Turning over rocks

When I first emigrated to Australia I was told that most of the great (in the sense of generating revenue for the mining companies, not necessarily otherwise desirable) mining bonanzas have followed on from discoveries by prospectors who tour the country kicking over rocks.  On the ANPS walk to Mulligan's Flat on Wednesday we turned over a few rocks and, rather than Alan Bond or Lang Hancock, we found a scorpion and an attractive centipede underneath

This encouraged me to go and turn over a few rocks on our place to see what was underneath.  In doing this I was well aware of the rule of turning over beach rocks in Tanzania: always tip the rock back towards you, so that anything nasty run away from you!  This particularly apples when you are expecting scorpions, centipedes or spiders to be involved.

I did find a couple of centipedes.  They were a fair bit smaller than the Wednesday one, but not otherwise dissimilar.

I also disturbed a fair number spiders but they did not hang around long enough for Ol' Fumblefingers to get a snap. The same applies to Cockroaches .  The ants didn't seem keen on my presence so those rocks got rapidly replaced.  The interesting insect found and photographed was possibly an antlion, included here.

Given that I was on a dry rocky ridge about 60m from the nearest water I was surprised to find a couple of frogs in residence.  An expert naturalist friend, Steve (to whom many thanks are due), confirmed the first as  a Spotted Grass Frog (due primarily to the very obvious dorsal stripe) and identified the second as a Smooth Toadlet (despite it having a very unsmooth appearance.

One skink was found.  This was a very pretty animal and Steve identified it as a Robust Skink.

The next day I received an email from another member of ANPS who had turned over about 6 rocks near his house and found a scorpion.I can recognise a challenge so went and rolled about 4 rocks, in an area where I had previously sign a scorpion.  Bingo!

If this image is inspected closely there are at least translucent 6 baby scorpions present.  I have no idea why there are droplets of water all over the mother.  This looks very similar to the one we found at Mulligans Flat so I am assuming this is also a Southern or Wood Scorpion ( Cercophonius squama).

I have continued to roll rocks and on 18 September found another big centipede (slightly different colour but I'd expect the same species)

  and a scorpion.

Given the apparent difference in colour between the carapace and the appendages I wondered if this was a different species but on referring to the Scorpion Files  have concluded it must have just moulted.