We say g'day to the bush. It's always polite to knock on the door, send out a friendly greeting.
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| 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.
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| 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.
Here some purple patersonia, there some white heath bells of epacris dancing along their slender stalks.
And what is this? Bright, bright pink, four petals, fine leaves. Definitely boronia.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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