was about to occur. We had been encouraged to share in this wonder of Nature, in this beautiful place.

The silence, the stillness, the calm focus, the eternal waves rolling on to the beach, the sunrise — it felt like a meditation. And it felt like hope.

My favourite part of this annual ‘ceremony’ is when Aunty Rhonda invites everyone to come and connect with the water, when she speaks of the water as linking peoples all over the world.

First the children run down to dip their toes in the sea’s edge, then slowly most people do, forming a physical and symbolic line of solidarity, of humans and nature, of First Peoples and latecomers.

I thank the Birpai for sharing with us such a peaceful way to get past the heat and anger, the pomp and misplaced ’nationalism’ often associated with 26th January.

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. 

Fantasy forest

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Life is a struggle in the rainforest, and elaborate means are used to reach the light and to survive.

This huge Curtain Fig on the Atherton Tableland is famous, but not unique.

Once the fig had strangled the host tree, it fell over on to another tree, and the vertical roots descended to feed it, forming a curtain.

On another walk, this one showed the process of development of those curtains.

But figs are not orderly in their strangling.

Or gentle. This could look like an embrace but it has a relentlessness about it that seems cruel. Anthropomorphic, I know.

Where do root and trunk differentiate?  Incredible colours and shapes kept catching my eye in this fantasy world.

I have no idea what is going on in this miniature strangling scenario, but it seems not of this world. And is it plant or creature or something in between?

Rainforest fungi

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In Nature nothing is wasted. Fallen and dead trees are habitat for fabulous fungi, and the damp conditions in these forests encourage them en masse.

Some were solid and strange, unknown to me… unless someone had been sneaking about with a can of whitewash.

Others were like flowers, fringed and delicate fans.

Amidst the profusion of mossy green, orange and white stood out.

Less obvious, but more unusual, were these black ones, looking more like moths which, having briefly alighted on this log, were choosing to stay and transform into the most fanciful shapes.

How beautiful is this cascade of snowy flakes?

Whether weird or wonderful, abundance was the common theme in these tropical forests. 

I do love moss and lichen, but fungi have my heart too.

Tropical oddities

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Lake Tinaroo being man-made, there ought not to be crocodiles there, but freshwater crocodiles are in there, although not often seen.

Lake Eacham is a crater lake and it does have one freshwater croc, albeit again seldom seen.

So it was a treat to have a trail runner point out this one basking on a log near shore.

Is it yawning or smiling?

The flora discovery was that some tropical Queensland trees grow flowers out of their bark, a behaviour called ‘cauliflory’.

The wonderful resource of the Queensland Plants Identification Facebook page  revealed this for me.

Firstly this one, abundant to the point of  showiness, is Yellow Mahogany (Epicharis parasitica). 

And then on the Bumpy Satinash (Syzgium cormiflorum) was this one, spotted on several walks. These only flower every twp to five years so we were lucky. The fruits that would follow are often called ‘White Apple’.

We later saw other trees, on other rainforest walks, where the flowers were more fully open, fluffily fringed like gumnut blossoms.

In the garden of Inge’s Tinaroo home we spotted this weird green-fruited tree and discovered it is a Hairy Fig (Ficus hispida).

The fruits of these three tropical trees are naturally loved by cassowaries.

Growing on the bark makes the fruit accessible to more than high flying birds, or to opportunistic ground foragers once the fruit falls.

This sci-fi apparition is a cycad, I learn. Our Facebook boffins say it is a female Cycas ophiolitica, but out of its usual range.

As it is in Inge’s garden, it was likely planted, and she has pruned the dead leaves, so the crown we see is fresh growth, which developed very fast.

These cycads are descended from the first seed-bearing plants, around 200 million years ago, and although they look like palms or ferns, they are actually related to pines, as cone-bearing.

Tropical Queensland has opened my mind to many flora possibilities that I’d once have dismissed as fanciful.

But there were many simply wonderful plants in those forests, as well as weird ones. Next post…

Remembering Harry

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‘Harry’s Lookout’ was a simple clearing,  a place for hang gliders to launch from and gawkers like me and my family to embrace the view of ‘our’ little beach, Shelly Beach.

But that was decades ago. Harry is long gone and I know his work on the Lookout and his rough steps down to the beach have been ‘updated’.

Now I am so close I revisit that Lookout and vow to walk down Harry’s steps to the beach once more.

The first surprise is the Lookout area itself. Very arty, sort of Polynesian, no cobbled-together scraps as it was in Harry’s day.

The spot is still magnificent.

There is a small but quite superb birthday celebration happening  here.

I ask if there is any info up here about Harry and one young woman says, ‘I didn’t even know Harry was a real person’.

I assure them he was, still alive when my parents used to live not far away.

I head down the steps that Harry originally made. Back then they were in many colours, of whatever scraps of pipe or timber Harry could find. I recall lots of blue and yellow, and hand rails. No doubt they were kitschy and probably unsafe.

Now they are all uniform treated timber… and no handrails.

They are still best taken downhill rather than up.

Harry’s path takes you through some great rainforest and magically twisted tree trunks.

When I reach the beach, it is smaller than I recall, and of course Harry’s caravan is long gone. But I am so pleased to see that down here at least he is remembered.

I do recall Harry and his wife as likely the most sun-damaged people I have ever seen. I know Council later tried to evict them but public support for one of our last true eccentrics saved them.

Now there are several memorials to him. One is a timber statue, complete with mayoral medallion.

Harry’s van was beyond the most visited part, where the cars park and the brush turkeys pushily patrol the picnic tables.

It’s busy even today, a windy winter Sunday.

There is a wonderfully varied and detailed testimony to Harry’s life set in a helix in the sand. 

I am happy he is immortalised here, but regret that there is no such information up the top. Or did I miss it?

That lookout and those steps were a huge labour of love: rough and ready and free, un-OHS, un-arty, unauthorised, but so personal and indicative of a time now past.

Vale Harry.

Bamboozling bird behaviour

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Given the chaotic state of the world, it should not have surprised me to hear and see this… but it did.

A weird and unchanging sort of scream made me look out to see a kookaburra holding down another kookaburra, seemingly with its beak. I couldn’t tell if there were two or three birds involved.

It was undoubtedly aggressive, I thought; but then I remembered that in a lot of animal mating behaviour looks more aggressive than loving.

This went on for about five minutes, but when the top bird released its grip, they both flew off, leaving me baffled.

Can anyone shed light on such an event?

I don’t know where these local Sacred Ibis nest, but this one seemed to be bearing a stick for the building of such a nest as it flew between the trees. It landed on one of the bird baths, which are all way too small for it. But how would it drink with a stick in its beak?

The bird seemed to consider this problem for a time, then it let the stick drop, bent its long neck and laid its too-long beak sideways in the water. Is that how it usually drank?!

 I felt guilty that I hadn’t provided a big enough bird bath…

The other puzzle has been this little brown bird that often scuttles across my ‘backyard’, hiding in lantana-bush nearby, then dashing across the grass.

I am told it is a Buff Banded Rail, and sometimes I see two of them.

I am delighted to know what my shy scurrier is at last.

Amazing Bald Rock

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Bald Rock National Park is near Tenterfield and this mightiest of the many mighty granite domes in our tablelands region is truly impressive. In fact, it is the largest granite dome in the southern hemisphere.

For once I was able to screw up my courage and brave the slanted walk across the top surfaces, leaning uphill and trying hard to ignore the downwards pull I always feel.  White dots tell you where is safe to walk, but they don’t know my imagination…

Yes, the view is 360 degrees, but for me more fascinating is that these huge boulders are ranged in a neat row on top — by whom and how?

Or that in sheltered cracks and dips, surprising plants manage to grow up here.

Like these aromatic shrubs of Prostanthera petraea, White-flowering Mint Bush, as delicate in appearance as any pampered garden plant; only found in such granite pockets in this region.

I admit I took the easier option of getting to the Rock, taking the Bungoona Walk which was gentle and extremely varied. While wallowing in the scent of masses of wattles, I loved the dominance of purple Hardenbergia, climbing shrubs and sticks or rambling over the ground.

Clumps of Flag, from pale lilac to deep purple, appeared now and then. Shouldn’t our national colours be purple and gold instead of green and gold?

Another special regional plant I spotted on the way was the perennial Coronidium boormanii.

Of course the track eventually had to encounter these Granite Titans, tossed like marbles to balance at the foot of Bald Rock itself.

I not only fear and avoid heights, but caves and looming overhead rocks, and yet the track leads you through many tight spaces like this.

I know they have poised like these for eons, but still I duck and scurry through, hoping they do not choose to move at last… not right now.

I found Bald Rock National Park one of the most interesting for me. The campground was good, apart from the sad sight of a very ill quoll, probably blind and perhaps dying, (once rescued, likely from a dog attack, and released here) who came nosing around.

Ancient engineering marvel

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This enormous 274m long stone structure appears in the landscape as if from nowhere. Cars are now held back from its proximity, so you walk –along with many others – and suddenly there it is: the Pont du Gard, the tallest and best preserved of all Roman aqueducts.

Built in the 1st century AD to carry water 50 kilometres to Nîmes from springs at nearby Uzès, it was designed to have an average fall of 7mm per 100 metres, and it worked! The top level was a stone-lidded conduit, smooth inside, which required much maintenance to keep clear of carbonates and vegetation over the six centuries of its use.

The actual 49-metre high structure is of rough limestone, no mortar. You can see the large projecting stones that supported the scaffolding as it was built. The lower level’s road bridge was added much later; water was the reason for this mighty undertaking.

I had mistakenly thought it was built to bridge the River Gardon, but no, getting water to Nîmes was its main purpose. The six arches of the lower level are six metres thick to cope with that river’s flood. The history of the Pont is chequered, but Napoleon figures large in taking on its restoration.

The river is treated as a swimming and boating place by many and as cars can access each side of the river, people can walk to its sandy beaches.

On the far side is a large park and promenade, with cafés and seating and playground, and walking access to the beaches. It seemed a very popular place for families.

Back on the main tourist access side, I briefly visited the Memories of the Garrigue park, where the original ‘garrigue’ vegetation and the typical early land use, of grain and vines, as well as making charcoal, was commemorated.

Garrigue vegetation is Mediterranean, likened to our mallee, as its trees are low growing. It can have dense thickets of kermes oak, stunted holly and holm oaks, with lavender, sage, rosemary, wild thyme and artemisia common.

It reminded me of Bimblebox, although many trees there are taller, in its dry grey-green nature, compared to the lush chestnut, oak, lime and plane tree forests I had become used to in Italy.

Many famous people visited this Roman marvel, and many have written of it in awe. UNESCO considers it a ‘testimony to human creative genius’… as do I. The architectural and engineering skills that devised it are astonishing; once more I am struck that such a civilisation was wiped out, and really by greed, for conquering more and more. Greed remains; will we?

Weird and wonderful

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Having always driven past the Hunter Botanic Gardens at Raymond Terrace, always with the fleeting thought of ‘I must go there’… I finally did.

It holds many green wonders of forests and palms but I found the noise of the adjacent highway traffic too distracting to enjoy the bush.

I did marvel at the amazing sight of the purples and oranges and burgundies of the shedding bark of the Angophora costata trunks. This one was surrounded by the spent flower spears of Bottlebrush Grass plants, Xanthorrhoea macronema, as if on guard.

A friend had advised that the Cacti Garden was her favourite; ‘Oh, I don’t like cacti’, I’d said dismissively.

But the large Cacti Garden here was actually amazing! I was so ignorant of the diversity.

Look at these fat green roses, as cupped as any David Austin bloom…

These strange cannon balls were ribbed with prickles and sneakily expanding, yet some incongruously bore a soft yellow flower on top.

These helmeted and shielded warriors were ready for battle, on the alert and checking in all directions.

Yet this sort of vertical cacti looked gently harmless, furry towers, unlike their accompanying army of fierce little green friends.

And I found this the weirdest of all, a tall sculpture of beseeching groups of clasped hands.

I will never dismiss cacti again… and I am now unsure if they really are plants. Their world is weird indeed, but it is also wonderful.

Bizarre birds

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In Central Queensland, emus are not an uncommon sight. But no matter how many I see, or how often, they always strike me as most bizarre.

Stately, yes. Self-contained, yes. And bizarre.

I’d stopped as this one high-stepped it across the road, not looking at me or my large white van.

Then it turned and unhurriedly retraced its steps back across the road, tail feather bustle bouncing, chest feathers extension flopping like a sporran, head on that gawky long neck rigidly ignoring me.

Bizarre!

Back on the coast, amongst rainforest instead of Desert Uplands, the camp had no emus, but plenty of Brush Turkeys strutting about.

Yet this one kept lying on its side as if shot down, one wing up, breast feathers exposed. It did it in a few places, and after each would get up and wander off to repeat the performance. Playing dead? Asking to have its tummy rubbed? Or just letting the sun warm that chest?

In between those two places I passed this tree in a bare paddock, full of galahs decorating it like coconut ice queens.

Not bizarre, but very pretty.

Cranky Rocks

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I have now driven almost 1500 km over three days, up to Bimblebox Nature Refuge near Alpha in Queensland. I stopped the first night near Warialda at a private property, which features an impressive jumble of volcanic rocks accessible from the Cranky Rocks camping area.

I set out to cross the suspension bridge and climb the easy path up to see them… and hopefully catch the sunrise. Too early, as you see.

The rocks were docile at this early hour, heaped large and small by the path.

Huge ones were balanced fantastically on smaller rocks. I hoped no crankiness would start them rocking as I passed.

From the lookout, it was clear how major had been the tossing upwards and landing all higgledy-piggledy of so many and varied granite boulders.

Far below, Reedy Creek lay still, in wait for the next falling rock pile to crash and splash.

The story is that the rocks get their name from a Chinaman who apparently got cranky and killed a local woman. He evaded capture by leaping to his death from the highest rocks.