Sunday 25 August 2019
Photos by Mary and Rodney
This area is close to home and yet provides lots of opportunities for a forest-focused day out. Nearness to home is attractive so twenty walkers, and a visitor, turned out on this cool cloudy day. While the walk was relatively short (about 7.5 km) it provided good exercise with plenty of small hills. From some points you could get attractive views down to the coast near Malua Bay. Some of the track was a bit gravelly and all of it was dusty following our long dry period.
Although this part of the Mogo State Forest has been well worked over for timber production there are still good specimens of Iron Bark and Spotty Gum, and Banksias were flowering in the understorey. Perhaps the botanical highlights of the morning were the several areas of Iron Bark Orchid high high on the bark of some of their host trees. Some were even at knee height but you had to get off the track to find those. More peculiar was an unusual fungus that no-one could identify, it was christened the “Elephants Foot” on account of its extraordinary shape.
On our return we encountered a couple of horsemen out enjoying a ride in the forest, an excellent way of covering the ground quickly and seeing the forest from a higher vantage point.
Rodney