[Photos] Maralla (late August)

[moonvoice]

The orchids are just starting in late August. Not the cowslips or the donkeys, not even the enamels. But the blue fairy orchids (which I had never seen in person before).

But this day of bushwalking was mostly about how the sun drapes herself all over the land lovingly, filling it with glowing light.


A shaft of light




She picks and chooses who she illuminates



A swamp paperbark at sunset



Burnt



There's this lovely winding gloomy murky path through a stand of mallee Acacias that feels very much like the official gateway into the actual bushland itself. This is the end of it.





Green



About as green as it gets, post June/July



A grove of immature swamp paperbarks. Even young, they still feel powerful.



Autumn is the best time for fungi



This is a natural peephole that has weathered into a dead (and burnt) tree over time. It feels very liminal, but Glen couldn't resist waving on the other side of it when I went to get a photo.



Gumnuts



This tree has such an unusual lean that you can drape almost fully horizontal on it while staring into its canopy



The raggedy blossom of Banksia ilicifolia, beginning to age from cream to pink



I liked the way the sun touched the Balga grasstree in the middle there



Pheladenia deformis, the Blue Fairy Orchid. My first.



It blossomed near this paperbark.



The sun and a Casuarina (sheoak). I love the foliage of sheoaks, it looks like someone has feathered out the leaves with a brush.



Sun on Eucalyptus.



A tiny (tiny) bit of sun on a Paperbark



One of the many endemic Fabaceae members. I can't be bothered identifying it, but a lot of them just get called 'flame peas.' They are extremely poisonous to foreign animals, and their properties are incorporated into 1080 fox baits etc.

Comments

[halfmoon_mollie1]

ahhhhhhhhhhh

[moonvoice]

*bounces happily*

[cmcmck]

Lovely as ever.

Looks almost like a light scattering of snow in your first one!

[moonvoice]

Our white sand has deceived people before! :D

[silverjackal]

All of these are lovely but I particularly like the photos of the paperbark. And the orchid, but you know I am fond of blue. I also had to laugh at Glen waving. Very mystical! ;D

[moonvoice]

Lol, I loved him waving. Tbh, it captures our mood while we're often walking, which shifts from like, serious and aware of the profound, to like, the silly happiness that comes from seeing a lot of great things doing well, and chatting together as we walk. It's a well-used bushland, and still surprisingly pristine in sections. But you often see families walking through it (which happened a lot less in Koondoola), and I've pointed a few things out to kids in the past (kangaroos over there, or 'if you hold still there's a quenda/bandicoot that comes out' etc.) and teens cycle through it, and so on.

There's biomes in it I haven't personally encountered before, and that's been the most interesting for me, especially tracking it through the seasons. :D