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All text and photographs © Jon Murray 2014 unless otherwise indicated.
This gallery contains 15 photos.
I’ve set up an unsophisticated photopoint (so direction and elevation of photos will probably differ quite a bit) to record changes to a single tussock and north, south, east and west respectively from there. Focal length is 28mm in all … Continue reading
Fungus and lichen.
A very neatly halved acorn shell. The nearest oaks are in Glenlyon, about 2.5 km away as the cockie flies.
Near the bird table I noticed a pile of what appeared to be sawdust at the base of a tree. It was. Although a dusting rather than a pile.
In a crack a metre or so up the trunk were many black ants (no idea of the species), working hard at bringing out crumbs of tree that they’d dug from inside, and dropping them to the ground.
I’ll try to replace the ants’ picture with a better one but it might be a while before they’re working so feverishly again – I took this one a few hours before we had three days of rain.
I’ve seen references to Aborigines using the fungus Laetiporus portentosus as a means of carrying fire with them. It apparently smoulders for a long time.
The tree trunk was charred in the fire and even though the fungus was quite a way above the charring it seems to have caught fire. I can’t see the remains on the ground so I suppose it completely burned away.
The burnt paddock next door is greening-up nicely, and the kangas (Eastern Grey, Macropus giganteus) are arriving for the best new shoots in the area. Because there’s now no cover on the paddock they hang out under my trees between meals.
Click to enlarge – then click that to enlarge it again. It still isn’t particularly clear – it’s something I made a long time ago and I can’t get rid of the blue background or make the labels bigger.
Kangaroo Creek flows (when it’s flowing) from Bullarto South, near the top of the Great Dividing Range, north to the Loddon River. Springs keep some sections full even when much of it is dry.
Scale? The straight-line distance between Woolnoughs Crossing and Back Glenlyon Road is just under 1.5 km. My stretch of Kangaroo Creek is just upstream of (south of – below) Woolnoughs Crossing.
Downstream of Back Glenlyon Road the creek falls into the deep, steep valley of its own creation. Upstream from there it’s just a small waterway, becoming almost negligible as it approaches its source in a paddock near Bullarto South.
There’s no gold in my part of the creek but upstream, somewhere around the Lightwood Drive area, a mine shaft was sunk in the 19th century. A report said the first results were ‘promising’ but I can’t find any more information about it.
Old-timers talk about the fishing in my stretch of the creek but fish are rare or absent now. There are occasional sightings of platypus or rakali (native water rat).
Kangaroo Creek 
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