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Category: Australia (not WA)

Carnivore on forest floor (#3 in “Deep Creek” single image teaser series)

 

 

The old-growth forest’s floor in Deep Creek Conservation Park is almost certainly South Australia’s finest winter location for fungi-fanciers.

It is also spectacularly well-endowed with successful predators who lack legs and teeth.

They can photosynthesise…

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Mushy magic (#2 in “Deep Creek” single image teaser series)

 

 

The pictured mushroom (i.e. fungal “fruiting body”) has a cap so shiny that parts of it act like a “funhouse mirror”, yielding what look like distorted reflections of its forest home’s canopy.

To see them, you probably need a good quality screen – bigger than a phone’s…and/or you may need to zoom in on/enlarge the mushroom’s shiniest surfaces.

In any event, you should have no difficulty “discovering” an ant who made a fatal mistake.

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Stringybark forest (#1 in “Deep Creek” single-image teaser series)

 

 

Deep Creek Conservation Park is circa 110 kilometres south of Adelaide – 90 minutes driving time, almost all of it on good roads.

One of South Australia’s better kept “secrets” includes SA’s best remaining (tiny) remnant of a once relatively common but now very rare type of forest, spectacular coastline, lovely bushland, wildflowers, many birds, and lots of ‘roos,

And that’s not all…

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Parachilna sunset (final episode in SA/NT “outback” single image teaser series)

 

South Australia’s longest chain of mountains is named after Matthew Flinders, not by him; “the navigator” did not impose his own name on any natural feature.

One of the Flinders’ gems is Parachilna Gorge, on the mountains’ western side.

Very soon after you drive back out of the gorge, you look across a seemingly-endless, flattish plain.

Sitting in it, nearby, is the almost-town of Parachilna; effectively, its excellent pub is the town.

Lake Frome’s vast salt-flat is a deal further “out there”, due west…so too the setting sun, at 5.19 pm on 06 June 2023.

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Glen Helen Gorge (#26 in SA/NT “outback” single image teaser series)

 

Glen Helen Gorge is in the Western MacDonnell Ranges, 132 kilometres west of Alice Springs.

It was carved by the Finke, allegedly the world’s oldest river.

Glen Helen is one of not many Central Australian places where water is “permanently” visible, reflecting the sky.

If you are looking for particularly beautiful examples of “water in landscape” – whether an entirely natural landscape, or a man-made/manicured/ garden setting – you will likely enjoy a higher success rate in regions with dry rather than wet climates.

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Beautiful, but… (#24 in SA/NT “outback” single image teaser series)

 

 

To my eye, Coober Pedy is an ugly town, albeit a singular one.

So, I was delighted to see something so lovely, growing not many footsteps away from a hideous shopping venue and car park.

I love the way such tall grasses look, especially when wind whiffles through them.

Alas, however, I was admiring a very “bad” plant.

Buffel grass – Cenchrus ciliaris L, pictured above – is “arguably the greatest invasive species threat to biodiversity across the Australian arid zone.”

Some beef producers, however, still view it fondly as “great cattle feed”.

The relevant legal requirement in South Australian Arid Lands:

Land owners in this region to take reasonable steps to kill plants and prevent their spread. Enforceable by the South Australian Arid Lands Landscape Board.

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Grass, winter sun, “desert” (#23 in SA/NT “outback” single image teaser series) + musical bonus

 

Technically, the country in which Alice Springs sits really is a desert environment.

It is, however, far from barren.

Central Australia is beautifully vegetated – botanically “rich”, not “poor”.

Trees and flowers are not its only beautiful plants.

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Incandescent rock? (#22 in SA/NT “outback” single image teaser series)

 

 

Strictly speaking, the answer is “no, of course not”.

However, when early morning or late afternoon sunshine “hits” some arid zone Australian rock faces, “incandescent” is almost the only appropriate adjective.

As you can see, this one appears to be emitting light, even if it is “really” only being affected by light.

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