The House(s) of Fran_mart

On the dog walk to town this morning we saw a relatively unusual sight.  Was it a Road runner?  No, it was just an Australian Pied Oystercatcher in an unusual spot!  Later in the afternoon we went to Captain Stevenson's Lookout at the end of the Caravan Park, which gives a good view over the mouth of the Inlet.  There were several species of wader there today including about 18 Bar-tailed Godwits of which some are shown here with the gulls.  And others with 2 Caspian Terns.  Our main walk had been under the powerlines to the West of town.  This had been slashed severely 2 years ago but is now back in business as excellent heath.  Lots of Burcharduia umbellata (aka Milkmaids).  No idea on this one, but there was lots of it and it's pretty! I have concluded this is Xanthorrhoea resinifera .  Most of the plants are still at the brown spike stage... ... or worse are deformed ...  .. but this one was in flower...

The BoM forecast quite a bit of rain starting about mid-morning on 2 September and going for about 12 hours.  And so it was: we scored 36.6mm in that time.  (I can't show you any radar images as the Captains Flat facility has abandoned the struggle - until at least next Tuesday.) However here are some images from around the places I have been.  I'll start with a couple of images of Whiskers Creek going under our drive. This is the paddock at the junction of Whiskers Creek and Widgiewa Rds: basically the ground is just saturated.  As the next three images show, so is the Hoskinstown Plain. Not surprisingly the Molonglo is across Briars-Sharrow Rd.  Just before I took this a guy came up the road with a high clearance 4x4 ute, but it looks too close to the wading limit (70cm) of the Pajero for me to have a go.  A few months back I showed a photo of a sword stuck, Camelot-style, in our dam.  Nearly a metre of it was visible.  To...

While wandering towards Whiskers Creek yesterday I noticed a rock with a good covering of lichen and moss, so returned today for some photos. From consulting the 1:250k Canberra Geological Map Sheet I have concluded that this is a greywacke.  As explained in the Wikipedia article about the rocks it is primarily a form of sandstone, formed in such a way as to have a lot of other rocks mixed in with it. On looking more closely at the rock there were some very interesting forms of lichen and moss. (Rolling stones may not gather this stuff, but that welded to the Earth's mantle certainly do.)  I know even less about lichen and moss than I do about rocks so will let the pictures do the talking. I will be bold and say the next two images are moss rather than lichen.

So today we met at Brooks Hill Reserve near Bungendore.  According to my records our database entries for this reserve start with a walk on 20 November 1996, but a founding member of the group said that they used to walk here earlier than that, but the plant lists were not kept in the same way. As the official report notes there wasn't a huge amount of flowering around today but the Acacia genistifolia made a nice show in places. Incidentally that photo was taken on my new camera: pretty good recommendation by Roger!  Had I believed them when they said "battery requires charging" all photos would have been taken on that, but Frances smaller version (used by me) did a pretty good job as pinch hitter. These flowers of Eucalyptus rossii were waving around above head height so difficult to snap, but there was so little in flower I thought a 'record shot ' was all that was needed.   Chrysocephalum apiculatum was lower and more cooperative.  I suspect these...