57 replies to this topic

[wagtail]

hello Murmurs people, I am back from W.A....I'm sure you all missed me heaps, and no doubt you have all been waiting with anticipation for my stories from the west....hehe. I intend to blah on, so feel free to skip over it all.

So, I went to Perth for an ecology conference, 700+ uber nature-nerds from around the globe, and I mean nerds....I seemed positively cool amongst this crowd....also I should issue a discalimer, if I say anything derogatory about academics it's not meant as a slight against anyone here, in fact without knowing some of you peeps, I may not have had the confidence to go to this conference at all - so thanks :)....but yeah, people who have led very institutionalised lives are kinda different to me and I found some of them very difficult to communicate with.

What was great and inspiring about the conference was hearing about all sorts of great work that is being done all over the planet.  There were people from Europe, China, India, Kuwait, Libya, North and South America, Iran, South Africa, Korea, NZ etc etc etc.  And there were representatives from various indigenous cultures from around the world, including the US, Peru, and many parts of Australia.

I went on a couple of multi-day field trips with a very international bunch of people and it was wonderful to see my own country through the eyes of others.  To watch as a young Chinese woman took photo after photo of leaf litter beneath eucalypts because she thought it looked beautiful.....to see uber-botanists with their brains about to explode at the newness of what they were seeing, and twitchers get excited about birds that I watch daily in my back yard  :p.  All very cool.

Anyway, here's my photos......[with apologies for the quality of some of these, I left the SLR at home and had a few issues with the new compact]

first up is a bit of a panorama of the city of Perth:

http://www.murmurs.c...77&d=1251953460

There are about 2 million people in the Perth metropolitan area, and per capita it is now one of the most sprawling cities on earth.  It is located on the Swan River which provides an idyllic setting for a fairly uninspired city.     Weirdly the city it most reminds me of is Dallas.  Maybe its a mining town/oil town thing.  People in Perth seem more aggressive than in Adelaide and the cost of living must be pretty high, because we ate some pretty average meals which cost about the same amount as really great fine dining cost in Adelaide.  

One thing Perth has going for it is a great public transport system.  Lots of trains and the buses all run on natural gas, so there is not a lot of pollution in the city. You see this sign on all the buses and trains, it sounds like a euphemism for farting or masturbating if you ask me:

http://www.murmurs.c...75&d=1251953460

The other great thing about Perth is Kings Park Botanic Gardens which is one of the biggest urban parks in the world.  Most of it is natural bushland and it houses some great research facilities, which is needed as the areas around Perth are some of the most bio-diverse in the world.  Western Australia has around 12,000 plant species [and growing].  

The cityscape above was taken from  a vantage point in Kings Park, the photo below is of some everlasting daisies in the park..the sort of view you would have if you laid back and looked skywards:

http://www.murmurs.c...76&d=1251953460

[wagtail]

I had one day on Rottnest Island, which is about an hour and a bit by ferry from Perth.  It is a car free zone and if my time had been my own I would have very much liked to cycle around and explore some of the many little bays on the island.  Rott-o is best known for it's population of Quokkas a little hopping marsupial that is mostly nocturnal but they can sometimes be seen under bushes in the daytime, I was able to get a nice snap of this female.  There are about 13000 Quokkas on the island:

http://www.murmurs.c...72&d=1251953288

I also spent quite a bit of time just lazing around on a jetty watching all the fish in the shallows, I also saw a big sting ray while I was there:

http://www.murmurs.c...74&d=1251953288

Rottnest Island is a pretty good spot for snorkelling, I think it has the most southerly occurrences of coral in the world...but I could be wrong about that.  Anyhow, I think it would be nice to spend a bit of time there exploring some of the little bays:

http://www.murmurs.c...73&d=1251953288

Edited by wagtail, 03 September 2009 - 01:30 AM.

[wagtail]

The first field trip went north of Perth into a few national parks [Kalbarri, Coalseam, Lesueur]  where there was usually a profusion of wild-flowers, fields of native daisies mostly, and they went for as far as the eye could see in so many places:

http://www.murmurs.c...88&d=1251954314

Geologically we were on some of the oldest dirt on earth, and in country which had fairly low rainfall...one of the unusual things about the ecology of Western Australia is that the lower the rainfall, and the less fertile the soil, the greater the diversity of species in the flora.  Interestingly, there are very few native grasses here, and therefore surprisingly few kangaroos.  It was kind of weird to be in such an undisturbed landscape and see so few kangas.


Here's a couple of pic of the red-rock and white sand country that the Murchison River carves it's way through:

http://www.murmurs.c...81&d=1251953895



http://www.murmurs.c...82&d=1251953895

This photo is of a place called The Pinnacles, which was an amazing environment that I would like to revisit and spend some time in.  I need to look into how these formations occur because I heard two different versions when I was there:

http://www.murmurs.c...84&d=1251953969

We were there just before sunset and it is quite an eerie, haunting environment, with these formations looking like scattered tombstones.

Edited by wagtail, 03 September 2009 - 01:15 AM.

[wagtail]

This photo is from Lesueur National Park, which was one of my favourite spots....the 'bigness' of this landscape was impossible to capture, so I'm a bit disappointed with my photos from there, but I'm posting this one to give you an idea.  The biodiversity in Lesueur is incredible, with 110 native plant species being recorded in one 10 x 10 metre area.

http://www.murmurs.c...83&d=1251953969

[wagtail]

You're probably bored already...I'll have a rest before posting more.  

Should I drop the ecology stuff and just post the pics...??

[Leilani]

Thanks for sharing Rebekah - those Pinnacles look pretty bizzaro!

[zeppelino]

wagtail said:

  

Should I drop the ecology stuff and just post the pics...??

Pics are amazing. I, for one, think you should not drop the ecology stuff, I like reading it.

[trix]

wagtail said:

You're probably bored already...I'll have a rest before posting more.  

Should I drop the ecology stuff and just post the pics...??

Don't be ridiculous, let us all discover our nature nerd side...

[Green Lady]

Fantastic photos, Rebekah!  I enjoyed reading your impressions of the places you visited, and it sounds like you had an interesting time.

[OneArpeggioPete]

keep on with the nature nerd stuff, it's incredible! :) and the photos are really beautiful, make me want to go to western australia even more.

:-)

oneArpeggiopete:cool:

[In the Corner]

OneArpeggioPete said:

keep on with the nature nerd stuff, it's incredible! :) and the photos are really beautiful, make me want to go to western australia even more.

:-)

oneArpeggiopete:cool:

Oh yes, please continue with the nature-nerd stuff!  Makes me almost feel like I'm ambling along beside you.  I LOVE the snail's eye view of the daisies and sky.  gorgeous!

[Mary]

Awesome thread and awesome pictures.

[wagtail]

I asked because it's likely to get much, much nerdier...you've been warned...:p

Take this plant for example, it's a native legume that produces anti-grazing toxins similar to the poison '1080' which is a particularly nasty chemical still used to control feral animals in Australia [I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about the ethics of this].   It was suggested this toxin may have stopped the plants from being grazed in the era when the megafauna roamed this continent.

But anyway, native marsupials in Western Australia have evolved a tolerance to this chemical, that the same species of animals here in South Australia and the eastern states do not have.  So the poisoning of foxes, feral cats, rabbits etc can be done in WA without there being any risk of death to native species.   At this point, I should point out that the reason there are 13,000 Quokkas on Rottnest Island and virtually none on the mainland is because Rottnest doesn't have the introduced predators that the mainland has...particularly cats and foxes.  

http://www.murmurs.c...86&d=1251954287

Having said all that, the reason I really like this plant is for the patterns on the back which was pointed out to me by our tour leader, who was the king of uber-nerds, and also a very cool and interesting guy.  He speculated that the patterns on the back were to attract pollinators with UV [??] vision...ie they could see through the plant.  Kinda cool and very pretty:

http://www.murmurs.c...85&d=1251954287

Edited by wagtail, 03 September 2009 - 08:39 PM.

[wagtail]

And here's a Banksia flower, just because I think it's a pretty good photo!

http://www.murmurs.c...87&d=1251954287

There are a gazillion [I counted them, I swear!] different species of Banksia in Western Australia, as well as squillions of other members of the Proteaceae family.  This is where all the Gondwanaland super-continent stuff starts to do your head in, because botanically Western Australia actually has a lot more in common with South Africa than it does with the east of Australia.

[wagtail]

oh yeah, here is another one of our stops up north, where we ventured towards the coast, this place is just south of Shark Bay, it was kind of frustrating to get so close to Shark Bay and not actually see it for myself, it's one of those iconic nature destinations, that along with Ningaloo Reef is a place I would like to visit soon.  Hmm, I think this is also my only Indian Ocean photo.

http://www.murmurs.c...80&d=1251953895

We saw two Southern Right whales at this stop, I'd post a pic, but if you've seen one ambiguous dark shape in the water, you've seen 'em all, I reckon.

[trix]

wagtail said:

Take this plant for example, it's a native legume that produces anti-grazing toxins similar to the poison '1080' which is a particularly nasty chemical still used to control feral animals in Australia [I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about the ethics of this].   It was suggested this toxin may have stopped the plants from being grazed in the era when the megafauna roamed this continent.

But anyway, native marsupials in Western Australia have evolved a tolerance to this chemical, that the same species of animals here in South Australia and the eastern states do not have.  So the poisoning of foxes, feral cats, rabbits etc can be done in WA without there being any risk of death to native species.   At this point, I should point out that the reason there are 13,000 Quokkas on Rottnest Island and virtually none on the mainland is because Rottnest doesn't have the introduced predators that the mainland has...particularly cats and foxes.  

I hope no WA possums made it to NZ, as 1080 is the main thing used for large scale possum control ...

[wagtail]

trix said:

I hope no WA possums made it to NZ, as 1080 is the main thing used for large scale possum control ...

Oh, that's an interesting point.  Possums were introduced to NZ in the 1800's weren't they?  I reckon it's most likely they took eastern states possums over.

[wagtail]

On the second field trip we went to the south-west corner of Western Australia, through some agricultural land to look at some of the landscape restoration that the farmers in that region were involved with.  

There is a lot of degraded country in the South-west, this is a consequence of a government scheme that paid people to clear all the vegetation from the landscape.  There is a film called "a million acres a year" which documents this vandalism that was done in the name of nation building.  

Much kudos to those farmers who have stuck around and are attempting to right past wrongs.  The problem with the clearing [apart from the obvious destruction of ecosystems] was that the removal of deep rooted perennial species led to the water table rising, bringing saline water to the surface and essentially poisoning the country.  70% of Australia's dryland salinity is in Western Australia.  Those farmers we spoke to were something else, I really admire their dedication.

The following photo is of a naturally salty ecosystem.  A salt marsh on a property where the dominant species is samphire:

http://www.murmurs.c...94&d=1251954862

[wagtail]

After we visited the farmers we traveled through the Stirling Ranges National Park, a stunning area, and my favourite place we visited, I'm definitely going back there some time...there are some really cool plants in this place, but most of it was quite difficult to photograph.

Here's what the landscape looks like:

http://www.murmurs.c...97&d=1251954916

and here's another, because I like the tonality of it:

http://www.murmurs.c...96&d=1251954916

[wagtail]

okay, this is getting to be kind of a long thread.  I took loads of plant photos, but I'll just post a few that I particularly like.  The first two are of two different types of carnivorous plants.  The first is a Drosera sp. they have a around 100 [!!!] different species of Drosera in WA, I think we have maybe around 7 here in SA.  I particularly like this genus of plants, but I had no idea there were so many [I'm jealous]:

http://www.murmurs.c...99&d=1251955086

The second carnivorous plant is these freakish pitcher plant things....these are endemic to the south west of WA:

http://www.murmurs.c...04&d=1251955264


This is another of the Banksias, although I think this one used to be classified in the Dryandra genus, they have been doing all sorts of renaming because a lot of the taxonomy is based on DNA now...meh, it gives me a good excuse to not bother learning botanical names when they keep messing around with them.  I think this one is very pretty:

http://www.murmurs.c...02&d=1251955231