BZ3620 Trip 2: Davies Creek

Our second day trip was to Davies Creek on the Atherton Tableland. Eucalypt woodland dominates the drier areas of the watershed, with rainforest further up the creek towards the falls. Wet sclerophyll, a very cool and rare type of forest, runs along the creek in a narrow band.

Upon arriving at Davies Creek, we split up into two groups, one group started at the rainforest, and the other started in the eucalypt woodland, and then swapped over after lunch. Luckily the group I was in was the rainforest starting group.

Above, native bees gather around a wound on a Bursaria. Doing what, I don't know. Maybe gathering the sugary phloem?

On the way to the rainforested area, we stopped at the Eucalyptus grandis wet sclerophyll ecotone. Eucalyptus grandis dominates this area, and is similar to the mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) forests down south, in that they need devastating fires to reproduce. The understorey was composed of ferns, mostly bracken and Cyathea, Dianella, gingers, and heaps of other things that I didn't get a good chance to look at.
The Greater Mahogany Glider inhabits this type of forest, and the marks that it leaves on the trees are quite distinctive. The glider drinks the sugary sap, and as it works its way up the tree, it moves in a spiral, so there are these cool spiral shaped scars on the trunks. I didn't get a good photo of any of the scars, but they are there.
These ecotones are very cool, because of the reproduction by fire method, and also because they get invaded by rainforest. Most people think that the rainforest would be being invaded by the sclerophyll, but without a consistent fire regime, the rainforest is quite aggressive in moving into and taking over the fire affected ecotones. So if the rainforest invades fully, then there is no habitat for the gliders.

From there, we moved through the teeny tiny patch of ecotone to the rainforest. Yay!

And of course, because we were standing still talking about plants for so long, the leeches found us.

As with most rainforest areas in tropical Queensland it seems, there is history of logging in the area.

On the side of the path, there was a dead bush pig. Someone had killed it and separated the head from the body. Bloody hell, it was ripe. Worst thing that has even been smelt in the history of mankind. It had been dead for a while I reckon, it looked like it had gone past the bloating stage of decomposition and had turned to mush which had soaked into the ground. Urgh. Never again.

We then headed up into the dry eucalypt woodland. Nothing too exciting there, so no photos. Nothing except this cute little dragon that Fiona caught.

My old enemy, Erythrina vespertilio. Thorny little buggers.


Nothing to do for the rest of the trip, so I poked around the flooded gums along the creek.

And that's Davies Creek.