Go west, young man
J and I saw out the end of 2023 at Woodford Folk Festival – as usual, a lovely week of interesting talks, yummy food, muzak and e-detox. Unfortunately, we both came down with Covid-24 as soon as we got home and it knocked us around a bit this time. Sick leave helped ease the transition into the horror of working full time… and once settled in to the routine again I immediately got itchy feet. I’d gotten some gen on Condamine Earless Dragon (Tympanocryptis condaminensis) late last year, a reptile I’ve spent a lot of time surveying for and never seen. That provided a seed of an idea, and when I also got some gen on a few rare plants just west of ‘Woomba I formulated a plan. We booked a pet-friendly hotel, rounded up the hounds and departed the stifling heat and humidity of Brisbane mid-afternoon on Friday.
Up early the next morning, I enjoyed the lovely cool fog rolling over the range as I took the doggies for a walk. J slept in a bit but we were still on the road to the Dragon site before 0700. They only spend a little time basking in the morning before dispersing to forage, or seek shelter in soil cracks – and at this time of year, you don’t have much time before they warm up and skedaddle. As we were getting close to the site J remarked that “it’s very flat” and she wasn’t wrong! Heading west from Toowoomba is always a little surprising as all relief quickly disappears from the landscape. The plains stretched out around us… and then we hit the floodwaters. I’d done a recce of the satellite imagery last night to make sure we could get to the site on bitumen and I’m glad I did, because Polly had to traverse several kilometers of flooded road! We dodged the swimming house mice and eventually pulled up on some ‘high’ ground close to the site.
I won’t drag it out – we dipped. The Dragons may have been findable a couple of kilometers up the road, out of the floodwater, but we were not going to drive on the blacksoil road that was under a foot of water (obvs). Anyway, it was getting hot and we had an appointment with some rare plants (and breakfast). We took the boys for a swim on the road and then hopped back in the car. A fun little adventure and it was interesting to see the variation in the habitat. I’ll have to try again later in the season!
We ripped back into town and met up with rare plant finder extraordinaire, Dan Kelly, for breakfast. The Leuzea australis in town were showing well and flowering – a good sign. J decided that she didn’t fancy creeping around in the full sun looking for plant lifers, so she stayed back at the motel with the doggies and Dan and I headed out into the paddock. The first place we stopped was the reference site we’d been given for Picris evae. This was a lifer for both Dan and I, and our hearts sank when we saw that the roadside verge had been recently mowed. We kept our chins up however and had a good look around, and before too long Dan called me over – he’d found one!
Not a bad start to the mission! We headed back to a site we were getting quite familiar with near Gowrie Junction and quickly found the small population of Leuzea we had been tipped off about as well. These were growing just uphill from a patch of native grassland in fantastic condition, in which Dan found another Picris. We’d come to the grassland to look for our final target, Thesium australe. This peculiar parasite is very hard to find, and lived up to its reputation – we searched a 20×20 m area for almost an hour with no luck. Dan said that the plant had probably senesced (bloody thing). We were on the verge of senescence also by that time – it was about 36°C and we’d been crawling around in the sun for a few hours. We headed back down the hill into the sweltering heat of the Lockyer Valley and that was all she wrote. In the end I had a 50% strike rate for the day and we’d seen some pretty high quality rares in the wild – not bad.
I might try to do a wrap-up of 2023 next time I’m away for work – I saw a heap of new stuff last year. I hope det fixar sig is a bit more active this year, even if it’s just small posts like this that make it up.
Until next time then!
🙂