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!

A botanical rural dean

This text is drawn from chapter 6 of my book, Curious Minds, because Woolls emerged in the midst of a Facebook discussion on the flower Woollsia pungens.

William Woolls (1814 – 1893)

You get a sense for the way the old botanists worked, when you read William Woolls adding extra comments like the following, wherein you will recognise two recent acquaintances of ours [mentioned earlier in the book]:

There also I noticed the remarkable shrub Atkinsonia ligustrina, of the Loranthus family, which is very dissimilar to the other species of the order. This plant, at my request, was named by Dr. F. Von Mueller, in honour of my friend Miss Atkinson (now Mrs. Calvert), who collected many interesting specimens during her residence at the Kurrajong, and to whom the compliment was especially due.

Sydney Morning Herald, 31 March 1871, 2. 

As we have already met the baron and Ms Calvert (née Atkinson), let us now consider these three masters of 19th century Australian botany: Louisa Atkinson (Beata Ludovica Calvert), Ferdinand von Mueller (who referred to Louisa in that way) and William Woolls, but mainly the latter.

Woollsia pungens was always the first plant collected by Botany II students in the 1960s, when we were sent off at the end of Lent term to collect “70 native species”. Back before the glaciers started tumbling, Woollsia was one of the few plants flowering in chilly May.

Prior to my diversion at 14 into the science stream, I had acquired a smattering of Latin before I was told ex cathedra by Wally the Deadmaster: “Boys who do Physics don't do Latin!”. This dictum was probably delivered at the urging of the dragon lady who taught us Latin, but I digress. The point is, I could make sense of most of the Latin names, but having collected and pressed my specimens, I wondered “why Woollsia?”.

On the left, Dr, William Woolls, as he appeared in the Australian Town and Country Journal, 5 October 1872, on the right, Woollsia pungens.

I asked Professor Roger Carolin, who said it was named by von Mueller for William Woolls. Jump forward to the twenty-noughts when I was a Trove-fiend, working through old newspapers, and I either deduced or was told that Woolls used to write about botany and nature as ‘W.’ for the Sydney Morning Herald, so one lazy night, I searched out and tagged most of his articles with his name.

I still didn’t know what the plant was first called, but as I am doing this second edition, I dug deeper. Antonio Cavanilles called it Epacris pungens in 1797, but Robert Brown later moved the species to a Western Australian genus, Lysinema, something I had deduced from a pencilled note in my copy of Florence Sulman’s little book, The Wildflowers of New South Wales. Some prior owner had noticed the error and corrected it (while getting the spelling wrong).

The correction that set me on the right track.

As an avid reader of old Herald copies, I knew von Mueller had named Atkinsonia after Louisa Atkinson, later Mrs Calvert, and here is how Woolls explained why von Mueller did so:

This plant, at my request, was named by Dr. F. Von Mueller, in honour of my friend Miss Atkinson (now Mrs. Calvert), who collected many interesting specimens during her residence at the Kurrajong, and to whom the compliment was especially due.
— Sydney Morning Herald, 31 March 1871, 2.

Now you are ready to tackle a mix of abbreviations and odd Latin: the first line below tells us Antonio Cavanilles named it Epacris pungens, the second says Robert Brown moved it to Lysinema. Line 6 tells us Louisa Calvert (her married name) collected it in the Blue Mountains, and the author of the treatises (auctori opusculorum) in line 7 is William Woolls.

Ferdinand von Mueller, Fragmenta phytographiæ Australiæ, 8. 1873, 55.

Woolls’ article was mainly about his Species Plantarum Parramattensium, or Plants of Parramatta, and that was the key, when you burrow into von Mueller’s Latin. Keep in mind that in those days, scientists mainly learned “on the job”.

Born in 1814, Woolls was his parents’ 19^th child, and shortly after his father’s death in 1830, the 16-year-old William emigrated to Australia, where he soon became a teacher, and spent a generation educating the sons of prominent colonists. While he was a staunch Anglican, Woolls resisted ordination, but in 1873 became a deacon, and six months later a priest at Richmond, and in 1877, became a rural dean.

In 1871, he received a Ph. D, from the University of Göttingen for his work that we have already met as Plants of Parramatta, but they said of Christopher Wren, si monumentum requiris circumspice: to see his monument, look around. Woolls’ monument is all over Australia’s east coast.

Woollsia pungens, without a doubt one of the hardest heath flowers to photograph.

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[i] 

Our Easter is in the autumn

Easter in Australia is a major holiday period.  Our schools have a four-term year, with the first two terms being divided by a break beginning around (or before) Good Friday and running through the following week.  Nominally, it is autumn, but this blog includes a dozen or so species of wildflowers that were photographed, in bloom, in the sanctuary where I work on North Head, on 11 April 2017.

Our seasons are weird, as I said before. Anyhow, the first six are: three banksias and three Acacia species.

Many Sydney people will be off to the coast, or inland, or anywhere, queuing in bumper-to-bumper traffic for hours, just to escape the crowds.  We who stay here say nothing about how Sydney at Easter can be very quiet indeed, for most of the remaining locals gather in just a few crowded venues.

In a research plot, fenced from rabbits,
the flannel flowers and wattle do well.

Here is a flannel flower or Actinotus,
called by that name from the feel of the petals.

Australia is a nominally Christian country, but once again this year, we will be reminded of just how nominal that allegiance is.  All over the nation, churches will swell to almost-full, as they only ever do at Christmas and Easter, but even then, few churches will overflow as they did in my youth.

Australian people seem to be able to find the comfort they need in more material things.  Perhaps we miss the symbolism northern hemisphere people get from celebrating the Resurrection in the spring.

Lambertia sp.

Epacris longiflora, long known also
as Native Fuchsia

Be that as it may, it is still autumn for us now.  We have just had two days in a row with 20 degree (C) temperatures in Sydney.  Over the Easter weekend, we have been promised maxima of 25C each day.

In Canberra, and in the mountains west of Sydney, and in the more pretentious suburbs, their foreign deciduous trees are turning to autumn colours and losing their leaves.  Elsewhere, people grow sensible Australian trees which are never bare, except after a bushfire.

One year at this time, a small bushfire broke out on the next ridge, smothering us in smoke.  It was a minor burn, though it crowned once or twice, sending flames up into the sky, and raining ash on the the houses nearby.

The blaze was soon controlled, but it's an ill wind, they say.  During the holidays that year, I found time to poke around the burnt areas, to see what relics I could uncover of the earliest inhabitants, whose engravings dawn many of the sandstone rock faces throughout the bush.  After a fire, many of these surfaces become accessible for the first time in maybe thirty years.

The clean smell of bush smoke was actually a blessing, for there had been a smell of mothballs on the bus, as woollen jumpers (our name for what others may call a pullover or a sweater) are resurrected from storage for yet another year.  All over Sydney, electric one-bar radiators are being pulled out and given their annual run-in, adding a distinctive burnt dust smell to the great indoors.

Our old dog always recognised autumn.  He would lie curled on his bed in their conservatory each morning, rather than standing hopefully and peering through the glass at us as we ate breakfast.  The humans are often a little less wise, and many of them will be swimming still. perhaps I will be among them.

Glycine, a delicate member of the pea family

We are ambivalent about our autumn.  Many people will cross the mountains to Bathurst on Thursday and Friday for a weekend of camping, drinking, and motor-bike races, but many will decide that it is too cold for a last swim, and spend their time in museums and art galleries.  After six years working in the museum industry, I have some sympathy for my former colleagues as they prepare for the onslaught of the masses.

Grevillea buxifolia, the grey spider flower,
is around for most of each year,

Few people will go walking in the bush, which is where you will find us in the next week or so, making the most of the peace and quiet.

My wife and I found a whole new series of rock engravings two weeks ago on an isolated ridge.  We will work our way slowly along the ridge, following the fine smooth sandstone bed that attracted the artists. 

Hakea or needle bush

Not all sandstones are the same, but this stratum was once a washed-out river bed, filled later by sand that was particularly pure and free of clay, making a smooth, flat, tough sandstone surface to work on.

The bush tracks around Sydney are deserted right now, partly because there are fewer flowers blooming, maybe as few as a dozen or so species right now, and also because it is also Easter Show time.

I go to ‘the Show’ about once in ten years, and always come away swearing I will never do it again.  It looked for a while as if we would be going this year, and I found myself looking contemplatively at places I might fall from, breaking a leg as I land. That would  have saved me, but strategically placed rain did the job instead. Now the crowds will be too large.

Woollsia pungens commemorates an early Australian botanist,
William Woolls. Like Grevillea buxifolia, it flowers all the
year, almost.

One thing is certain: you will never find me travelling the roads at Easter.  There are just too many people driving at Easter.  Not that they can drive fast, of course, but there will be an ill-concealed fury in their driving that I have decided I can do without.

It would be enough to have to mill around the Royal Agricultural Society Showground with 150 000 other people, growing footsore and weary, getting annoyed by either dust or mud or both, becoming exasperated by outrageous prices, and yet somehow being entranced by some of the sights and smells that return me to my childhood.

Instead, I am at home, doing a last listen to the mp3 files version of my next book, a massive Australian history, as big as three normal paperbacks, which will be called Not Your Usual Australian Tales.

I will have more to say about that in a week or so, but here's an anecdote from the end of my foreword:

On a personal note, I have another reason for doubting paper records: I was born in Queensland in the latter days of World War II. When my father, who was in the RAAF, moved north into “the islands”, my mother flew to Sydney with me as a babe in arms on an Air Force Catalina.

The RAAF was subject to inflexible regulations, and the number of passengers allowed on a Catalina was restricted. An Air Commodore on the flight ordered that I be embarked as a Gladstone bag, and that was how I appeared on the manifest, so anybody would seek in vain who sought evidence of my travels on faded, curled, foolscap sheets.

I am grateful to the Air Commodore, but according to my mother, not the most reliable of witnesses, I showed my gratitude at the time by throwing up on him. I tend to believe this, because I have always been a bit of an anarchist at heart, but posthumously (so far as he is concerned), I express my thanks to that kindly and probably slightly smelly Air Commodore.

Still, neither my travel nor the arc allegedly described by my stomach contents appear anywhere in any surviving record. There is a lesson there for us all.

Australia's mystery poet

Who was ‘Hugo’? I have no idea, but there are two of his poems available in the newspapers of his day, both in The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser in 1831. One of these, Zodiac Light, was competent by fairly ordinary, but The Gin shows a new awareness among the white people of the colony. I speculate that ‘Hugo’ was born between 1800 and 1810, in the colony, and grew up with Aboriginal playmates. He writes as one who knows the bush — and the Aborigines’ plight.

This poem was first published as “Original Poetry” in The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Saturday 16 July 1831, page 4. It offers early instances of several words like gin, gunya and waratah.

(As I have a strong interest in such things, I have found an even earlier case of waratah from 1804. Oddly, there seems to have been no other mention of the plant until 1826, when the modern spelling first appeared. By 1831, Hugo was out-of-date in his terms. The real question must be: what happened to him?)

The Gin

“Where spreads the sloping shaded turf

By Coodge’s* smooth and sandy bay,

And roars the ever-ceaseless surf,

I’ve built my gunya for to-day.

“The gum-tree with its glitt’ring leaves

Is sparkling in the sunny light,

And round my leafy home it weaves

Its dancing shade with flow’rets bright.

“And beauteous things around are spread;

The burwan*, with its graceful bend

And cone of nuts, and o’er my head

The flowering vines their fragrance lend.

“The grass-tree, too, is waving there,

The fern-tree sweeping o’er the stream,

The fan-palm, curious as rare.

And warretaws* with crimson beam.

“Around them all the glecinæ*

Its dainty tendrils careless winds,

Gemming their green with blossoms gay,

One common flower each bush-shrub finds.

“Fresh water, too, is tumbling o’er

The shell-strewn rocks into the sea;

‘Midst them I seek the hidden store,

To heap the rich repast for thee.

“But where is Bian?—where is he?

My husband comes not to my meal:

Why does he not the white man flee,

Nor let their god his senses steal?

“Lingers he yet in Sydney streets?

Accursed race! to you we owe,

No more the heart contented beats.

But droops with sickness, pain, and woe.

“Oh ! for the days my mother tells,

Ere yet the white man knew our land;

When silent all our hills and dells,

The game was at the huntsman’s hand.

“Then roamed we o’er the sunny hill,

Or sought the gully’s grassy way,

With ease our frugal nets could fill

From forest, plain, or glen, or bay.

“Where sported once the kangaroo,

Their uncouth cattle trend the soil,

Or corn-crops spring, and quick renew,

Beneath the foolish white man’s toil.

“On sunny spots, by coast and creek,

Near the fresh stream we sat us down ;

Now fenced, and shelterless, and bleak,

They’re haunted by the white man’s frown.

She climbed the rock—she gazed afar—

The sun behind those mountains blue

Had sunk; faint gleamed the Western star,

And in the East a rainbow hue

Was mingling with the darkling sea;

When gradual rose the zodiac light,

And over rock, and stream, and tree,

Spread out its chastened radiance bright.

So calm, so soft, so sweet a ray,

It lingers on the horizon’s shore;

The echo of the brighter day,

That bless’d the world on hour before.

But sudden fades the beam that shone,

And lit the earth like fairy spell;

Whilst in the East, the sky’s deep tone

Proclaims the daylight’s last farewell.

“Fast comes the night, and Bian yet

Returns not to his leafy bed;

My hair is with the night-dew wet

Sleep comes not to this aching bead.

“The screeching cockatoo’s at rest;

From yonder flat the curlew’s wail

Comes mournful to this sorrowing breast,

And keenly blows the Southern gale.

“Avaunt ye from our merry land!

‘Ye that so boast our souls to save,

Yet treat us with such niggard hand:

We have no hope but in the grave.”

Thus sung Toongulla’s wretched child,

As o’er her sleeping babe she hung.

Mourning her doom, to lead a wild

And cheerless life the rocks among.

Their health destroyed—their sense depraved

The game, their food, for ever gone;

Let me invoke religion’s aid

To shield them from this double storm

Glycine sp.   (Peter Macinnis)

Of physical and moral ill;

We owe them all that we possess

The forest, plain, the glen, the hill,

Were theirs;—to slight is to oppress.

— Hugo

Footnotes:

* Coodge: Coogee

* burwan: burrawang

* warretaw: waratah.

* glecinæ: probably  Glycine sp., a member of the Fabaceae

Waratah, Telopea speciosissima (Peter Macinnis)

A visit to the Sydney volcano

Looking east, near Green 4.

Yes, that's right, Sydney has a volcano — or at least a remnant in the form of some contact metamorphism.  The last time I visited this was 41 years ago, and I had trouble finding precise information on the web, so this post is in part to save others the searching annoyance I had. The assorted technical words are there to catch the attention of people's web searches. The rest of you, just enjoy the views, OK?

The short version: look for the structure on the right, and go around to the left of it. The neck will be in front of you. The coordinates are, near enough, -33.887471, 151. 285581.

Detailed version

Looking south, on the coast, southern end of golf course

On the premises of the North Bondi Golf Club, there is an outcrop of sandstone which has been turned to quartzite. The standard view is that this is the result of contact metamorphism from a volcanic neck that burnt its way through the Triassic Hawkesbury sandstone. There are also a number of weathered dykes in the area.

The location is near Green 4.  I got off the 380 bus near Wallis Parade, scrambled up the slope to the golf course, and made my way cautiously across course.  After a bit of poking around to the south, where I saw this amazing pair of weathered-out dykes — or is it a trio?
I think the left-most is just a joint.

No matter, I found the columnar jointed quartzite when I clambered on top of the sandstone structure in the first picture, found a tee, and then looked down.  I scrambled back down the quite daunting sandstone stairs (no hand-rail!), and went around to get my shots. 

Looking north from the quartzite

I then took one more shot to guide those coming behind me. The chimney from the sewage treatment works (top left cornert) is a good landmark, and I was looking north here, from just beside the quartzite. You can just see North Head in the distance, out on the right.

That left that part of my morning done, so I skittled back down to the road to catch a 380 bus further north, getting off at Macquarie Light, a remarkably early Sydney structure.

MACQUARIE TOWER and LIGHT, is situated on the highest Part of the Outer South Head of Port Jackson Harbour, in Latitude 33° 51’ 40” S and Longitude 151° 16’ 50” E. from Greenwich. The Height of the Light from the Base is 76 Feet; and from thence to the Level of the Sea 277 Feet, being a total Height of 353 Feet.—The Inner South Head bears from the Light-House N. by W. ¾ W. distant 1¼ Miles. The Outer North Head bears from it N. by E. 2 Miles. The Inner South Head and Outer North Head, lay N. E. ½ E. and S. W. ½ W. of each other, distant 1 1-10th Mile. The Light can be seen from S. by E. to N. by E. Those lines of Bearing clearing the Coast line ½ a point each way, and may be discovered from a Ship’s deck on a clear Night, 8 Leagues. The North End of the Sow-and-Pigs Reef bears from the Inner South Head, S. W. by. W. ½ a Mile. N. B. The Bearings are Magnetic, and the Distances computed in Nautic Miles. The Variation 9° Easterly.
(signed) J. Oxley, Surveyor General.
Sydney, New South Wales,
29th April, 1818.
— The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 20 June 1818, 1, http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/2178010

Cactus (probably Opuntia, a weed.)

 After that, it was plants. I have been teaching my young charges at Manly Vale Public School this week, and one of the things I introduced them to, in my role as "visiting scientist", was the one on the left, Kunzea ambigua, which is important on North Head, and hard to photograph. I was fairly satisfied with this one, though I was happier with the bee that was burying itself in a cactus flower.

Still, this last one would have pleased my children most, because I introduced them to the art of determining gender in she-oaks, an Australian and Pacific native genus.

They delighted in spotting the trees and shouting "boy-tree" and "girl-tree", once they cottoned onto how to tell which was which. This Allocasuarina distyla is a girl-tree, as they would all have known, because they now recognise male and female flowers.

I have no idea what the long-term effect will be of my teaching them that particular skill, but I am sure that in some way, it will have opened somebody's heart and mind to a new way of thinking.

That means I win!

Proper Australian seasons

This was by way of a try-out for a small part of a project which was at the time, still to be green-lighted. The project is now complete, and today, 15 January 2017, I signed the contract and burned the CDs that will be Australian Backyard Earth Scientist. Today, I am creating that page, and it will be up later. Tomorrow, I will post the whole lot back to the National Library of Australia.

Please note: I think there is enough raw material here to get some talented person thinking about an illustrated children's book. My project is not going that way: if that's your thing, please, go for it — and I will even help!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

When the First Fleet reached Sydney in 1788, they found “a land of contrarieties”: the swans were black, not white; trees kept their leaves but dropped their bark; it was warm on the hills and cool in the valleys; the eagles were white; the bees had no sting — and the seasons were wrong way around!

They had to adapt, and legend says the Marine soldiers soon learned to change between winter and summer uniforms, using seasons based on the first day of March, June, September and December. Those arbitrary dates sort of worked.

The invaders would have been better off using a natural calendar, as the Dharawal people of Sydney did. You can find the details on the web: search on <Dharawal seasons>, or look at  http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/dharawal.

Flying fox, Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney

Miwa Gawaian, or waratah

This page is being written during Ngoonungi, which is cool, getting warmer, the time when the Miwa Gawaian (waratah) flowers, but Ngoonungi is mainly the time of the gathering of the flying foxes.

I live in Sydney, just north of Dharawal lands, and as dusk gathers each night, I see these fruit bats fluttering east along the valley below my study, sometimes close to my window, rushing off to gorge on figs. I know then that the time has come to work barefoot during the day. It is the season of happy toes, and it will last six months.

Far to my north, in Yolngu country, the stringybark is in flower now as Rarranhdharr comes to an end. In the Anangu Pitjantjatjara country, in what we call the north of South Australia, it is the end of Piriyakutu/ Piriya-Piriya, when the hibernating reptiles come out. In Western Australia, the Noongar people call this time Kambarang, when the rain gets less, and the quandong is in fruit.

The first Australians have lots of additional season markers for those seasons, as you can find out by searching on those season names on the internet, but I have my own local season markers. I react to the first blowfly, cicada or koel; first magpie attack; the first funnelweb (or brown trapdoor spider) in the swimming pool; and the first Christmas beetle, mosquito and channel-billed cuckoo.

Angophora costata (it looks like a gum

tree, but it isn't).

When my children were younger, they knew it was proper summer when first Bogong moth got in and started banging around on the ceiling at night. For me, high summer is when the trunks of the Sydney smooth-barked apple, Angophora costata, go orange-brown. We take friends on mystery walks that pass through a grove of these, just to watch their wonderment.

When my children were younger, they knew it was proper summer when first Bogong moth got in and started banging around on the ceiling at night. For me, high summer is when the trunks of the Sydney smooth-barked apple, Angophora costata, go orange-brown. We take friends on mystery walks that pass through a grove of these, just to watch their wonderment.

Other season boundaries include the last mosquito, water dragon, or channel-billed cuckoo; the pink haze of new leaves on the gum trees: the first really hot, dry westerlies and the first evening storms with warm rain that you want to run around in. Or the first real electrical storm that you don’t want to run around in!

A few natural season markers come from introduced species, like the jacaranda time in late October. There is a University of Sydney tradition that if you haven't started studying before the jacaranda in the main quadrangle flowers you will fail your end-of-year exams. Sydney’s very first jacaranda comes out at Circular Quay, and I saw it the day I wrote this.

Jacarandas 14 October 2016, Circular Quay, Sydney. Look for the almost-out flowers on the right.

Then there are tulips, daffodils, petunias, and the autumn colours on the liquidambars. There are natural season markers everywhere, when you start to look.

But then I wondered about more human, more urban markers of the seasons, so I asked my friends what they thought, and here is what we found between us: the first time your breath comes out of your mouth like smoke as the water vapour in your breath condenses in the cold; the time when you can stop nagging the children to wear a hat and have to start nagging them to wear a jumper, or when you wake up in spring and hate the thought of porridge, so you go to muesli, and back again in autumn.

I really loved this one from Anil Tortop, a Turkish-born illustrator in Brisbane: “The time I use/stop using hair dryer. Or when ants start to invade the kitchen. Or when geckos start singing all together.”

Urban seasons are also divided by the first mention of “tinderbox” on the news; first Christmas music in a shop; the appearance of footie goalposts; first plastic bags of autumn; the first hot cross bun or plum pudding; the first advertisements for Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mothers’ Day, Fathers’ Day, International Talk Like a Pirate Day, Halloween, Christmas, after-Christmas sales; the last swim of the season; first lighting of the gas heater at night.

But that’s enough from me: what are your seasonal dividing markers, and what do you call your seasons? There are no rules about numbers: most Indigenous calendars seem to have six seasons.

Guilty parties

Thanks to these friends who threw suggestions at me: Matthew Ansell-Laurendet, Barbara Braxton, Mel Campbell, Peter Chubb, Toby Fiander, Jan Gidge, Anne Graham, Rachel Hennessy, Serene Johnson, Mary-Ellen Jordan, Tamara Kelly, Peter McBurney, Rob McFarlane, Kari McKern, Ian Musgrave, Judith Nelson, KJ Price, Anil Tortop, Tamsyn Taylor, Emily Walpole, Alexandra Williams, Losang Zopa.

Points of view on points

A few years back, we were on a rapid chase of rocks, plants and animals in central Australia, and I never noticed one day when I brushed against a spinifex (Triodia) clump. I got back to the motel, washed my socks, and in the dry Alice Springs heat, they were ready to wear at dawn.

Something was wrong, though. My leg itched, and suspecting an insect, I looked closely. I found several seeds which had evaded vigorous washing, and I remembered what Ernest Giles said.

In 1872, in Australia Twice Traversed, he wrote of "…the so-called spinifex or porcupine grass — botanically, the Triodia, or Festuca irritans…"

About a week later, he added "Whenever one moves, these spines enter the clothes in all directions, making it quite a torture to walk about among them." Well, I can confirm that.

Three weeks later, Giles "… fell into a hideous bunch of this horrid stuff, and got pricked from head to foot; the spiny points breaking off in my clothes and flesh caused me great annoyance and pain for many days after." I didn't try that.

A few days later, he that he and the horses were suffering after going through 200 miles of "the vile stuff", and my third shot, showing a Triodia-covered hillside will give you the idea of what it was like.

A hillside covered with Triodia tussocks near Standley Chasm.

Giles usually travelled with a small dog, and learned to carry a dog called Monkey, when they passed through Triodia. That was less possible with camels, and he reported in 1875 that they lost all the hair on their legs up to three feet, and the bare skin turned black. In 1897, David Carnegie's horses and camels were so hungry, they ate spinifex.

Spines and prickles have always interested me, and if you look at http://www.tinyurl.com/ozlingo, you will find that the Bathurst burr and cobbler's pegs were once a part of my long list of temporary obsessions.

Here are some views of cobbler's pegs seeds, Bidens sp. The first is of a germinating seed, the others are views of ungerminated seeds, showing the prickles that help the seeds attach to animal fur or human clothes.

Why did I have a germinating seed? Parents, grandparents and teachers please note: cobbler's pegs seeds are great for germination experiments (so are dandelion seeds). Hint: a eucalyptus-scented tissue delays germination by several days. I will say more about that, some other time.

Now here, on the right, is a tick, also seen under the microscope: note the barbs on the stylet between the palps! This particular tick was in my neck for several hours, some years ago, and my wife pulled it out with tweezers.  It hurt, so I took a closer look, and realised why so many expletives flew as she pulled it out. Usually, this is the time when some of the tick's gut contents are pumped into the patient.

This pumping effect is why using tweezers is NOT recommended any more. Freeze, don't squeeze!

Lizards have spines, too, and every point tells an evolutionary tale.

 
Finally, how do you handle an echidna?

Answer: very carefully!  If you do ever need to handle one, you (1) need training, you (2) need a very good reason to do so, and (3) either use heavy leather gardening gloves, or an old coat, or several layers of thick towelling. At a pinch, two wallets will save your hands...

I once stopped traffic on the Hume Highway to move one off the road, so this sort of situation can arise, but as a rule. just leave them alone. (I have to say that the Hume Highway drivers I briefly inconvenienced were all considerate and understanding, but the echidna was probably a bit traumatised, though less so than it would have been if a truck went over it.

We cannot call any of these organisms, or their outer layers, pointless. Like all of nature, they merit closer study.