Visit to Mole Creek Karst National Park – 7 May 2022

This day was a bit different to my other days in Tasmania. My sister Alicson and her husband Shane were taking part in a cave rescue practice at the Honeycomb Cave at Mole Creek. It sounded an interesting area, so I went along with them to spend the day exploring the surface environment.

I turned out to be an interesting day, with a nice rainforest creek with plenty of fungi, plenty of birds around and some fascinating limestone features. And there was also some interesting weather with some great rainbows.

Honeycomb Cave is away from many of the other caves at Mole Creek.  It open to the public as a wild cave. There is a nice campsite at the parking area.

I first explored the creek. At the parking area, it disappeared underground into  a limestone cave. I explored that later. I followed the creek upstream.

Here an arch of ferns growing on a log spans the creek.

Furter upstream the creek becomes quite rough.

I followed upstream along a track on a higher level and eventually I could see the creek emerging from a cave portal. A sign indicated that the cave could be followed for a distance of 70 m. Beyond that was private land.

All the time I had been wandering up the creek, I was on the lookout for fungi. Here is some that I found.

Jelly Babies – Leotica lubrica

Clavulinopsis amoena

?

Mycena sp.

Heterotextis pezizformis

Hymenoscyphus sp.

Mycena sp.

Hygrocybe apricosa

Clavulina sp.

Dead Man’s Finger – Xylaria sp.

Gymnopilius sp.

Perhaps Collybia eucalyptorum

Artomyces sp.

Psilocybe subaerugimosa

Bolbitius titubans

Hypholoma australe

Calocera sp.

Jelly Fungus – Perhaps Dacrymyces cupularis

This is an interesting cup fungus. Perhaps Tatraea dumbirensis –

Mycena interrupta

Bisporella citrina

Clavulinopsis sulcata

Hygrocybe rodwayi

Cortinarius sp.

Pseudohydnum gelatinosum

And here is a selection of birds.

Scarlet Robins

Grey Fantail

Common Blackbird

Pink Robin

One of the cavers on the rescue practice invited me into the cave to see how the cave telephone worked. I then took a few photos near the underground stream.

Meanwhile, out on the surface a storm had passed over. We had a nice series of rainbows.