The Dandenongs through the eyes of a conservator

Lucy's uncle Mike had put us in contact with a student who is passionate about the Dandenongs and knows them intimately.  We met up with Alex Maisey for an afternoon in the forest.  Alex has been studying lyrebirds for the past 12 years and we headed off to check on some nests.  Up a very muddy little stream Alex pointed out a nest in the top of a tree fern - a scraggly pile of branches with a hole in the side. 

We're not sure we would have spotted this nest!

Unfortunately the single egg had been robbed from the nest, so we headed on to another site where we were collecting photos from a remote sensor camera set up on a lyrebird display mound. It was exciting to put the memory card into the laptop and see short videos of male lyrebirds maintaining the mound, debating territory and one male impressing a female with his elaborate dancing and tail fan shaking.  We also saw images of wallabies, wombats and the invasive red fox.  These foxes were introduced to hunt about a century ago and now pose a major threat to many small mammals and birds that live and nest near the ground.  Extensive fox baiting has allowed the endangered lyrebird population to start recovering over the past decade.

Back in the main Sherbrooke forest we headed off the path to look for more lyrebirds and to admire the forest from the best vantage points.  

A Lyrebird nest in the fork of a tree.

Mommy lyrebird on her egg.

The forest is majestic!

We were both in our element with Geoff being surrounded by big trees and Lucy to have someone to answer all her questions on the ecology of the forest, forest succession, fire, and anything else related to the local environment.  Alex was long suffering and continued his fascinating narrative as we zigzagged through the forest looking at stands of slender tree ferns, very big Mountain Ash trees, flowering orchids, river cascades, climax cool rainforest, etc.  It was really nice to chat with someone who knew the forest so intimately and to see the things you miss on the main path. Thanks Alex!

"What would you like to know about ferns?" Alex patiently answers Lucy's questions.

Explanation on how a lyrebird makes his display mound.

A small grove of slender ferns in amongst the Mountain Ash's.

Fern Lace

The Mountain Ash trees just go up and up!!!

An epiphytic orchid on a Sassafras tree.

Lucy in her element

This ancient gum tree had lots of interesting nodules which Geoff took to with gusto. Climbing trees is one of his favourite passtimes....

William Ricketts Sanctuary

William Ricketts was an Australian artist and sculptor who lived on a piece of forested land in the Dandenong Ranges.  He developed a compassion for the forests and the animals living in the forest and to the aboriginal people of Australia.  William spent many years visiting and staying with aboriginal people (he was a white man), learning about their beliefs and earning their trust.  Aborigines do not like having their picture taken, painted or sculptured as they believe that it ties their bodies to the earth and does not allow their spirits to go into the next world.  William managed to persuade them that it was through showcasing their connectedness with nature that Europeans might start to take care of the biodiversity and ecosystems that the aborigines treasure and depend on.  So he sculptured them in clay and mounted them on rocks in the forest around his home.  His property became a gallery and the beautiful sculptures blended in well to their environment and became covered in algae and moss. 

The old entrance to the sanctuary creates a wonderfully austere welcome. 

The clay sculptures were created with the texture of wood and  it is difficult to discern where the wood and stone ends and the sculpture starts.

Children feature strongly in the sculptures.

The scale of the sculptures are often to actual size making them even more realistic.

The natural colouring blends the sculptures in to their surroundings to the point that we often didn't see them at first glance.

Before he died, William Ricketts donated his land to the State and it is now a sanctuary - a peaceful piece of forest where 92 of his sculptures nestle onto rocks or stand in quiet glens.  Many of them are designed to have small fountains coming out of them and most have been sculptured to look like they've been carved out of wood.  He often sculptured himself along with aborigines and many of the sculptures include forest animals or birds.  All of them embrace Aboriginal spirituality and a respect for the natural world.

William Ricketts with two lyrebirds - a symbol of harmony with the forest

Healesville Sanctuary

About 2 hours outside Melbourne is the Healesville Sanctuary.  It is part of the Melbourne Zoo complex, but showcases only native Australian animals and birds.  Neither of us are very keen on zoos, but since so many of Australia's animals are nocturnal, smallish and often adapted to live in trees, this was a great way to see them.   Marsupials (pouched mammals who's underdeveloped newborns complete their development in their mother's pouch) are so energy-efficient that they need to eat one fifth less food than equivalent sized placental mammals.  We enjoyed learning more about them.

The beautiful eagle statue at the entrance.

They have enclosures where a combination of animals live together in a certain habitat and they do shows in the arena.  We were extremely impressed with the raptor show which was outstanding and showcased some really impressive raptors, parrots and cockatoos flying 'up close' while they told you about them.

The busy little echidna running around

Ever wondered why kangaroos hop?  It turns out that hopping is the most efficient way to get around at medium speeds.  This is because the energy of the bounce is stored in the tendons in their legs and their intestines bounce up and down, pumping their lungs full of air without them needing to use their chest muscles!

A lazy red kangaroo.  We definitely did not expect to see them like this!  All he needs is a cocktail with a little umbrella in it....

Mom and joey kangaroo - odder looking than we expected! Do you notice how much of their weight sits on their tails?

The Monitor Lizard at the reptile display, similar in size to the Legavaans back home, but with some funky colours. Geoff had never touched one before.

Mr Red Tailed Black Cockatoo - his wife was also impressive with gold flecks over her body and yellow and red in her tail.

Lucy feeding an Eclectus Parrot

The Blue-faced Honeyeater

A cute little Zebra Finch

The Green Parrots, like the Rosellas, loved Geoff's hair!

These little guys were so friendly and playful.

At the koala enclosure there wasn't much activity - just fur balls up in the trees.  We didn't blame them as it was pretty chilly.  The Volunteer suggested we come back at feeding time when they come down out of the trees.

Mmmm... fresh gum leaves!

We were rewarded with a little joey koala clambering around on his mum! So cute!  That morning was the first morning that his mum had been secreting a special type of faeces for him to eat called pap which provides him with the necessary bacteria to break down the tannins in the Gum leaves, so he was excitedly nibbling here and there.

Curious little fellow.

Cuddled up again in a warm little ball.

We read the following in the Lonely Planet about koalas:

"If you visit a wildlife park or zoo, you will notice the faraway look in a koala's eyes.   It seems as if nobody is home - and this is in fact near to the truth. Several years ago biologists announced that koalas have very small brains compared to the size of their skulls..... and we now believe that they have sacrificed their brain for energy efficiency.  Brains cost a lot to run - ours typically weigh 2% of our body weight and use 20% of the energy that we consume.  Koalas eat gum leaves which are so toxic that they use 20% of their energy just detoxifying this food.  This leaves little energy for their brain, and living in the treetops where there are so few predators for a large animal means that they can get by with few wits at all."

We're not sure what the zookeepers would say to that!

A fuzzy wombat

The Rock Wallaby - the equivalent to our Klipspringer

 The Sanctuary had an interesting campaign running called "Wipe for Wildlife".  Back home we're encouraged to use toilet paper made from recycled paper or pulp by-product from sugar production, etc as a more sustainable option (and generally it isn't bleached and washed and so uses less water and doesn't pollute that water) to toilet paper made from trees planted in a plantation.  In Aus, this is a real issue as indigenous forest is stripped, pulped and exported to countries that turn that pulp into toilet paper and send it back to Aus.  In Tasmania some of the forests being logged are hundreds of years old.  This type of habitat loss is the biggest threat to Australian forest wildlife (along with foxes and feral cats) and there is a big campaign to protect this wildlife by buying toilet paper made from a responsible source.  Their advertising campaign was interesting and we found these posing boards at the sanctuary.

We thought Geoff's one was particularly appropriate/funny!

The Dandenongs

Lucy's uncle, Mike Clarke, met us at Melbourne airport and whisked us off to dinner in the city before heading out to the outskirts of the city. We had our first taste of kangaroo fillet - which is surprisingly similar to ostrich fillet in taste and texture.

Mike, Geoff and Lucy enjoying Kangaroo Steak

The Dandenong mountain range lies 45minutes drive east of the city of Melbourne and is an area of (mostly) protected indigenous forest including massive Mountain Ash trees (a Eucalypt) with an understory of, among other things, a couple species of Tree Fern.  We are both super keen on plants - Geoff on trees and Lucy on everything else!  The Mountain Ash is the tallest flowering tree in the world and some of the trees that we saw are vying with General Sherman ( the tallest redwood - not a flowering tree - which grows in California at ~111m) for the title of tallest living organism on earth.  The range was formed by an ancient cauldron volcano and its lava flows, which, after about 300 million years, have broken down to form the rich soils that support the forest.  Initially the Dandenlongs were the summer hunting ground of the Wurundjeri tribe of aborigines and it was named "Corrhanwarrabul' meaning 'beautiful place where the birds sang, kangaroos jumped and lyrebirds performed.'  The white man arrived in the 1830's and pretty soon began aggressively logging the timber of the 100m+ trees for ship building and construction.  Most of the trees we were to see were 2nd or 3rd generation and even so some of them have almost reached the 100m mark!

The Mighty Mountain Ash with Tree Ferns making up the understory, it is difficult to comprehend the scale of these trees in photographs

We were based in the little village of Olinda and stayed in a lovely guest house from where we explored the area.  First up was the National Rhododendron Garden.  Although we were too early for the mass displays of Rhododendrons and Azaleas, the Camellias were all out and some of the first of the rhodies.  One thing we've noticed is that Australians like to display specimen trees - both their own and foreign trees, and we both really enjoyed the beautiful trees on show.  It was exciting for us to see our first of the Australian birds in their weird and wonderful shapes and colours.  

Tree Ferns make the most beautiful patterns.

The cute Eastern Yellow Robin

Rhododendrons really are impressive flowers

Hmm...de ja vu... looks like that picture in Wisley Gardens in England... Daffodils and temperatures below 10 degrees....

After some really great Aussie meat pies for lunch, we headed down to Sherbrooke Forest for a walk under the famous Mountain Ash's.  At the parking lot there is a 'wild' bird feeding station where, for a small fee, you can get a bowl of bird seed and feed the cockatoos and rosellas.  The cockatoos were much heavier than we expected and relatively hard work to hold up when 3 of them perched squabbling on your arm!  

Geoff with a Sulphur Crested Cockatoo

Three Cockatoos get mighty heavy!!

The Crimson Rosella's really loved Geoff's hair!

Hello! Their crests were beautiful!

We escaped the squawking, squabbling, and asian-photo-taking mass and headed off into the quiet of the forest. It was surreal to see such beautiful tall trees with their silver trunks and the lush green of the tree ferns below.  Up close, most of the tree ferns are pretty tall in their own right with many being over 4 meters tall.  

We have also been amazed how these forests full of beautiful, established forest comprise mostly of the trees and plants that we are trying so hard to eradicate in South Africa. It is surreal to see black wattle, myrtle, gum trees and port jackson looking so happy and glamourous in their natural surrounds!

Lovely forest walking

A rare Slender Tree Fern - one of the tallest we saw which we guessed stood at 8m!

Suddenly the forest was filled with bird song from a number of birds all calling at the same time.  The sound seemed to be coming from somewhere up ahead so we crept on until the calls came from both sides of the path.  At this point we recalled hearing about the lyrebird and how they mimic different sounds in the forest, and after now looking for a single large bird near the ground, we finally caught sight of on of him before he hopped off the log he was standing on and disappeared into the ferny undergrowth.  Super excited about our lyrebird sighting (glimpse!), we walked on and were soon rewarded by seeing a male walk across the path just in front of us.  Lyrebirds are relatively dull coloured in browny grey and are about the size of a khoraan with a long stocky tail.  In the mature males this plain tail transforms into a mass of long white feathers almost like skinny ostrich feathers and with the two end feathers thick and richly marked in rust and black.  During mating displays the males hold these feathers in a fan vertically or flat over their heads as they shake the whole fan and sing for the females, trying to impress them into mating.  By the end of our walk we'd seen a total of 6 birds (apparently quite rare) and Geoff had encountered the famous black leeches that fall from the trees and ferns.  The heavens had also opened us about 40 mins from the end of our walk, and despite having rain boots and jackets with us, two very sodden South Africans could be seen stripping off to get into their car!

A male Lyrebird displaying his tail - photo from Google

We wrapped the day off with a fantastic dinner at the SkyHigh Restaurant although the cloud was down and we didn't have much view :(

Complementary transport to the SkyHigh Resturant!

Home Sweet (New) Home

Back to Cape Town.

Its so fantastic being back in the city we love.  We spent 2 weeks moving house, catching up with family and friends, and doing some of the things we love like cycling on the mountain (Geoff) and working in the garden (Lucy).  Cape Town in Winter is such a great place with beautiful sunny days in between some amazing storms.

Good news is that both of us seem to still be in demand and will have jobs when we get back from our trip at the end of September! Being far away had made us question whether we'd still be relevant and useful in the positions we had held before. We quickly realised upon our return how much value we could add and feel much better for it.

All too soon we were back on the road (in the air…?) as we headed off to Australia for the last couple of months of our trip.