Karloo and Uloola Falls - Royal National Park

  Melbourne cup day a break, because I work for a Melbourne company that is incapable of managing the administration in having different public holidays for staff in different states.

So, I took the troops bushwalking - well I offered, but not many took the offer up, partly due to the casual Cup-related work on offer for the students, partly because of the weather. In the end there were three of us.

I've been running in Royal National Park a few times, but really only on Lady Carrington Drive (I think), so I don't know the walks. This was really the first, probably of many I feel, as there is fantastic public transport access.

40 minutes from Central to Heathcote, and the bush starts 10 minutes from the station. My phone ran out of battery, so there are many fewer
pictures than there might have been. It did in fact

 rain, but not heavily - a classic English drizzle really, for 2 of the 5 hours.

Most of these pictures are from water level - a lot of flowers, most familiar in form if not in name. Although I have an idea that there are a few Australian, as it were, "forms" that are shared around a variety of species, so I'll spare people my guesses.

 
The grasses in the above caught my eye with the very black - I assume seeds - tufts.

A classic rock pool - not raining at the moment this picture was taken.

There were a lot of these - not something I think we've attempted at home.

More rock pool vistas. The path is very well marked, except along the creek banks where there's no real necessity for it as the creek is not difficult to follow.

Cockatoos + house - the top one is actually emerging from a hollow in the tree. This taken from the top of the ridge, about 200 meters into the descent.

These were everywhere, up hill and down dale.

Lots of these trees, but not many with the impressive array of bumps.

I've never seen this fruiting before - amazingly like bunches of grapes. I also saw fruit on some of the casuarinas - also round green globules, but smaller and not bunched as here. I don't think I've seen those before, either - which is amazing when you consider how many casuarinas there are around the Cooks River.

These were also on the upper levels, near the bush-suburbia border. Thee were also an enormous number of gymeas on the ridges, but very quickly vanished going downhill. I was surprised by how few of them had flower spikes - they may have been very young plants. It looked in place like the most recent fire wasn't all that long ago, and I wondered if the gymeas might not be opportunistic post fire.