Drop-Bears and Drop-Kicks

First field trip for BZ3620 we went out to Stannary Hills and Irvinebank out near Herberton.
Stannary Hills represents a tropical heathland environment, typified by Casuarinaceae, Fabaceae, Proteacae, Myrtaceae, Mimosaceae, and Epacridaceae. Heathland in the south east of Australia has a much greater diversity of Epacridaceae, whereas those in the north, like Stannary Hills, usually only have one or two species present.

Silver daisies (above, below) are very common in the area.

Native bluebells (Wahlenbergia) are also very prevalent in the area.

Above shows what the newest flowers of the silver daisies looks like.

Above, flowers of Hakea plurinervia, and below, the unopened seed capsules.

There were also lots of Stylidium graminifolium (above), a type of trigger plant. Insects that land on the flower trigger a hammer mechanism which swings down and slams pollen onto the insect. Pretty cool stuff.

The top left flower in the above photo shows the hammer the best

Plant habit, and hand for scale.

There were also lots of grass trees (Xanthorrhoea) wit spent flower spikes, like the one below.

Sundews (Drosera spatulata...maybe) are present in areas with poor drainage, indicating that the area has poor soils.

I noticed more fringe lilies (Thysanotus tuberosus, above) on the downhill slopes than anywhere else.

Mirbelia speciosa (above, below) looked amazing when flowering together. Also a typical heath species - fabaceous, and with thin firm leaves similar to northern hemisphere Ericaceae heaths.

And now for my ABSOLUTE FAVOURITE, Thelymitra, the sun orchids (below). I don't know if these are nuda or aristata but I don't really care, because I finally got to see a Thelymitra!

Went trekking a bit further and found another orchid on my botanical bucket list - Caladenia carnea (below).

In one area there was a large patch of Borya septentrionalis. I had never even heard of this plant, but it is pretty cool! It is a type of resurrection plant, so when times are tough, nutrients and fluid are extracted from the leaves to keep the system ticking over, then when it rains they burst back into life. And the leaves are VERY VERY SHARP.

In a hill cut area where groundwater was seeping out, baldderworts (Utricularia caerulea, below) were growing. Another carnivorous plant, and the traps are borne along the roots as little air filled bladders that suck in little critters.

From Stannary Hills we moved up the road to Irvinebank, where it was more of an open woodland than heath. Here there were plenty of grevilleas, and acacias, as well as poison peas.

Above, Grevillea pteridifolia. Below, a Gastrolobium species, also called, poison pea as it contains the poison 1080 which poisons stock.

Below, Grevillea glossadenia, which is found only in Irvinebank.

Below, Acacia purpureapetala, the ONLY purple Acacia, and it is only found in Irvinebank.

So yeah, that was the Stannary Hills/Irvinebank trip. Going to Davies Creek tomorrow so that should be interesting.

Sometime in January 2013, someone decided that it would be wonderful if we were all to go fossicking out at the gemfields past Emerald. I am not one to pass up a road trip with the chance of finding sapphires, so if course I HAD to go.
It was fun, even if we didn't really find anything, but then again, I didn't really put in that much effort. Too many cool things to see and do!

First stop was in Biloela to get our fossicking licences and assorted paperwork for the trip. There are designated fossicking areas out at the gemfields, with the towns of Sapphire and Rubyvale contained within their own respective fossicking areas. We ended up at the Glenalva fields, a bit out of town, but it meant a shorter dig to find the sapphire bearing wash.

The sapphires lie in beds of gravel and silt, called wash, from long gone waterways. Depending on where you are fossicking the wash can be anywhere from 30cm to 2m underground from the topsoil, and even if you do get down to the wash, the wash varies in thickness. So finding the 'perfect' spot can be a little tricky.

At Glenalva, where we were based, the wash was fairly shallow...

But when we went to the Willows area, the wash was much deeper underground (~1m).

Digging to get to the wash, and even digging around in the wash, is incredible difficult. There is very little soil, the ground is mostly made up of billy cobbles, round smooth, microcrystalline silicic stones, which are lovely and hard and IMPOSSIBLE TO DIG THROUGH.
We ended up folding after going to a service station for fuel and finding that they sold bags of wash (with a free cut stone). The bags from the service station were large, but mostly wash with very few sapphires. Sapphires that were in the bags were very small and just chips and slabs off much larger stones.
Nevertheless, it was better than anything we had found so far.

After we had milked our wash bags of every last sapphire chip, we went back to fossicking ourselves, but gave up not long after. We headed back into town the next day, and had a squiz around a jewellers, where the sold bags of hopper stones, wash that gone through a hopper to separate heavy stones from light stones, so it was guaranteed that we would get some sapphires, as well as zircons.
These bags were WAAAAY better than the ones from the servo, the stones were whole, and much larger.
So, if you're ever out at the gemfields, make sure you get the bags from the jewellers, NOT the servo.

Now for picture spam.

The natural crystal shape of a sapphire is a hexagonal bypyramid, which you can sort of see in the blue chip above (the chip is from the servo bag).

Greeny sapphire from the jeweller bag.

One of the real highlight of the trip for me was the sheer bucketloads of lizards! There were heaps of Carlia running around that I can't be bothered to identify, as well as a couple of dragons.
Cue lizard spam. Shitty pics, I know.

How can you say no to this cutie?

Aforementioned dragon.
And of course, there were the ever ubiquitous Litoria.

Brace yourselves for shitty landscape and sunset pics. My external I keep all my good photos on died, so now I have to use my shitty copies :I

Decayed volcanic ash (I think)

We headed to a place called Washpool one day to sieve our bags of wash. We don't know if this is actually it, but meh, we used it for washing anyway.

The sort of territory we had to set up cap in. It's not smooth at all, it is pockmarked by giant fossicking holes and dotted with piles of rubble. And all that grown on them are spinifex and my favourite thornbush Carissa ovata.