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.
We have very few deciduous native trees, so here in the warm temperate areas we mainly see this seasonal colour show in gardens. As I was recently staying in a house with a lovely old one, I was taken with theirs.
On the tree or off, those autumn leaves are spectacular, as what I think is a persimmon tree shows.
Orange or yellow, they are the falling reminders of summer, be they on or off the tree.
Fruitful or decorative, or both, the variety of colour added to the botanical marvels amongst all the greenery.
Not fallen from trees, but popped up from underground, these small fungi were scattered through the grass like golden-brown coins.
It was a privilege to witness some of Nature’s wardrobe change as it made way for the new green leaves of spring.
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.
Port Macquarie has many large and handsome native fig trees, which I think are Port Jackson or Rusty figs (Ficus rubiginosa).
Currently they are laden with fruit, which will turn red when they ripen. Whilst edible by humans, they are not deemed very palatable, but are eaten by flying foxes and many native birds.
In flower right now on this coastal walking strip is another tree, with such pretty pink flowers and deeper pink buds that I wondered if it was indeed native. There are several of them, but growing near such a populous area I could suspect garden-escapees…
I was surprised at the size of the tree on which it blooms, and then spotted an even larger tree covered in the same flowers.
But I was right to be suspicious: this is actually Norfolk Island Hibiscus (Lagunaria patersonia), a native of Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands.
It is also called Itchy Bomb tree, as it can irritate airways and skin, and has proven an invasive weed in mangrove forests. It certainly does well here, and by the size of these trees, has done so for a long time.
The native Swamp or Spider Lilies (Crinum pedunculata) are showy enough to also be garden plants, but they do belong here.
And this native one I know is often used in landscaping: the Blue Flax Lily (Dianella revolutum), here showing its purply-blue berries that follow the bright blue flowers.
All this late Spring lavishness within minutes walking from busy streets… amazing!
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.
Being reintroduced as part of the Bounceback program, these Yellow-footed rock wallabies are perfectly at home here in Brachina Gorge, where there are not only lots of rocks, but small caves, which is how I spotted this one. They were prized for their fur by early settlers, which is why they became so rare.
Driving through Brachina Gorge, mostly beside a dry creekbed, there are plenty of showstopping rock formations; they certainly stopped me, often.
Note the area of oddly pale and rounded boulders at the foot of the wave cliff.
I needed a guide constantly at my side to answer my questions… how, why, when?
At one point there was a large scree of loose stones, and beside it the rock walls were noted as habitat for the very wallaby species I was so fortunate to have seen.
Look at the huge log pile against the gum to the right; this whole gully floor must be a rushing river after good rain.
Most of the Flinders gorges I have now seen hold very few caves, so the abundance of them here surprised me.
Seeing the exposed roots of the bordering gums, I can imagine such a gully river even better.
Not that I want to see one, as my AWD van might not cope, and there are daily gatherings of clouds, which, as I’m not local, I can’t interpret.
They tend to dissipate and a cold breeze dominates daily, which does not drop at night, but gusts fitfully and often strongly, so I keep waking up and wondering if I shoudl pull down the roof.
I do worry about rain as there are many dips and fords for the many currently dry creeks.
From Wilpena Pound to Bunyeroo Gorge the drive is through so many White Cypress (Callitris glaucophylla) trees that you’d think they were plantations had they been in lines. Decoratively shaped and clearly hardy, growing on the stoniest ground, these trees were very useful to the Adynamantha people, the wood for woomeras and spears, the gum and resin for adhesives and medicinal purposes.
But by this photo I felt I was heading into the real Flinders Ranges, with such rugged beauty lying in wait.
Native daisies abounded: the white ones are Showy daisy-bush (Olearia pimelioides ssp. pimelioides) and the yellow are Showy Groundsel or Camel weed (Senecio magnificus).
Probably the most common flowering plant everywhere I have been in these arid places has been the Hop bush, the Dodonaea. I assume that the greenish-yellow ones will mature to pink, the Lobed-leaved Hop-bush (Dodonaea lobulata). But here for the first time I saw a few bushes with much darker red flowers. I have now been able to check that the leaves are the same, so they are not a different species. But why some bushes nearby flower earlier, so have already matured to a darker red, I do not know.
These small bushes were common, and I think they are Silver Mulla-mulla (Ptilotus obovatus). Incredible what plants can survive in these harsh stony ’soils’.
For this Bunyeroo Gorge has a whole walk dedicated to its extraodinarily varied geology; I did half of it, which is how I can identify the many odd and smoothly rounded slopes of ultra-fine stones near where I am camped. It is ‘Bunyeroo Formation’, with cypress trees sometimes growing out of it and sometimes with larger stones scattered over it.
The Bunyeroo Gorge walk itself follows a mostly dry and of course stony creek bed, with the gorge rising beside it, well signposted for the different formations… and often beyond my ability to discern the object of the sign.
These ranges must be a geologist’s dream, and I feel guilty for not appreciating enough the ancient history laid down here in the layers.
Instead it is these mighty River red gums (Eucalyptus camaldulensis).that catch my eye time and time again; I could have done a whole post on their amazing trunks. I have to force myself to stop taking photos of their many varied shapes and markings, let alone their incredible ways of coping, being such grand survivors of both flood and fire… another sort of ancient history.
Speaking of history, at my campground there was one other group, a doctor and his family from Iraq, but originally from Palestine. What must they feel as their homeland is destroyed and the world does not stop it?! Unimaginable…
They had hoped to see some Aboriginal rock art here, but I explained it is now more protected… except in places where industries like Woodside’s gas projects still take priority. They said that similarly in the Middle East, much history has been destroyed.
But as the sun came up, we moved onto the more immediate topic of our tiny and annoyingly clingy bush flies, suddenly appeared. What are they after on our faces and where do they go at night? I wished I knew more…
I mistakenly had in my mind that Wilpena Pound was THE Flinders Ranges destination. In reality, it is most atypical, in many ways. The only campground within the Pound is extra expensive, being a fairly posh Discovery Park. It is run with the traditional owners, the Adnyamathanha, and their signage with their relevant stories along the walks was fascinating.
It is well done, with rammed earth amenities and Visitors Centre, a shop, fuel, restaurant, variety of accommodation, and heaps of shelters and facilities, with hot showers and flushing loos. As you can see, these are well spaced and the area is lush with trees.
Having got over my astonishment at visitor numbers and facilities at Cradle Lake In Tasmania, it was not such a shock.
There is a large area for powered sites but also plenty of room for solar-powered campers like me… unlike at Dove Lake in Tassie.
You do get a glimpse of the Ranges as you drive into the Pound, but if that was your only destination in the Ikara/Flinders Ranges, you’d be very misled. Once in the Pound itself, you are cocooned.
I’d say there would have been a quite a lot of people visiting only there, having whiizzed up from Hawker, plugging in their caravans, buying souvenirs, doing the gentle walks along the dirt road by the side of the creek, shaded by many River Red Gums and cypress trees, or even getting the shuttle bus for part of the way.
While there were few spots along the creek still holding water, evidence of the piled up logs showed its past power. There was even a small lagoon at one spot.
But I soon left the easy road and went up higher on the Boom and Bust track… not intentionally, as they’d changed the name, but it added an hour and a half to my walk, and more steep parts than my knees wanted. However it was interesting to see the drier country plants flourishing away from the creek.
The ’Pound’ itself is a creek-centred and thus treed gully, naturally enclosed by the ridges, widening out at the Hills Homestead end into the site of its early wheat-growing period.
There are other higher and steeper walks for the experienced or young to choose, but I was trying to be realistic.
At the old Homestead (rebuilt, closed up) I climbed only half of the way up to the Wangarra Lookout, to the first lookout. I was blessing my trusty walking stick, but by this stage my feet hurt, my knees were whingeing, and I was not lifting my feet enough, so I knew I was tired, and thus liable to trip.
I contemplated getting the shuttle bus back but the waiting driver said you had to have paid in advance.
He passed me twice on his runs as I was slowly trudging the three kilometres back … mean!
And just as I was reflecting that thankfully I’d seen no feral goats, as if on cue, right behind the sign about them, there they were! But the sign was rejoicing really, as were others I saw praising the Bounceback program, where the deliberate return of native species was making life harder for the invaders. Here it was the Yellow-footed Rock Wallabies, combined with culling programs.
As there was phone reception here, I could hotspot, so I spent a day catching up with this blog … and resting those overstretched ageing body parts.
I was also trying to identify strange plants; this slender, graceful one was an isolated plant near my campsite, and I think it’s a Weeping Pittosporum (Pittosporum angustifolium).
On my higher walks this narrow-leaved beauty caught my eye; it seems to be the Silver Cassia (Senna artemisioides), which I had spotted in a few other places.
But there were other eye-catching white-flowering ones that I cannot find.
I did buy the liltle ID booklets at Wilpena Pound, and I had searched unsuccessfully for a similar South Australian native plant boffin group as I have in NSW. I need them…!
The staff at Wilpena that I spoke to were not National Park rangers and could not help with plant IDs.
As i drove out, the green paddocks and rolling hills could have been anywhere… like the Hunter Valley before it was disembowelled for coal… except for the occasional emus unhurriedly strolling by. Such strange birds…!
I am heading for Bunyeroo Gorge and a much less posh campground, with no reception and no flushing loos. More my kind of place…
I had been wanting to try the Queens Lake Fire Trail, but as it is near North Haven, it’s a fair way off.
However, this day, heading that way, I thought I might have time to finally take that walk.
Luckily I brought the gumboots, as most of this walk was a wade.
With the amber water against the white sand, it was attractive, but slow going as the water got deeper. I was never sure that my gumboots would be taller than the water as I stepped in.
I kept wading for some time, thinking that the trail must lead me to Queens Lake. Maybe it does, eventually, but wading is wearying, and after about 45 minutes, I turned back.
Not that the wade was wasted, as Spring has sprung here, with a dainty but prolific native show, and not of wattles, as I’d expected.
There were masses of pink boronias, and a few trigger plants for a start.
Many others, mainly white and yellow, waved from the dry background.
There were lots of banksia trees, and some, like this one, were so thick of trunk and gnarled of bark that I think it has seen many a wet and dry season here.
I can’t imagine this fire trail will be dry soon… and I hope it isn’t needed.
The Camden Haven River is fringed with magnificent mangrove forests that bridge the strip between the tidal waterway, with its many oyster beds, and the land.
Some of the mangrove trees are larger than I knew they grew. This one seemed to have a hollow, low down, perhaps where a branch had broken off. Then a swift movement made me grab the phone… no real camera with me.
A bird had flown up and into that hole. It reappeared and sat on top of the entry. Zooming in… a kingfisher?
The park that runs beside the river is full of sculptures, trees that have formed their own shapes, like these two that have grown together to become one and then branched to three to reach the sky.
Some of the figs are mighty, spreading and shady, with swirling, sinuous branches.
Their intricate complications begin at their toes.
In a different sort of Park, Sea Acres at Port Macquarie, I saw a different sort of bird, an owl, Ninox, carved from wood into a seat with embracing wings.
It has the teacher’s spot, facing a wider education space along the walkway, with carved timber entry posts.
But Port Macquarie is identified not by its remnant coastal rainforest, but by its many tall pine trees, planted long ago, dominating the skyline. As I walk under them, I look down, and find their trimmed roots forming different sculptures yet again.
Truly, Nature makes Art everywhere, if we but look…
Just up the road from me is Sea Acres Rainforest Centre, which has a boardwalk through it, and is a big tourist attraction, with a semi-outdoor café and a rather good souvenir shop.
To my shame I haven’t been in there for years, except for the café.
Yet despite the tourists, and the briskly walking lappers, the walk is a coastal rainforest delight.
The Reserve has masses of Australia’s most common palm, the Cabbage Tree Palm (Livistonia australis), which survives all but the worst fires. Growing up to 30m, they are mostly tall here, but these young ones show the fanned spiny leaves. Those leaves were woven into the once-popular Cabbage Tree hats, and the palm hearts were eaten; the cream flowers are said to resemble cabbages.
The other palm here is the Bangalow Palm (Archontophoenix cunninghamiana), tall and slender, growing to about 20m. You’d notice them more when the bright red bunches of fruits are hanging up there; birds love these.
Amongst the palms, there were some species new to me, like the Giant Water Gums (Szygium francisii), their distinctive trunks usually buttressed.
As you saw in the first photo, there are plenty of trees being enveloped by Strangling Figs, at all stages. The Reserve has four species of figs that can be stranglers; they are hemi-epiphytes, and although they do eventually kill, ‘strangle’, the host tree as they use it to climb to the light, they are not parasites. This one seemed to be clasping the host to help it get higher, not strangling it.
On the same host tree is a Bird’s Nest Fern (Asplenium australasicum), an epiphyte, which is just the botanical name for a plant that grows on another plant.
Epiphytes too are these Elkhorns (Platycerium bifurcatum), with Ribbon Ferns (Ophioglossum pendulum) growing from it, hanging below.
This unusual ‘collar’ held several baby epiphytes. Cute, eh?
No rainforest post would be complete without some vines, from mammoth and muscular (and a bit scary) to dainty and looping.
While there is more than one post’s worth to show and tell in Sea Acres, I was entranced by this perfectly posed vine, just starting to make its way up.
So entranced that I bought an annual pass to be able to wander through at leisure, in different seasons.
Plots Fire Trail was my last to investigate – a definite wade rather than a walk. It was the wettest yet, but here the banksias were perhaps the most magnificent and plentiful.
I have learnt that there are hundreds of different banksias, especially in Western Australia, often extremely restricted in their choice of habitat.
I hazard a guess that the millions of shrubs here are Heath Banksias, ericifolia, feathery-leaved, bright red-tipped, overwhelmingly prolific in the gift of their beauty.
Today for the first time I saw two samples of a different Banksia species, serrata, I think. This whole plain is regenerating after fires so perhaps this species does not take so well to fire.
The last generation stands much taller, as bare dead trunks, but the regrowth at their feet is vigorous.
And colourful, bright and cheery with many warm tones, above the black mud and stagnant water I am slogging through.
I can hear lots of frogs but of course I see none. The watery trail is, however, full of what I think are frogspawn, small islands of eggs that look like bubbles.
The young paperbarks keep catching my eye, with velvety new leaves masquerading as soft pink flowers.
My next walk I hope will not be such a wade, but I have learnt a lot about these swampy areas from the fire trails that I hope will not be needed for a long time, as so much energy has gone into the spectacular regrowth.
