Travelling Worm

In this post: Meryla Flora Reserve, Morton National Park, and the Fitzroy Falls in New South Wales, Australia. Plus wombat poo, plant snot, a cicada husk, a predatory lyrebird, and a somewhat dark ending.

This is the blog of Mark Wordsworm, the travelling worm. I’m a 40-year-old bookmark (give or take a few years) and I proudly boast my own Hallmark serial number, 95 HBM 80-1. You’ll probably want to read all about me and my Travelling Companion (the TC).

Today’s travel notes

Me and the TC set out to explore some 4WD tracks around Meryla. We discovered that all the dirt tracks were closed to vehicles, due to environmental concerns and track repairs. It’s a beautiful area, so we drove around on the sealed roads instead, exploring parts of Meryla Flora Reserve and the Fitzroy Falls in Morton National Park.

The book I’m in

Machinehood, by S.B. Divya. This is the second book by this author that the TC has put me in, and I’m enjoying it just as much as I enjoyed the first (Meru). Divya has created an interesting and exciting mix of philosophy and science, resulting in an excellent SciFi story.

Travel tips

Take your own picnic, so that you can stop wherever you like to enjoy the scenery and the peace.

The photos

Me at Fitzroy Falls:

We started our explorations in Meryla Flora Reserve on one side of Morton National Park. The day was misty, which added to the beauty of the forests and valleys.

The TC, bless her cotton socks, was taking great care to avoid all the poo on the ground. A closer look through the camera lens revealed that it wasn’t poo:

Nor was it seaweed. We were far from the coast. No, it’s a type of cyanobacterium (Nostoc commune), fondly known as plant snot. People also call it star jelly, witch’s butter, and mare’s eggs. It’s found world-wide. The part that you see is a sheath made of jelly. The bacteria live inside the sheath, and can form large colonies.

So that’s what the TC was traipsing through. It’s a good thing she was careful, as plant snot is very slippery when it’s wet, as it was here. In long dry spells, it dries out and waits for rain.

To her delight, the TC did encounter some actual poo, perched neatly on a rock:

Poo-bearing rock is a fairly common sight in the Australian bush. Evidently wombats, the makers of these monuments, deposit their offerings on a rock as a mark of territory. He who poos highest has the most influence in terms of spreading scent and being seen.

We left Meryla Flora Reserve and made our way to Fitzroy Falls, on the other side of Morton National Park. The waterfall is 81 metres high, formed by the Yarrunga Creek dropping into Kangaroo Valley. To get an idea of the scale, notice the people on viewing platforms on the left and right of the falls in this picture:

This is a view of the valley. The falls are off-camera on the left:

It’s worth walking along the trails on either side of the falls. This lovely old eucalypt, nicknamed The Knobbly Tree, is on the Western Rim Walking Track:

Of course, the TC insisted on a pic of yours truly cuddling up to the tree, in spite of the scary-looking spider webs that covered the bark:

Imagine the spider that lives in the hole sunken into that web. I’m sure this would be a case of its bite is worse than its bark.

A tranquil view of the falls from afar restored my je ne sais quoi:

Not far away, another peril lurked: a lyrebird scratched through the dirt looking for grubs and chatting to its friend. While the TC ooh-ed and aah-ed, this worm stayed far away from the modern-day dinosaur:

When in natural surrounds in Australia, it’s always worth looking under the picnic table.

Here comes the dark ending that I promised at the start of this post. The TC noticed this cicada husk under the picnic table:

More disturbing, and a caution to an unwary worm, were the pieces of cicada lying on top of the table:

This worm does hope that the cicada who emerged from the husk had time to enjoy life above ground, and that it was another poor insect who fell prey to a bird.

That’s all for today, folks.