Just keep slogging away

Albert Camus, Return to Tipasa (1952)

I love a sunburnt country A land of sweeping plains Of ragged mountain ranges Of droughts and flooding rains. I love her far horizons I love her jewel sea Her beauty and her terror The wide, brown land for me. Dorothea Mackellar (1904)

Both photographs taken on diagonal corners of the intersection of Burton & Palmer Street, East Sydney. The flower is a cerise Crepe Myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica).

Neither a birder nor a twitcher be ... just sit and listen

Left: Male King Parrot

Right: Female King Parrot

There is a distinction between a 'birder' and a 'twitcher' in that the latter is meant to be paranoid about ticking off their sightings, and will go to great lengths to add to their prized list.

Left: Immature Male Regent Bower Bird.

Right: Mature Male Regent Bower Bird on the wing.

I neither heard nor saw Albert's Lyrebird. I neither saw nor heard the Wompoo Fruit Dove.

It is immensely difficult to photograph birds, especially if one is new to the activity, as am I. The little buggers flit!

Left: Male Superb Fairy Wren (Blue-wren)

Right: Female Superby Fairy Wren (Jenny-wren)

There can be just a few things nicer than walking a rainforest trail with light rain falling, and a cachophany of bird-calls resounding through the canopy. There were times when I was the only person in sight, and the birds were calling all around me, and sweeping past me from one side of the track to the other - enjoying the game. The camera went away then, I sat on a rock, and just enjoyed.

Left: Eastern Yellow Robin

Right: Red-browed Finch

The sweetest and friendliest bird was the Eastern Yellow Robin.

Left: Brown Cuckoo-Dove

Right: Brush Turkey

I think my favourite bird was the Logrunner. His camouflage is just great, and he digs so far into the forest floor, to disappear from sight beneath the debris, and all I could hear was the occasional chirp so his partner could still locate him.

Left: Rufous Fan-tail

Right: Logrunner

I heard the Green Catbird caterwaul many times, but not once did I see it.

Left: Eastern Spinebill

Right: Crimson Rosella

In total, I photographed 23 different species. Many of the shots are very poor. Not shown here, but languishing on my hard drive are: White-headed Pigeon, Wonga Pigeon, Top-knot Pigeon, Yellow-throated Scrub-wren, White-browed Scrub-wren, Lewin's Honeyeater, Eastern Whipbird, Golden Whistler, Grey Fantail, Paradise Riflebird, and Bassian Thrush.

Next: Lord Howe Island at the end of February.

Fungi - crawling out from the primaeval ooze

From a simple post about fungi - you know, those mushroomy looking things - this post grew like topsy! I realised how much I did not know. Like nearly everything.


Did you now that fungi are more related to animals than to plants? Did you know that the living world was divisible into Plants, Animals, Bacteria AND Fungi? Did you know that Lichen is a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae? And, then again, that moss and mould are different from all the above.


Lamington National Park, in the MacPherson Ranges of SE Queensland has a massive variety of fungi, eg Coral, Rainbow, Bracket, Cup, Jelly, and probably more. Within each category there are specific names, like 'Dead Men's Fingers'. But I don't know many of them at all, at all.


In total, over the 8 days, I photographed 21 different types of fungi. The most were to be found along the Wishing Tree Track and the Python Rock Track. This post shows you a few of them. If you know either a botanic or a common name, I would love to hear from you.

Pst ... 'Dead Men's Fingers' is photograph 4.

The sun also rises

My rainforest escape is gone, but not forgotten. It is a delightful place and I am making plans to return again later this year. Being in a bit of a Hemingway phase, I hasten to add that just because these shots are mostly sunsets, the sun also rises.


The first two days were teaming with the tail end of the cyclonic depression that resulted in such wide-spread flooding. There is also this most delightful of mizzle that floats in over the MacPherson Ranges from the SE. The rainforest is quite deiightful drenched like this, and not in the least cold, as the clothing attests.


A couple more to show you, shot from my balcony with a glass of shiraz balancing precariously somewhere. Oh, and another thing. Remind me never to go during public holidays or even weekends during summer. The joint is jumping!

The Lamington Strangler

Early stage - This watkinsiana fig is enveloping the Booyang Tree which is still alive.

Middle stage - The strangler fig has totally enveloped the host tree, but both depend on each other.

Mature stage - The host tree has died and been totally 'used up' by the strangler fig which is a hollow structure.

The Lamington National Park has numerous examples of strangler figs at all stages.

The fig does not grow from the forest floor but from seeds deposited by birds within the forest canopy. It grows epiphytically, meaning it attaches itself to a host tree and grows both down toward the soil and up toward the light.

A 'strangler fig' is not a vine. Below is a vine winding its way around a tree to get to the light in the canopy.

The creepy crawlies of Python Rock

He reached down and with the blade of his pen-knife flipped back a circular piece of moss, which was the door to the nest of the Trap-door spider. The 'nest' can extend back into the soil for about a metre. Colin, our guide, was a font of this bushcraft, as we wound our way through the rainforest out to the Python Rock platform overlooking Moran's Gorge within the MacPherson Ranges in south-eastern Queensland. This is a big, varied country.


Within the rainforest there is a continual chatter of birds high in the canopy - Green Cat Birds, Golden Whistlers, Paradise riflebirds - heard but not seen; and a rustling of birds on the fetid forest floor - Yellow Throated Scrubwrens, Logrunners, Rufous Fantails - camouflaged to perfection.

The track is dominated by the power of the Strangler Figs as they clamber over Satinwoods, Mararas and Bloodwoods to claim their share of light and warmth. Mammals are rare during the day because of the intense heat, but this fresh digging is evidence of the noctural presence of the long-nosed Bandicoot.



Both sides of the track are festooned with crowsfeet ferns and orchids, with a variety of fungi and the massive webs of the Hammock Spider. The Millipede helps to break down the vegetation lying on the forest floor. With a little tug on the gyres to the nest opening of the arboreal FunnelWeb Spider, Colin tried to encourage her out to say hello, but to no avail.

The forest teams with life, have we but the patience and eyes to be open to it.