Tag: Porongurup

A forest floor’s “natural abstracts” often delight me rather more than do some allegedly “iconic” abstract artworks on “important” galleries’ walls.

As is true of all photos in the current series’ “Porongurup” sequence, the photo is ©️ Doug Spencer, & was taken in mid-afternoon of 12 February 2025, on the northern side of Porongurup National Park.

Any forest’s floor will repay your close attention, at any time.

This is true even when an unusually-prolonged dry spell has ensured that on this day the relevant forest will fail to deliver its usual visual treat in the “fungi department”.

However, in the “Karri trees’ annual exfoliation department” all was as it should be on 12 February 2025 in Porongurup National Park.

You are looking at the “skin” on a venerable Karri’s trunk, as it was on the afternoon of 12 February 2025.

Six months earlier – or six months later – it would have looked remarkably different, in both colour and texture.

Karri shed and renew their bark in an annual cycle.

“Karri loam” – the particular soil type in which Karri trees grow – is primarily composed of decomposed Karri bark!

This series has more birds, but not just yet; the next several episodes look at details of a forest.

These chapters are the fruit of a short walk on a wintry summer’s day.

50 kilometres northeast of Albany, the Porongurups are a “modest” mountain range – only about 15 kilometres long.

They rise no higher than 670 metres ASL, but have enough altitude – and are close enough to the Southern Ocean – to create their own microclimate.

The Porongurups are much cooler and also very much more moist than is everywhere else within sight of them.

They are remnants of what, more than one billion years ago, were much mightier mountains.