As I walk through my mountain forests I often come across impressive examples of the past power of geological events. I also often see things that I can’t explain.
This mighty rock rests upright, halfway up the sides of one of my spring gullies. It is too imperious to be ‘decorated’ with moss as lesser rocks are, mainly restricting it to its feet.
But how did that small separate rock get up there on its top? And stay there?
It has sat there, like a wren on an elephant’s head, for the thirty years I’ve been here.
Early in March I went to the Coolah Tops National Park for the first time. Averaging 1100 metres, they offer what would be stunning views over the Liverpool and Breeza Plains—if the Hunter coalmines’ dust haze hadn’t got that far. But I’d actually come for the Coolah Tops Jazz Festival.
Before the music began I did note that each ridge top was of loose basalt rocks, that screes on mountainsides were common, and that certain freestanding rocks were glaring rather balefully at the tourists snapping them.