Why the nature of North Head matters.

When the white invaders arrived in Australia in 1788, Manly was one of the first places they named. It already had a name (Kai'ymay), but impressed by the confidence of the Guringai men, who waded confidently out to greet their boat, Governor Arthur Phillip called the beach they were approaching Manly Cove. Invaders like to change the place names...

Before long, things went sour, as a disease that was identified by the invaders as smallpox (I take the view that it was not smallpox, but something else, just as harmful) hit the Guringai people. The original paradise was over, but Manly remains a pretty place, best approached by ferry, and offering a wealth beaches and walks.

I fled Queensland in 1944 at the ripe age of six months (I just knew Queensland and I would never get on), reached Manly, and I never left. In the welcoming spirit of the Guringai, I like to share some of its gems, ones the Guringai would have known, and that means North Head. It is a place of sandstone cliffs and deep sands, blown onto what is now the headland, way back in the last Ice Age.

Look closely at the ridge on the left, and find the sea eagle that photo-bombed the shot.
At the centre bottom, look for the site of  a rockfall, dubbed The Great North Head Calamity.

My favourite animal.

The sandstone is almost 250 million years old, Triassic rock with ever few fossils, and lacking most of the nutrients plants and animals need. It's a paradox, but places with depauperate (poor) soil are hotspots of biodiversity, and there are about 450 species of flowering plants there, birds, mammals, reptiles and a rich fauna of invertebrates.

Would you know this one?

Since I officially retired, I have worked on North Head as a volunteer, weeding, planting and doing other stuff to help maintain a fragile ecosystem, but I am also a lifelong educator, and wearing that hat, I decided to generate a web site about the place, and host it myself. It was to show the casual visitor just how much more was there to be seen.

Once you know this is a spittle-
bug, you will be able to look it up.

Because I always travel with at least a phone and a camera, the web site was soon bloated with pics, so during one of our escape-from-lockdown rambles, I decided to do an e-book version that people could carry around. I added a great deal of extra information, even more images, and some internal navigation, and then, pushed by friends, I did the print version.

For a variety of reasons, the headland has retained many unusual like forms, and while I deliberately do not give detailed locations, the e-book and the print book help the visitor to understand what they are looking at, and provide some background.

A donkey orchid.

A dragon that like grapes.

Why no locations? Because some people cannot resist 'adopting' some of what they see.

If they had to work to find the unusual plant or animal, somewhere on our 250 hectares (that's a square mile for the old-fashioned and Americans), they will care more about it, take just a photo, and leave the plant or animal there...

Finding everything will take a very long time: in the past year, I have found my first North Head flatworm, and only my second centipede. There are things I have missed, but sooner or later, I will find them, just as I found a python.

I stopped the traffic for this one.

In the book, in all its versions, you get the geology, the history of the headland, the tracks that are worth following, and what to look for as you wander along them. I even tell you about these fig trees, and where to get the best views.

Where do you get the book? The cheapest way is as a $2 e-book from Google Play, and at the other end, a full-colour paperback will cost you $50 from Amazon. There is also a $4 e-book from Amazon, which is the lowest price they allow. Get the Google Play one, instead, because they are the same!