The Road to Shipwreck Creek

This is not the latest movie by Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.  It is the direction in which our investigations (eventually) took us on this day.

My investigations began rather early, about 1am, when I heard a few thumps from the deck.  As expected this was a possum wandering around.  I chased it off and returned to bed.  30 minutes later more marsupial noises were heard.  They seemed to be coming from the kitchen, so more investigations were needed.  Somehow a brush-tailed villain had got up into the hopper window.

Getting into this position requires a vertical jump of over 1m into a gap about 15cm wide and landing on a 10cm wide ledge.  I have no idea how it managed it, but a post-photographic poke removed it very easily. The window was closed and I returned to bed and sleep.

Our exercise walk took us into town and as we came back we noticed some worm collecting going on.

I have seen Pelicans standing here, so know the explanation is a sandbar  and not cause for suggesting a Sister-lake relationship between Mallacoota Inlet and the Sea of Galilee.

The local Energy Company were active in the street all day.  They were operating with the wires live, presumably placing faith in the earthing line off the truck, and the possibly the mini-Dalek in the trailer!

Our first walk was to Quarry Beach which was, like the area in general rather quiet.  As the beach is a dead-end (especially at high tide) it is a good place for Tammy to run off the lead.  She largely ignored the Silver Gulls dining on the squillion flies on the Kelp.

 She would have been interested in this former Australasian Gannet, but her lead had been applied to prevent that.

I turned the corpse over to check for bands and was surprised to find turquoise stripes on the feet.

Heading back into the forest we found a good array of Dipodium roseum, but no other orchids.

The most interesting floral sighting in this area was a drift of white flowered shrubs in a creek bed.

 This turned out to be Prostanthera lasianthos, with a common name of Victorian Christmas bush.

 The Dianella sp was 'óver'.

Getting down to Pebbly Beach a float from a drift net had washed up.  Obviously this, like the current Government, has a few barnacles that need to be knocked off.  Unlike the current Government the key barnacle wasn't wearing red Speedos

The lesser barnacles made an interesting pattern (again unlike the current Government).

Another interesting pattern (especially for someone re-reading 'Chaos' by James Gleik) is made by these grass seed heads.  They are ubiquitous along the sandy dunes at present.  To my surprise this is Spinifex sericeus and I had always thought of Spinifex as a plant of the Inland.  (Which is of course a ridiculous idea for a genus of grasses.)

 Back into the woods and there were white flowers around.

This looked very like a 'chrysum' of some form but I couldn't find a good match in the references we had with us.

 This is definitely a fringe-lily (Thysanotus sp).

While we were looking at the plants a car load of young persons drove up and asked where the road went.  This rather surprised me as they had passed many signs, including one about 200 away, saying "to Shipwreck Creek".  At which the road ends.  I told them that is where they were headed and off they went.  I am not sure how much use their surfboards will get there: my memory is it is very rocky!

Meanwhile, back at the house birds were flying around.  This Pelican was actually over the Inlet, about 200m horizontally and perhaps 10m vertically below the deck.

 A pair of Whistling Kites came by of which one obliged with a silhouette.  On a drab grey day it was not possible to pick up the underwing pattern.

I couldn't get a picture of the Grey Goshawk, also in the area, at all.  This was possibly because it was always travelling rather fast to keep in front of the local Magpies!