Walking Captains Creek and related Tracks

 We have been doing a little training for some longer walks.  (Those with a long memory will remember a similar plan (possibly a Cunning Plan) in the past.  One of the longer walks we had in mind was a car shuffle from the Captains Creek Fire Trail to Bucklands.  For some reason we had this pegged as 12 km: in fact it was only 9km, which was a pleasant surprise as we worked it out.

I did three ebird checklists along the way, so have three maps covering the various stages of the walk.  This first one starts at Genoa Rd and goes down the fire trail to Captain's Creek Jetty.

This is looking back down the very steep section after 0.5 km.  Given the amount of rain we have had this year  the rebuilt track is holding up very well.

There is a bit more erosion  on the far side of the hill.

In this part of the walk the main vegetative interest was seed pods - these are Acacia suavolens.  There will not be a lack of regrowth when another fire goes through here.

There were a few chewed-up areas on the track, of which this was probably the worst.

More seed pods: I am pretty sure these are Dodonea triquetra.

A lone flower of Kennedia rubicunda.  This species isn't as common this year as last, and is probably less evident inland than on the coast.

We saw more trigger plants (Stylidium graminifolium) than we have noticed recently.

This is clearly a Leptospermum, and I would have expected it to be called something like L. ericifolium.  However I think it is actually L. continentale - which does seem to have been a rename from, or at least confused with, L. juniperinum.

Dampiera stricta: always a pretty plant.

Did I mention the amount of rain we have had?   It was rather surprising that this was the only set of puddles we cam across.

We didn't actually go to the Jetty but continued on towards Bucklands.

There were a few daisies around, but I haven't been able to identify them to species so far.

This section was somewhat interesting last time we did the walk, as the bridges had been burnt out and we had to use fallen trees to cross the watercourses.  Although the bridges have been replaced the back-ups are still in place.

Looking downstream.

Another side-creek, with nice reflections.

Fungus on a tree.

We only saw one orchid (Dipodium sp.) in the whole walk!

A large (for this area) Wahlenbergia sp.

The walking track is a lot narrower than the fire trail.

A gully with tree ferns.

A view across the mouth of Captains Creek to the repainted Jetty.

A new taxon: Exocarpos cupressiformis akwesane.  The subspecies name being that of a Mohawk Reservation spanning the border between New York State, Ontario and Quebec

The third leg was along the banks of the Narrows.

This was the first stretch where we found Bursaria spinosa (Blackthorn - grab a branch to verify the vernacular name).

A subsequent very tall shrub of the same species.

Melaleuca armillaris.

 A view of the Narrows.

Clematis aristata - most specimens, of which there were a lot, have gone to seed looking like Old Man's Beard.

We felt surprisingly spritely at the end of the walk.