A little out of area

This covers an outing of the Bairnsdale Field Naturalists Society which we attended on 20 November.  We stopped three times, with the second being added as it looked interesting when most of the group drove past on the way from Bairnsdale to Drummer.  It was nice to have the first stop relatively close to home!

A look into the Thurra River.

A fern - or possibly 2 ferns.  

Various epiphytes.

I was told this is a Tanglefoot orchid (Plectorrhiza tridentata).  I had thought this would be a large plant but was in fact tiny.  (As an aside it is possibly surprising how often that is the case: another one comes next.)

This is the Butterfly Orchid (Sarcochilus australis).  I had mentally confused this with the much larger S. falcatus - Orange Blossom Orchid - which is only known from one site in Victoria (not near where we were).  However I eventually picked out the small flowers hanging down in rainforest.

Zooming in helps a bit!

White Elderberry (Sambucus gaudichaudiana) was common at Drummer.

The scene at Reedy Creek, the add on stop.

This one is a worry.  It is very common here, growing in swathes along the roadside.  We thought it looked like Leucochrysum sp. and iNaturalist AI agrees, but Flora of Victoria only offers 3 species, none of them anywhere close to this site!  Let us see what the humans have to say.  A human has responded, suggesting Chrysocephalum baxteri, which agrees with a comment about 'Chrysocephalum' made in the field.  (In our experience ' chryso' usually means something yellow - Chryso is Greek for golden - so we had rejected that.  We were wrong!)

A very small Gompholobium and I strongly suspect it is G. glabratum.  The text in Flora of Voctoria describes the range as "only from the upper Genoa River and the upper Cann River Valley" but there is a dot on the map almost exactly where we found this.

Lots of a showy Hakea growing on the edge of a swamp.  It doesn't look like the usual species around here (H. decurrens) but does match quite well to H. teretifolia, although I didn't find any of the dagger-shaped fruit.  Let's see what the humans on iNaturalist have to say.

A pretty little white flower (with bonus raindrop) is identified on iNaturalist as Libertia pulchella  (Pretty Grass-flag).  As its vernacular name suggests it is a member of the Iris family.

This is definitely a Prostanthera (aka Mint-bush) and I think P. lasianthos (a member of the group gave the species name but I didn't write it down).

Cyathea australis.  One specimen looked a bit odd, but it was decided eventually not to be C. leichardtiana.

A collection of fungi!

An expert on iNaturalist has identified this as Schizophyllum commune a fine specimen too.

A blown down nest with eggs, and the eggs being invaded by fungi.

The consensus on iNaturalist appears to be Narrow-brand Grass Dart (Ocybadistes flavovittata).

These burrows were all over the Drummer area.  It appeared to be where the animal had been digging for truffles.  From referring to "Tracks Scats and other traces" it seems unlikely to be Bandicoot (the hole doesn't end in a point) so is thus most likely to be a Potoroo.

Some images of infrastructure.  The first is Drummer.

The others are Mackenzie Rainforest.  There was debris in the vegetation suggesting that in floods earlier in the year the water would have been several feet above the walkways.  A large (>1m diameter) tree had fallen across one of the walkways but that had been removed and the walkway rebuilt.