Wildflower Wanderings

We haven't brought maps. We're just going for a wander up the Marcus track to see the spring wildflowers, maybe find our way to the lake, but we're here for the wildflowers.
We say g'day to the bush. It's always polite to knock on the door, send out a friendly greeting.



Marcus track, wallum heath, Noosa National Park. Image: Rosalie Hall 

                               

We're walking a wallum heath track, nicely mown for wildflower walking season, along the edge of the swamp that opens wide to our right, wallum woodland to our left. Everything growing thick and dense, matted together.
The wildflowers hide amongst the chaos and peep out from the borders of the mown track.



Milkmaids (burchardia umbellata). Image: Rosalie Hall

Milkmaids and vanilla lilies sprinkle pink and white through native grasses and reeds, little jewels in the morning sunlight, encrusted with irridescent black beetles.
Do the vanilla lilies really smell like vanilla? With my nose in the dainty bunch of purple pods I find that yes, they're softly vanilla.

Wildflower walking in the wallum is like a treasure hunt. You hunt, you find treasure.

                                                    Epacris heath flowers. Image: Rosalie Hall

Here some purple patersonia, there some white heath bells of epacris dancing along their slender stalks.

                                               Boronia falcifolia.                Image: Rosalie Hall

And what is this? Bright, bright pink, four petals, fine leaves. Definitely boronia.

                                                 Sprengelia.    Image: Ilyhana Kate Kennedy

And here, look! Gorgeous tiny russet gold beetles nosing into the white cups of sprengelia petals. Oh. Gone before we can catch them with the camera.

"Can you hear that?" my walking buddy Rose, has picked up a sound far off in the swamp. What is that?
We're listening.
Whoomp whoomp whoomp whoomp
Thrummming, drumming now.
"Coucal pheasant?" I say, and I can feel my eyes are probably wide like a child.
"Calling for it's mate", replies Rose, big eyes too and we're whispering, though of course it's so far away it can't hear us.
A magic moment.

Eriostemon wax flower?? Image: Ilyhana Kate Kennedy

 



Now there's a different flower, just one little bush. Looks like eriostemon but I'm not sure. One for the books when we get home. Or google.

So little shade on the track and the sun is already biting into our skin. It's much hotter than we expected for so early in the day. Winter has broken open and the cold escaped.
Well, maybe we won't stay out in the sun too long.

                                          Yellow pea flowers??      Image:Ilyhana Kate Kennedy

                                        More yellow pea flowers?? Image: Ilyhana Kate Kennedy

                              Chaffy swamp pea (pultenaea paleacea). Image: Ilyhana Kate Kennedy

 

Colour calls down the track. Pure yellows and burnt oranges of pea flowers, some I can name, some not. The chaffy swamp pea has some of those gorgeous tiny gold beetles.

 

                                          Tiny purple flowers??     Image: Ilyhana Kate Kennedy 

 

Oh my goodness we're stepping on flowers on the track!

Tiny, so tiny! I've no idea what they are. At first I think they come from the bunches of strappy leaves, then realise that the leaves belong to patersonia. These little darlings pop straight out of the ground with no leaves at all. They fly a tiny purple flag on a fine red stalk.

We see now that they are sprinkled here and there along the bare ground of the vehicle tracks. So small we nearly missed them.

Treasures. Little gems.

 

                                          Villarsia exaltata.                           Image: Rosalie Hall

 

                                               Villarsia exaltata. Image: Ilyhana Kate Kennedy

 

And then atop tall stalks, rising a metre high out of glowing and juicy oval leaves, shimmer the fringes of pure yellow villarsia marsh flowers. A water plant. Rose knows this one. I don't recall seeing it before.... I love discovering plants I don't know.

 

Haaahhh! Big sigh. Such a wonderland. And we are such flowerheads...in our element.

 

So. We've come to the end of the mown track and reached a T intersection and the woodland. It's shady here. We could walk on.

We don't remember which way to go. And like I said, no maps.

Left or right? No signs.

We go left.

We're in dry forest with loose sandy floor. Spirit of the bush is very quiet in here.

 

                                          Tiny bells all over??      Image: Ilyhana Kate Kennedy

 

A waft of soft perfume lifts from bushes snowy with tiny white bells. I don't know this one either. It reminds me of smokebush in the mountains of Victoria, but smokebush has daisy flowers.

 

                                          Ancient banksia, split and fallen.    Image: Rosalie Hall

 

                                         Mini eco-system in ancient banksia. Image: Rosalie Hall

 

There are ancient banksias here, with huge trunks. Some have split right open from the sheer weight carried for decades. One has a whole mini eco-system complete with wildflowers growing in a hollow high-up.

 

A spangled drongo flashes velvet black and metallic blue as it arcs with burrrrinnng wings in and out of the track ahead of us.

 

                                          Trapeze spiderweb.                       Image: Rosalie Hall

 

Amongst the twiggy branches, trapeze spiders have hung their gossamer cones.

 

                                         Rufous fantail                                  Image: Rosalie Hall

 

Rufous fantail is flitting and flirting, ever the walker's companion.

We've come some distance now. Will we keep going?

We might find the lake.

Where's the sun? We're going south. Hmmm.

The lake should be west. Who knows?

 

We stop and rest. Rose has apples. Great.

 

OK just a bit further, see what's round the next corner. We cross a trickling stream of clear tea-brown.

 

                                                                     Image: Ilyhana Kate Kennedy

 

At some mutually decided point of tired legs and no lake, we turn back.

Then from out of nowhere, a guy on a bike comes wheeling past us like something is after him. Did you find the lake? No, he calls back and is gone. Friendly type.

 

No more dawdling, purpose walking now, on the return.

 

Suddenly my radar picks up something to our right, about 15 to 20 metres away. Something.

We're very still, listening. Hmmm.

And then, here it comes. Footsteps on the forest floor, crackling the leaf litter. Coming closer. Coming straight toward us.

Maybe a scrub turkey, I think.

But no, here it comes.

 

                                          Monitor lizard.                                Image: Rosalie Hall

 

A metre of monitor lizard waddles onto the track, sleek and fat-bellied, charcoal grey with yellow spots.

Big enough. Cool.

It's just a few metres in front of us. We're standing still 'cause we want to watch, but please don't mistake us for trees.
Rose lifts the camera. Monitor lizard catches the movement, realises we are not trees, scrabbles madly for the nearest upright that is. Up it goes.
OK. Now for the photo session.

                                                    Monitor lizard.          Image: Rosalie Hall

                                                    Monitor lizard.           Image: Rosalie Hall


We're back in the open swampland on the mown track. There's a cooling breeze. We chat to a couple who emerge from that right hand turn we didn't make, and yes they found the lake.
Oh well, next time.

Rose finds some little red sundews sparkling an invitation to flying edibles. Last shots for the day.

                                         Sundews.                                       Image: Rosalie Hall

A cuppa and cake sounds good now so we motor on down to Baked Poetry Cafe and find a table amid the throng.
Back home we'll google to ID the flowers and Google Earth to find out where we've been. Maybe we'll take a map next time eh! But then if we'd gone right, we wouldn't have seen monitor lizard.

There's a full program of wildflower walks on the Sunshine Coast this week. You do need to book a place as the walks are very popular. Here's a link for info http://www.sunshinecoast.qld.gov.au/sitePage.cfm?code=wildflower

Do you know the names of the flowers in the pics above that we were not able to ID ? Let's know in the comments.
Here's a good site for info http://www.noosanativeplants.com.au/articles/flowering-now/

If you'd like to walk the track that we took in this blog, start at the little park at Hawthorn Grove, Marcus Beach UBD K20 map 19. The track on the UBD map is not correct. However you can see the wildflowers by walking down the mown track that leads off from the park. If you want to go beyond the T intersection, best take a map of the tracks. Wear closed-in shoes, sun protection, take water.

WE'RE HEARING THAT YOU LOVE THIS BLOG. HOW WONDERFUL. WE LOVE SHARING OUR WALKS WITH YOU.
PLEASE ADD YOUR EMAIL IN THE RIGHT SIDEBAR OR FOLLOW BY RSS TO RECEIVE YOUR NEXT BLOG NOTICE.

Wandering the High Dunes

Fabulous Day. Warm in winter sunshine. Everything glowing.
Out of the traffic, out of the car and into the trees.
So quiet in here.
Shady woodland, trees standing tall. A sense of presence, of being observed. Everything alive.
We greet the forest, our old friend opening a welcoming door, showing us in.

                                                                                        image: Ilyhana Kate Kennedy

A trunk here and there surprises with grotesquely curving limbs reaching forward, gaping. Rufous fantail flirts a dance of joyful being, up, down and around, tail flicking the fan.

We're pushing into soft white sand now, uphill rising, opening out into the light, no enclosing canopy here.
Aah. Here we are. On the high dunes, under a cloudless blue, wandering in Nature's garden.

                                                                                                                 image: Ilyhana Kate Kennedy

Full fat creamy banksia flowers thrust upwards from glossy green whorls of serrated leaves.

                                                                                                                                            image: Ilyhana Kate Kennedy

Shiny spheres of slender green lines burst from the tops of grass tree trunks, some still thrusting a long dark spear into the salt clean air.

                                                                                                                                               image: Rosalie Hall
 Ah look there, such a spindly little bush, such beautiful blossom, a delicate wattle with soft fluffy cream puffs and pink buds.

                                                                                                                                               image: Rosalie Hall

And here, is that a boronia, four crisp white petals and burgundy stems?

Brahminy kite rides the air pockets above, hitching a lift on the updraft, ginger wing feathers gleaming in sunlight. Soaring away now.

The soundtrack of the high dunes belongs to the honeyeaters, small and warbling, or large, knobble-nosed and I swear, talking, whole conversations.

                                                                                                                              image: Ilyhana Kate Kennedy

Our eyes are everywhere, we are mad with the beauty, the strangeness of form and colour so peculiar to Australia.
We move only a few steps at a time.

                                                                                                                               image: Ilyhana Kate Kennedy

Little rounded clumps of yellow pea flowers. Occasional small eucalypts, red-stalked, domed in form. Wedding bush, radiant in all-white blooms.

                                                                                                                                               image: Rosalie Hall

And out there, out beyond the green, the incredible, indescribable winter ocean blues.

Small trees close a canopy over the track ahead, shady, dark. A flash of russet wings low across the track. What was that?
Once again we enter the forest, the track winding downhill.

                                                                                                                                               image: Rosalie Hall

Up there in the sunlight, the russet of a pollen laden casuarina waiting for a breeze to carry his gift to the little cones held by the lady beside him.

                                                                                                                               image: Ilyhana Kate Kennedy

Down into the swamp crossing, a little creek gurgling under a boardwalk.

                                                                                                                               image: Ilyhana Kate Kennedy

Soft ferns under white paperbarks, the canopy opening in places to light the swamp.

The track winds up from the swamp and steep downhill again. Ocean is roaring now.
Out onto the long stretch of beach and that unbelievable blue, bordered by Devil's Kitchen one end and Hell's Gates the other, rocky dramatic headlands.

                                                                                                                                               image: Rosalie Hall

Huge rolling viridian, white-capped, curling, thumping into the rocky outcrops, thrashing foam metres into the air.

It's a weekday. Just a few people wandering, or soaking sun. Just one out surfing. Hardly anyone on the beach. We sit and rest, snack on our supplies.
How lucky we are to live here.

A couple of men in wetsuits nearby are picking up their boards and heading out. One of them asks us if we have lip salve. Rose offers the stub of a lipstick. He rubs some on, and they smile and joke with us, then go and contemplate their entry to the ocean.

                                                                                                                                               image: Rosalie Hall

Mid afternoon. Time to return.
We hike the hill, and drop down again to the swamp crossing, up through the forest and out onto the high dunes once more. The light is softer now, the air cooling.

                                                                                                                                              image: Rosalie Hall

The honeyeaters are working the garden, upside down in the sweet banksias, sipping, calling to each other, flying full-pelt, chorusing alto, bass, soprano, tenor.

                                                                                                               image: Ilyhana Kate Kennedy

Velvety blue afternoon shadows glow in the wide white sandtrack. Oh look here, a creature trail of little feet and tail.
Back through the garden, into the forest.

Oh my goodness, what's that!
A long segmented worm creature, sliding in the track sand. We move it out of harm's way and it burrows down into the loose sand. How does it do that?

We're nearly out of the forest, emerging into that other world.
Such a gorgeous walk, such a beautiful day.


If you'd like to do this walk, go to the Park Edge Rd entry to Noosa National Park (Sunshine Coast UBD Map 9 Q 17). Take track 5 down to Alexandria Bay. It's around 4.6ks return. Some good tips...stick to the track, take water and snacks. It's a heavenly walk, and if you have energy to spare, start earlier in the day, turn right at the beach and walk up onto the Headland above Lion Rock and Devil's Kitchen. I've seen eagles, dolphins and sea turtles from there. At the right time of year you might also see the whales on the move. Spectacular.
There are no facilities at Alex Bay or along the track. There are no lifesavers, surf is dangerous, swimming very risky. There was no signal on my mobile at Alex Bay, and there is just one fixed radio phone at the end of the track at the beach. So play safe eh.