Mount Gravatt Koalas

Such a long absence, I have skipped summer!  Well, it is about time I started nature blogging again, and even though I can't blog about the Australian National Botanic Garden any longer (as I am now located in Brisbane!) I have chosen my new location wisely...

I now live next to a beautiful 'urban' bushland reserve in Brisbane, called Mount Gravatt, which is also the name of the suburb.  The bushland reserve is really fantastic mountain habitat with high biodiversity as well as the best lookout over Brisbane at the summit.  We have made contact with the local Mount Gravatt Environment Group and helped out on Clean Up Australia Day a couple of weeks ago, this pic is from the Environment Group blogpost about it.

So, besides this, my partner Edd and I have had quite a few adventures on the mountain already.  However, it was only recently that we discovered the Koala family.  We had read that there were Koalas seen on the road there at Christmas, so we decided to dedicate a day in January (21st) to track them down... with great success!  My partner Edd blogged about that sighting here, and here are a couple of pictures I took:

Mum and Joey

Dad

Today we went back to try and see if we could find the Koala family again, looking in the same spot (below Federation Lookout).  Sure enough, we were very lucky and spotted Mum and Joey again - and it is Mothers' day too (in the UK)!  This time the light was much better and they were lower in the tree, so I got some much better pictures.  We feel so lucky to have Koalas living so close to us, Mt Gravatt is clearly a special place and I look forward to sharing more of my new adventures in Brisbane with you all. 

Goodbye beautiful garden

All good things must come to an end, and its time for me to leave Canberra and move on.  I am sad to leave Canberra and very sad to leave the Botanic Garden where I have had so much fun exploring and taking photos.  We will be staying in Australia - we are moving to Brisbane, to start an exciting new life in the sub-tropics!  I hope I can continue my nature blogging in some form from there - watch this space...

Thanks to the people who have taken an interest in my blog and all the lovely comments.  Taking an idea from Red's Australia blog, here is a round-up of three of my most memorable posts from the past  year and a half...
My most popular post

Bowerbirds lovemaking in the lovenest

 My most viewed post by far is my 'David Attenborough' moment where I captured the Bowerbirds lovemaking in their love-nest.  I spent many lunchtimes seeking out Mr. Bowerbird and watching quietly as he chugged and whirred his way around the bower.  My video camera skills are very amateur without a tripod but what an amazing thing to see and I was so excited to share it on my blog.  


My most beautiful post

Lovestruck Galahs

I think my most beautiful story is the Galah love story post.  I looked up one day and two Galahs were kissing and cuddling on a branch above me, they really were so sweet.  I got some great pictures of them as they gave each other little pecks and cooed.  Extremely cute.




My personal favourite post

A Brush-tail Possum in the red spotlight

I waited a year to go on the 'Twilight Adventure' in the Botanic Garden last August, and I wasn't disappointed.  It was such a privilege to go into the gardens at night, there is so much to see in the bush after dark!  The best moment was a close encounter with a Tawny Frogmouth, such a strange night bird.  I also discovered many more Kangaroos are in the gardens than I thought, and caught a glimpse of a Sugar Glider.


These are just a few memorable moments, others include watching the baby Wattle birds grow, a soldier beetle mating frenzy, cute bathing parrots and the challenge and reward of trying to photograph many fast moving little birds like the Eastern Spinebill, New Holland Honeyeater and Spotted Pardalote!  Watching the seasons change in the garden and the wonderful colours and aromas of the beautiful flowers (at least, those that don't give me hayfever) has been fantastic.  I was really chuffed that my Cicada photo was a finalist in the ABC 'summer bugs' competition, and I recently discovered that this blog featured as 'website of the month' in a recent issue of the ABC Gardening Australia Magazine!  Such a wonderful two years, thank you ANBG, I will miss you.

Rosellas growing up

I love the Crimson Rosellas Platycercus elegans, they are cheeky, colourful parrots who make the sweetest little chirps, like a squeeky toy.  There are always plenty in the gardens.  At the moment Ive noticed a number of young ones who are making the transition to adulthood, so their feathers are changing from green to red. According to Birds in Backyards, "Young Crimson Rosellas have the characteristic blue cheeks, but the remainder of the body plumage is green-olive to yellowish olive (occasionally red in some areas). The young bird gradually attains the adult plumage over a period of 15 months."  I got some nice shots of a young one in this 'puberty' stage, as well as a beautiful fully fledged adult male.

Science week coming up!

Science week is coming up and that means the Twilight Adventure will be back at the Botanic Gardens, horay!  I had a great time on the adventure last year , so sign up early or you will miss out.  Details of bookings for this years Twilight Adventure are on the ANBG website here, along with a range of other Science Week activities.

Here is a shot I took on my adventure last year of a Tawny Frogmouth, there are lots of other pictures on my blog post.

On the right side of winter

The evenings are starting to get a little lighter again and now I feel we are on the right side of winter, spring is on its way.  There are some little signs in the garden, like the frisky male superb fairy wrens Malurus cyaneus darting everywhere and the thousands of star-like buds on the wattle (Acacia spp.) trees, just waiting to burst into bloom (and to give me hayfever!).

There are plenty of winter flowers out in the garden too, including many Banksia and this lovely flower, it is some sort of Grevillea (I couldn't find a label - it was just outside the main entrance to the gardens).

Strange fruit

I came across a couple of weird and wonderful fruits in the garden today, both of which would have been eaten by aboriginal people.   The first was the Burrawang (also the name of a village near Robertson in the Southern Highlands of NSW), Macrozamia spp.  An amazing thing about the Burrawang, which is native to the NSW East Coast, is that it is poisonous!  It is incredible how, over thousands of years, aboriginal people worked out how they could eat such plants.  According to the sign by the plant in the gardens, the Burrawang can be eaten after cooking the seed, breaking it up and then soaking it for up to three weeks in running water!! 

Near the Burrawang was another fruit, that looks a little like jelly babies, growing on the Brown Pine tree Podocarpus elatus, or Illawara Plum.  Nothing like a pine tree that I'm familiar with, originating in the rainforest.  According to the sign in the garden it is 'sweet but mucilaginous'.  As I didn't know what mucilaginous meant I decided not to try one! 

A devil in the mountains

On my first ever post on this blog I came across the beautiful 'Mountain Devil' Lambertia Formosa in the gardens, so I was really excited to find a 'real-life' wild mountain devil in the Blue Mountains near Sydney when we visited recently!  I really felt I'd learnt so much from my lunchtime wanderings to instantly recognize this fantastic flower.   

We love the Blue Mountains and have visited several times, there is something magical about the landscape and the timeless villages there, with always a warm welcome at one of the splendid B&Bs.  Autumn is really a wonderful time to be there.  We walked the National Pass at Wentworth 'one of Australia's finest bushwalks', which is quite a long walk and a little steep in places, the website here has a lovely video on to give you an impression of its beauty.  We crossed some waterfalls in full flow and passed many lookouts with wonderful views.  All the time it was so peaceful, just the sound of a lyrebird calling from down in the valley and of course, plenty of Rosellas and Cockatoos.  Here are some more pictures of the flora and landscape I took on this trip - I know its a little diversion from the Botanic Gardens but to see the flowers of the gardens in the landscape of the mountains is truly wonderful, the Banksia were flowering as you can see below (see also my post on the nearby Mount Tomah Botanic garden for more mountains flora!).  I'd love to know what the really pretty pink/purple flower is?  Also the pink bell-like flowers too.  Many plants are rare that are found in the Blue Mountains (some more info here), with many unique species found nowhere else in the world.