Sundry interesting things

Walking along the beach at Bastion on Monday we found an interesting large (~1m) fish corpse.

I put the photos on iNaturalist (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/55468383) and it has been identified as Eastern Shovelnose Ray Aptychotrema rostrata.

On that app it is well South of previous records while the Atlas of Living Australia https://tinyurl.com/y3khysbw has a previous southernmost ob around Eden.

Moving on the reflection of the cliffs behind the campground was interesting.

On the morning of 4 July I visited the wharf area and found the level of the Inlet well down (again). The amount of gunge on the gauge makes assessing the depth hard But making rough measurements on the image gets it to 0.2 m.

On the afternoon of the 5th we went for a walk for about 1km down the Captains Creek track. If a horse can get down there safely we certainly could. Come to think of it I wouldn't have minded a horse when we got to the hill after about 0.5 kms!

The most obvious flowers were Scaevola ramosissima for which the word "profuse" was apt. Second most common was one we referred to as "blue fleur-de-lys" until we got home and Wildflowers of the Wilderness Coast revealed it as Lobelia gibbosa. It is listed as flowering in Summer, which timing is repeated in Flora of Victoria. As the maximum temperature was 12 C (after 10C yesterday) I think these flowers need to read a few books!

It was good to see many seedlings of Banksia serrata beginning to emerge. Many/most of the big old trees of this species had epicormic growth, even when they were badly burnt.

The same applies to the eucalypts. This tree had been incinerated, with little wood left near the ground but it was still pumping out growth.

As we left we found a colony of Caladenia catenata which we had walked past on the way in. I'll blame my glasses fogging due to my mask for that oversight!