“There Aren’t Many Flowers In the Australian Bush!!”
“ Are there?”!!

This is a line I have often heard and again on a recent bushwalk with NBC on the Lawler Range with Max.  I delighted in pointing out a few of the flowers we passed from then on.  This walk probably doesn’t have as wide a display of flowers as you find in the sandstone country round the Watagans, Wolemi, Hawkesbury or the Blue Mountains, but a fine collection was to be spotted as we passed including some delightful ground orchids. On another walk on drought affected Koombanda Ridge near Bell in October the display was magnificent, even some late waratahs (but these were Lilliputian, tiny because of the dry weather).  This walk provided a wide range of species of flower some great cliff views and a somewhat aggressively inclined tiger snake. 

Of course every one became nervous about snakes after this but this one didn’t bother us any  more, we stopped looking at it and it went away.  Do you know, I do not know of anyone bitten by a snake on a bushwalk despite the frequent sightings (and claims of close encounters of the fancy footwork kind). The ridge systems off the Bell Line Of Road come strongly recommended by me for the less experienced walker.They are easy to walk, easy to navigate and a seemingly never-ending display of things worth looking at.  Views into the distance, tall coloured sandstone cliffs, deep mysterious creeks, fascinating weather sculptured rock formations, interesting vegetation and always the flowers.

Another recent walk to Pickle Bottle Creek with Jim again provided a fine display of sand-stone ridge native flowers, as well as a goodly collection of cliff and rock formations including "Jim’s Natural Arch".  Some of the noteworthy plants were the stands of velvet plant (feels just like velvet), Lyre Bird Bush, Flannel Flowers and of course the ground orchids which I would need a macro lens to photograph.  

There are also many ground hugging flowers that are easily passed hidden in the ground cover with out notice, it’s amazing what you will notice when you start to look, I mean really look.  People often point out these delicate flowering jewels to me and I haven’t seen them until then. One thing for sure it makes it worthwhile on any walk. Some of us find it so fascinating that they take a book with them so they can identify each flower. During the songline tree walk I took the work-book with me and identified as many trees as I could and made a record of them for the organisers, one of whom was the man that identified the Wollomi Pine as a new to modern times but ancient species. © Copyright 2003 Dug Floyd