Bushland, animal tracks, fungi, birds, flowers and one very large snake.
Bright orange native chanterelles (I think!) growing in the sandy soil and pushing through the leaf litter. We saw lots of great fungi.
One day, Dan and Dad went off to Melbourne to pick up a whole bunch of things we’d had in storage since before we left Australia, so me and Mum decided to go for a walk. A return to Providence Ponds Flora and Fauna Reserve to explore south of the highway has been on the cards for a while, and with clear blue skies and temperatures in the low 20s, it seemed like a perfect opportunity.
Morning shadows over the road. It was lovely weather.
 Two of the least interesting ant holes of the day. |  Kangaroo (or wallaby?) prints. |
Gaia and Google gave different information about the tracks in this section of the reserve, and I knew from last time and from satellite imagery that there would probably be tracks not marked on either map, so we set off with an intention to explore and see what we could find, rather than to walk a set route. Things started off easily enough, and we enjoyed the quietness of the mid-morning bush. On this side of the highway the reserve is a little less diverse (north of the highway it seems to be a different ecosystem every kilometre!), but one of the cool things here was the visual of a wall of stringybarks - just a thick band of grey trunks stretching out wherever we looked.
It's hard to do justice to the wall of grey that you get in stringybark bushland like this.
 A pretty flower we saw a couple of times. |  Wildlife highway across the road. |  Banksia and the sun poking its rays in at the side. |
But a lot of the interest of this walk was in the details. In the sandy soils we saw many, many animal tracks - mostly wallaby, a few kangaroo, some wombat, a dog, a dirt bike (of course), and deer. We spotted a variety of cool fungi - none of which I can identify apart from the whole swash of chanterelles (I'm pretty sure) near the end. Australian chanterelles are tiny, and although there were a lot of them, I thought that actually cleaning them of the gritty sandy soil would not have been worth the effort! We enjoyed the few remaining wildflowers and some of the cool banksias of the area. There were also looooooads of ant holes, all built up like fortresses against the incursion of rain and debris. I can’t emphasise how many there were - some sections were like cities of little ant towers. Mum started categorising them into schools of ant architecture - the volcano, the iron age fortress, the pyramid, the hummock. And of course, I took almost no pictures of these ant hills! It’s so easy to forget to photograph the things that are most common on any particular walk.
Mum stopping to watch some rosellas fly through the trees.
 Is this the eponymous pond? |  A very sand-encrusted funnel shaped fungus. |
We made it to the end of Bell Track, according to the map. But the road continued through a bee hive site (under constant video surveillance - beware, honey thieves!) and to the edge of the reserve, just as I had hoped. We turned right along the paddock line, following a grassy track, picking grass seeds out of our socks every few steps, getting buzzed by mozzies and screamed at by white cockies. It was all good! Well, until we turned the corner and found a stretch of road under very stagnant water, stretching as far as we could see. We decided to pick our way around a little way to see if we could find the end, and off we set.
A large, probably marshy, area. I was pleasantly surprised that this part of the road wasn't underwater.
 A tiny mushroom with a bold shadow. |  A beautiful native bluebell. |
“Oh, shit. Jonathan, stop!” I turned around to find Mum stepping onto an island in the middle of the road/lake. I wondered if she’d seen a big spider (she hates spiders). And then I looked where she pointed and - whoa, OK! the fattest red bellied black snake I’ve ever seen, which I must have missed by centimetres when I walked past. I also hastily hopped into the middle-of-the-road island. The snake didn’t even move - it was just curled up in a sunny patch without a care in the world. Anyway, we know that red bellies are quite nice snakes, but we decided that maybe it wasn’t worth continuing this way after all, and back we went through the mosquitoes and the grass seeds!
WARNING! LIVE BEES! We did not hassle the bees and the bees did not hassle us.
 Underside of a yellow mushroom. (They had already been knocked over.) |  Top of a purple mushroom. |
We had lunch in a spot of shade, as it was feeling quite warm. Rehydrated hummus (very good), Vita-Weats (my fave, as noted previously), tomato leather (good) and spinach and tomato leather (OK), all washed down with water. We had a few chocs to snack on along the way, and a nut bar, too. The break was a good opportunity to take off the shoes, pick the grass seeds out of the socks and tend to any hot spots. I wrapped a plaster around my problem toe, just in case - I’d felt a tiny twinge and didn’t want another blister. (Learnt my lesson!)
The track by the fence. Well, if it's all like this, we'll be fine! (Spoiler: it wasn't.)
 The water. |  The snake. (Sorry for the poor pic!) |
The rest of the walk was similarly pleasant, but I had been feeling sluggish all morning and did not improve after lunch. The miles were not coming easily. My pack felt heavy, my legs felt slow, my head wasn’t really in it. I realised, late as usual, that I could put my sunnies on to keep some glare out of my face. We also had a bit of a rest - which is when I spotted all those chanterelles. Despite the nice surroundings, I was a bit over it. We did a loop back to the car, skirting the Perry River (not visible) and surprising a couple of feral deer (they were very red, decent size but not huge, and they made some high-pitched, short, screams of alarm calls before they ran off - any ID based on that?!).
Strong sun, strong shadows. I liked the lines these trunks made, blackened as they were by fire.
 Mum heading along one of the roads post-lunch. |  Not visible here: me violently waving my arms to disperse flies. |
Apart from the deer and the tracks, a few butterflies and those bloody mozzies, the main animals we saw (and heard) were birds. Lots of crimson rosellas, a few magpies and currawongs, a shrike thrush, sulphur crested cockatoos, willie wagtails and a fantail. Cool spots were a jacky winter and a scarlet robin. But my fave were the two - no, three! - no, four! - gang gangs that were eating nuts in a branch above us, and which we wouldn’t have noticed if we hadn’t stopped walking and, in the absence of footsteps, heard their quiet little creaking noises. I love gang gangs.
This was one of the very few signposts we encountered, and it didn't even match our map!
Notes
We walked 17km in a bit under 5hrs - quite slow. I’m going to chalk that up to (1) a moderately heavy pack, (2) lots of stopping to look at fungi and flowers and other small things, (3) the slow going down where we met the snake and (4) me just generally not feeling good. Afterwards, I had pretty sore hips, and an achy lower back, but some gentle stretches and exercises the next day helped my fully recover, physically. My new, happily colourful anti-chafe undies were great.
The photos I take of these never quite do the rich, warm brown shades justice.
 Chanterelles. |  Cool yellow banksia. |
A little village of fungi.
I don’t know why I felt under the weather. I had a little sleep when we got home and afterwards I still felt bad - even a bit dizzy - and I developed the didn’t-wear-my-sunnies headache. I drank enough water and didn’t have a blood sugar drop, so it wasn’t that. I did wonder, however, if it might have helped to take some of the electrolyte powder that I had with me last time. Who knows! Anyway, I was pretty grateful for the chocolates - especially towards the end of the walk. I’m not the hugest fan of chocolate in everyday life, but wow, it can be nice when you’re out for a walk. A little burst of energy! Yes! (Thanks, Annie!)
Mum negotiating an epic obstacle!
I’m thinking of snacks to pack for the Heysen, especially what to put in my drop boxes. I’ll pack snacks only for the stretch from my box to the next town/shop - in most cases that’s 2-3 days, with 3 snacks per day plus a bit of extra scroggin and dark chocolate. I’ll take a wide range, so I don’t get really bored of anything, and also to take things that I might not be able to find in little general stores (I’m counting on those to have Snickers!). In my scroggin mix will be some combination of:
What do you put in your scroggin? (Also, I hope this final picture doesn't put you off said scroggin!)
- Nuts that I like (macadamias, pecans, almonds, brazil nuts)
- Dried fruit (mango, banana chips, freeze dried strawberries, apricot bites, ginger)
- Candy-coated chocolate (e.g. Jaffas, to avoid the melting-chocolate-getting-everywhere issue)
What do you put in your scroggin? (Also, I hope this final picture doesn't put you off said scroggin!)
Showing off my new undies. Even if they hadn't worked well (they worked well!), they are very joyful.
This walk is on Brayakaulung (GunaiKurnai) Country. Please note my previous post re: Providence Ponds as a possible massacre site. As will all of so-called Australia, sovereignty was never ceded and this always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land.
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