Walking a little bit further

 Having had a really slack day on Tuesday (hanging around home in case needed by the plumber installing our new solar HWS) we decided to extend our foray towards Shipwreck Creek.

For some reason eBird had a cow about recording the track, so this image is my estimate of where we went, snipped from Google Earth.  The big picture is that we made it all the way to the Shipwreck Creek Campground.  The numbers relate to comments about aspects of the orchids.

Point 1 is given that number mainly because of its position on the image.  We saw nothing there on the way out.  However on the way back we found at least 20 plants of Caladenia tentaculata.  As I was keen to get back to the car, and we have had plenty of images of them, I didn't sop for more.

After negotiating the pebbles and entering the forest we found lots of pink tape on the trees.

I assumed this was to mark the track.  The track is now quite obvious (unlike a few months ago) so I am intrigued that they have done this.  Perhaps they just had some surplus surveyors tape?  Frances had an alternate theory that it was marking dead trees that are to be bonsaied.  The problem with that was that with trees of identical condition one would be taped and the other not taped.  Like the wisdom of God, the rationale of Parks passeth all understanding.

Once we got to the first stretch of heath (point 2) Sun Orchids became numerous.  Every blue one I looked at had lots of spots so I rated them Thelymitra ixioides.

This was the biggest spike we noticed.

While this was the biggest cluster.

In total there were at least 200 plants of that species.

For this area we found a few open T. carnea and a few buds closed buds.

When we got to the final stretch of heath (point 3) we found at least 100 buds of this species (including one cluster of 18 plants), but very few T. ixioides.

There was quite an amount of other blossom.  Possibly the most notable were many Patersonia glabrata and P. occidentalis (Purple Flags) and the most numerous Burchardia umbellata (Milkmaids).  All well covered in past blogs so I have saved your downloads.

An outstanding example of Thysanotus tuberosus (Common Fringe Lily) was photographed, while the smaller T. patersonii (Twining Fringe Lily) was not

We only saw a few specimens of Thelionema umbellatum and none of its blue relative T. caespitosa.

In contrast there were many examples of Tetratheca sp in the heaths.  This downcast one is T. ciliata.

A small species of Lomandra, with silvery leaves is L glauca which was quite common near point 3.

There were some insects around (no mozzies until we got to Shipwreck Creek campground where they were in the usual plague proportions).  A few dragonflies zipped about.  I think this is the back end of a tabanid fly.

The commonest insect - that we could see - were Cabbage White butterflies.  Judging by the behaviour of these two there are more on the way.

When we got to Shipwreck it appeared that most of the infrastructure was OK.  I would have thought this was all rebuild but some boards on the dunny looked a little scorched.  The notice board was also in good nick.  A notice said the campground was closed "due to COVID".  I presume that gave Parks an additional way of prosecuting people who evaded all the closed roads and camped there.  Some of the old notices were missing so I wonder if it was a new emplacement built some time ago and the passage of a few months had weathered it so it didn't look as though "just out of the box".