An Excellent Expedition to Sassafras

As Denis Wilson has already blogged, he kindly invited Frances and myself to join him and Alan Stephenson on a prawning expedition to Sassafras.  It was, to quote Lewis Carroll, a most frabjous day. 

As with all expeditions choosing the route occupied a bit of time, in this case mainly because the most direct track due East from Bungendore doesn't match a road pattern.  Rather than going South to Braidwood then up to Nerriga we chose to go slightly North to Tarago and then along Cullulla, Sandy Point and Oallen Roads.  This looked, from Google Maps, to save about 25kms each way (and we knew from ANPS outings in that direction that the roads were pretty good).

Some nice countryside was seen en route.  We seemed to hit the sandstone country soon after the start of Oallen Rd, as evidenced by these nice eucalypts and banksias (the first of several species from this genus we were to see on the day).

Moving along we dropped down into Oallen Ford across the Shoalhaven River.  We were surprised to see a family running (what we presumed to be) a couple of small gold sluices here.  At about $50 per gramme (ban the Imperial system!) good luck to them!  We passed through the metropolis of Nerriga and the locality of Sassafras before hitting the road works.  Here we spent a few minutes waiting for the escort vehicle to arrive.

The ocean is (just) visible in the background, if one can get past the intellectual puzzle of whether the stop sign is being held up or is holding up.   Once past this mind-game we rapidly got to the car park at Tianjara Falls where we followed Denis' advice to take a look at the falls.

The rainforest below the falls can be seen in this image.  At the top we were in the sandstone heath country including Lambertia formosa (aka the Mountain Devil, due to the shape its seed pods).

After a refreshing cuppa we headed back up the hill to the first rock shelf.  This involved reacquainting ourselves with the road works- O joy! O rapture!  I think the escort vehicle was a tad surprised when we pulled off the road before the end of the work, but that was where the orchids were!

The main business here was to find the prawn orchids Crangonorchis pedoglossa growing on a steeply sloping rock shelf above the road.  Since they have the obliging habit of growing on the bottom edge of patches of soil trapped by irregularities in the rock (and we had, in Denis and Alan, two expert orchid hunters) the target was soon achieved and conveniently at eye level.   As Denis has already put up a selection of his excellent images I will only include this one of a school of prawns.

We also found two species of Eriochilis in this area.  E. petricola was mainly a very pink flower, but defined by the presence of a fully formed leaf, red on the underside.

E cucculatus was also around, generally paler in the petal but without the well formed leaf  (and such leaf material as was around was green on the underside).

In his post Denis refers to getting down and dirty.  This is what he means.

It also gives an idea of the habitat in this area.  By the time I had 'assumed the position' the insect that was fertilising the plant had found other places to be.

After proving that there were many orchids in this area we sorted out protocol with the road works crew and headed back down the hill - through the road works for the 3rdtime -

to 12 Mile Road.   We stopped at a rock shelf and soon found Pharochilum daintreanum Daintrey's Greenhood. 

This shot gives an idea of the habitat around these flat rock platforms and also the quality of the road - this bit had been improved by a bulldozer.

After being turned back by a road closed sign (possibly fortunate,  in that my driving skills avoided being tested) we got to another rock platform and after being fortified by lunch searched a large area finding many Daintrey's and a Speculantha sp.

As well as the orchids there were a lot of flowering dicots around the area and some interesting fruits.  in sequence we have a Banksia ericifolia flower and cone; a Hakea teretefolia (Dagger Hakea) fruit; a Leptospermum flower and fruit and a flowering 'pea'..

I will will finish with a shot of the moss in which the Speculantha was growing. 

I originally said about this image "My camera seems to have done weird things with the colour here in that the white flecks are, I think, a mass of small black ants fossicking in the moss."  Denis has pointed out that in fact the black bits are the ants: his eyes are obviously way better than mine as I could just work that out when looking at the image at original size (5Mb rather than 100Kb)!    The image is rather attractive however.

Slightly tired but VERY happy, we wended our way back up the hill.  We were surprised to find the bitumen gang still at work at 3:45 - they must have a heck of a performance incentive in their contract - as we went through them for the 4th time.  I think they were beginning to recognise us!  A gentle drive home, through sprinkling showers from Tarago to Bungendore.