A right Charlie's Creek track.

 I have read a few explanations of why, in English slang, the phrase "a right Charlie" means a fool.  This one is well off (my understanding of) the mark, and I suggest the author gets professional help.  I was always told that it is a reference to Mr Chaplin, reflecting the number of daft situations in which the Little Tramp finds himself.  Whatever: the meaning seems to have a fair application to the walk we did today, shown in the following extract from Google Earth.

I will come back to this a little later, but as a depiction of the two tracks I'd say the material Google accessed was an approximation drawn by someone in the Bairnsdale or Melbourne offices of Parks who has never been East of Orbost.  And their drafting tool was the famous "thumbnail dipped in tar".

Here is the track which eBird logged from where we actually went.

At an early point we came across this sad specimen.  I have asked iNaturalist for suggestions about identification (the first suggestion by their AI - emphasising 'Artificial' rather than 'Intelligence' - was European Dormouse).

The track - well cleared (presumably to let the Parks contractors get to rebuild the jetty at the end) is surrounded by densely regenerating Acacia scrub of which A. terminalis was well into bud.

The bloodwoods (Corymbia gummifera) were well into flower, explaining why a proportion of the fruit bat flyout has been pointing in this direction.

It never fails to astonish me how the autofocus function on my camera will find something other than my target to focus on.  In this case it has ignored the blossom (~80% of the image) and gone for Frances arm (~5% ) in the background.

A nice new jetty with some anglers well ensconced.  When we were last here (before the fire) the piles of the jetty were covered with sea squirts: they have yet to re-establish.

A Pelican passed over, giving me at least one bird snap.

Here is the eBird track.  Many diversions from that shown on Google Earth, amounting to an extra kilometre of distance.  It also suggests far better the amount of ups and downs along the way rather than the flat track I had been expecting from the straight line on Google Earth.

Flowers were generally hard to find.  A pretty little Dianella sp.

An orchid!  Eriocholus cucculatis , with the vernacular name Parson's Bands: the column etc always makes me think of a ranting evangelist, rather than a timid Parson.

I find it hard to capture steepness in photos.  This was one of the early gullies which the track took.  This was quite a surprise as on our previous foray (from the Double Creek car parking area) partway along the track the difficulty had been flooding rather than altitude sickness.

The contrast between the burnt black branches and the green foliage justified this image.

Two interesting holes: I think Bandicoot, but advice has been sought.

An attractive butterfly kept fluttering in front of us.  Every time it landed it shut its wings rendering itself both less attractive and harder to find against the fallen leaves.

Eventually I got a shot of the upper wings: a Variable Sword-grass Brown (Tisiphone abeona).

Colourful Gahnia sp. fruit

Finally we get to Charlie's Creek: by this stage I had realised that the track shown on Google Earth was garbage, as we had already done 2.9km and that shown was only 3km.  It was also interesting that the last1 kilometre we had walked had had NO maintenance from Parks for at least 2 years, and possibly not since the fire.

I had hoped that with the shiny new signs at each end of the track they would have fixed up the crossing here.  Hah: I am talking about Viv Parks here.

Frances crossed upright doing a sideways shuffle.  I sucked in my dignity, threw it away  and crossed on hands and knees.  But I didn't fall in!

Along the rest of the track the wattle showing signs of flowering was Acacia longifolia.

This is the low lying area which was flooded last time we walked this track.

Attractive bark on some sort of burnt tree.

Double Creek: a pleasant sight as it meant the end was close(r).

Nice new signs are always possible in Parks-land.  Slashing a track, or replacing a bridge not so often.

Kiah sculpture

 An alert reader will notice that this post doesn't directly show anything about weather, wildlife or Mallacoota but I think it is close enough. We stopped at the Kiah store on the way back from Eden to fill up my car with diesel: it was 216.7 c/l, compared with  237.9 c/l in Mallacoota.  

There was a very good bit of sculpture beside the driveway, which does reference the 2019/20 fire, so that justifies the inclusion.

On checking Jesse's website I found that "2020 Vision" was installed at Jindabynes Lakelight Sculpture Competition in 2021 as well as Sculpture Bermagui where it won Peoples Choice Award in both competitons!"

Filling a blank etc

I have recently done a small project to identify the species of birds which, if absent, would indicate that an area in Far East Gippsland needs further 'work' to be regarded as having a representative bird list.  One land area showed up as having no eBird records at all.

So I decided to visit cell A3 to start a list.  This shows the area I chose to attack and the associated tracks.

We parked at the intersection with the Salvage Track: this comes off the Princes Highway, but there is no indication that it is closed at that end.  I assume that there is a swamp somewhere along the road which has got a tad cut up.

This is East Wingan Road: the surface is a little loose in places but basically very smooth and easy to drive.  The Jetta would have handled it with ease.

Obviously the Shire budget for road signs was well funded!

We wwalked down the East Wingan Track.  From looking at the tracks in the sand the only vehicle which has been down there recently has been a bulldozer, probably clearing the fallen trees off after the fire.  The surface was uncompacted and erosion was an issue.

There were very few birds around (both Pardalotes, Yellow-faced Honeyeater and Superb Lyrebird were all we recorded).  None of the Indicator Species.  There were some nice flowers however.  

One of the most obvious was Tetratheca ciliata (identified by the leaves not being in whorls).

Dampiera stricta was very common.

The only flowering wattle I noticed here was A. myrtifolia.

A few specimens of Kennedia prostrata were in one area,

A large white Epacris impressa near Salvage Track.  I tried, but failed to turn this into another member of the genus.

Our walk was 1km out and back.  

I intend to revisit the area and go further  along the Hard to Seek Track with side visits to Sandpatch Track etc to get a bit more coverage of the area.  Going further down the East Wingan Track will wait until I have got new rear tyres, but after curving around somewhat - or possibly more than somewhat  - it rejoins the Sandpatch track.

Our second visit was to the Genoa Creek Track which later in the season is an excellent spot for orchids.  As soon as we got out of the Pajero, Frances found a specimen of Caladenia caerulea.  This was the first we have found in East Gippsland.  Apparently there was a thriving colony here but we had not visited early enough in the year.  Now the site has been dug up for some works - which went to fair lengths to avoid other species - and is no more: hopefully(???) they will come back.

I am was reasonably certain this is Epacris microphylla.  However an expert on iNaturalist has explained that the leaves are insufficiently 'micro' and this is E. paludosa.  Many specimens in exactly the habitat described for that species in Flora of Victoria..

A different wattle.  From reading "Wildflowers of the Wilderness Coast" I am fairly confident that this is A. brownii.

Hovea heterophylla: we hadn't found this in the area until earlier this week.  Now it is going to pop up everywhere!

A member of the Fabaceae: iNaturalist reckons it is Aotus ericoides, which seems sensible.

A puddle in the track held hundreds of tadpoles (aka polywogs).  No idea what species.   Other, apparently similar, puddles had no, or at best very few, inhabitants.

I suspect these are some species of sawfly larva.  Their behaviour was very like the infamous Spitfires.

Some of the puddles were decorated with former insects.  The iNaturalist AI suggests a genus of termites not apparently known to exist in Australia.

Our final stop was in Genoa, looking over the flats North of the town where one Emu was spotted among the cattle.  I hope that there are others who survived the fire hiding in the woodland.