Blue Mountains Weekend – Strange Bugs, Pink Flannel Flowers, a Crater and Canyon – 31 January – 1 February 2015

This was an interesting and pleasant weekend in the Blue Mountains.

I headed up with John and Chuin Nee and their young son Jasper. At Blackheath we met up with Su Li and Brent and then headed out to Bung Crag at the headwaters of the South Branch of Bungleboori Creek.

We soon arrived at the crag and it was here that Chuin Nee, Jasper and Brent went climbing. John and myself were interested in exploring the area. There were a lot of small insects flying around in the bushes near the crag – and we spotted one lower down on the ground. It was a really strange beetle – or at least it was a normal looking beetle with amazing antennae. I spent a fair while trying to photograph the beetle – it was hard as the beetle was not keen to sit still. Back at home, I found the beetle was a Feather Horned Beetle (Rhipicera femoralis)

John and myself, then took Jasper for a walk up the creek, and we noticed more climbing areas and also a patch of pink flannel flowers – Actinotus forsythii. There does seem to be a lot of this seldom seen flannel flower out at present. The dormant seeds seem to only germinate about a year after a bushfire and also need a period of rain. When these conditions are met – you can suddenly get a carpet of small pink flowers. We were to spot much more of this plant over the weekend.

We then farewelled the climbers and climbed back up to where we had parked the cars. Then we drove to the Bungleboori Picnic Area and out towards the Lost City. This is a well known collection of pagodas. Neither John nor myself had been there before. The road out to the Lost City was very rough to say the least. There were deep wheel ruts and pools of mud. Other vehicles had driven around these pools creating a “road” about 50 m wide – very depressing! We walked the last part.

The pagodas were nice – but they seemed to have a lot of 4 WD tracks nearby. It was at the parking area for the Lost City that I found some more of the pink flannel flowers. Interestingly – some of them had creamy white stamens. It usually only has white petals and pink stamens.

We then drove back to the Glow Worm Tunnel Road and out along the Dumbano Fire Road and then walked down to Goochs Crater. This was the place where we met up again with the climbers and camped for the night in the big cave there.

The crater was recovering quite well after the bushfire, and around it was a great abundance of ink flannel flowers. This was an amazing spectacle!

We had a very pleasant evening in the camp cave.

The next morning, the climbers left and headed off to Mt York while John, Jasper and myself headed out to a nearby miniature canyon. It was an unpleasant walk down to the canyon. After bushfires, you really need to be careful when you walk as there are a lot of small sharp ends of burnt bushes. Despite trying to be watchful, I stood on one and it went right through the sole of my volley into my foot – ouch! We also got quite black pushing through burnt bushes.

But the canyon was very nice and worth the walk down to it. Jasper was able to walk through the shallow pools and he had a good time.

More photos from the weekend are on my website at these links – Bung Crag and the Lost City, Gooches Crater, and the Canyon.