Never too many gardens!

Over the years, I've spent uncounted hours rambling through botanical gardens, from Hong Kong to Sitka, from Edinburgh to Cairns, with stops at major gardens all over the US thrown in. Sometimes the sensory overload is so high, I think I don't absorb what I'm seeing, then years later, it's an Aha! moment when a botanical relationship or display comes roaring back into my memory. It can be a visual trigger, or a color, or a scent. (BTW, don't ever pass up a chance to visit the sensory garden at Chicago's wonderful botanical garden!).

On our recent road trip, it was total overload. The National Botanic Garden in Canberra is a marvel of hard work, appropriate botanic choices and a superb setting, focusing hard on restoring part of Australia's unique botanic heritage. Here are some before and current images.

The site was over-grazed, with topsoil eroded, and native flora and fauna almost completely gone.

Now the garden spills up Black Mountain and includes a rainforest gully that is quite lovely.

The garden also features an incredible index of Australian flora online, and a lab where pressed examples of a huge number of native and introduced species are available for the public to use in identifying plants in gardens or in the wild.

Since it is late summer here, all kinds of things are blooming in the garden. Some Australian flora is so flamboyant I think someone must be making it up; for example, the huge red blooms of the gymea lily are borne on stalks about ten feet tall! They may take years to produce a bloom, and the foliage is over my head. That's some lilly! In the opposite extreme, some of the eucalypts, hakea, wattle and banksia have flowers so delicate they appear to be made of fairy floss. Trees of the grevillea family have flowers so varied, without knowing what I'm looking at, I can't correctly identify them.

All  throughout the garden, native fauna have moved into their niches; this water dragon apparently cannot read the admonition to stay off the rocks! 

The hibiscus family is a huge native group of plants that happily thrive just about everywhere. I have learned that all parts of the plant are edible. This blue-blossomed hibiscus was peeking out of a shady area.

The delicate pink blooms of this eucalypt are an absolute magnet for lorrikeets, noisy miners, honeyeaters and other local birds. The honey is sticky, as our azalea blooms are.

Kangaroo paws come in a myriad of colors, from pale yellow to deep magenta. The hardy native has leaves like an small iris, with blooms borne on stalks 12-15" tall. The garden features some rangy big ones as well.

Banksias are named for pioneering botanist James  Banks. The amazing group of plants bloom in yellows and pale creams, but the shapes are small, candle-shaped (called, of course, birthday candle banksia), to large blooms the size of a big loofah sponge. The larger banksias have adapted to life in a fire-prone environment. The seeds are set in the bloom, looking like a fat chestnut crammed in the dried blossom. In a bushfire, the seeds pop open with such a big bang they sound like gunshots going off.

Water in the garden is sparingly used, recycled, collected in rainwater tanks and husbanded as the precious resource it is.  But a pond judiciously placed offers refuge to huge numbers of critters, plus gives a respite to weary garden visitors.

     Another glorious fairy-floss eucalypt bloom.
     The scent is as delicate as the look.

A visit to this wonderful, evolving garden is both an inspiration and a challenge to any gardener; turning the dry slopes of Black Mountain into the showcase for wise gardening shows what can be done, with lots of effort and planning.

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Cute and cuddly, boys, cute and cuddly

Keepers at Australian zoos tend to describe anything that can't or won't kill you as "cute and cuddly," so this category is bigger than it might seem at first look. So I've expanded my definition as well. Cheetahs, for a start, although they are definitely not native cuddlies. Donna has been very active with Cheetah Conservation Fund after her stint in Namibia last year, so she was thrilled to be able to go into the cheetah enclosure at the National Zoo in Canberra to get some up-close time with their lovely female cheetah, and to visit with the cheetah keepers. At Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo, she also had a chance to meet one of the keepers and have a pat with two of their strapping youngsters. WPZ has a very successful breeding program for cheetahs; thanks to such efforts, there is a chance these beautiful cats can escape extinction.




Of course, reptile keepers have a whole different take on "cute and cuddly". The reptile house at Australian Reptile Park, a private zoo, has an eclectic selection of things that slide about in the night, but even they draw the line at calling the Sydney Funnelweb Spider cuddly. It is the most venomous spider in the world. ARP has a venom collection program which provides anti-venom for many New South Wales health facilities. Currently they are hoping folks will bring in ticks. Shudder.







Hugo the tortoise, a young adult male, gets to come out of his enclosure every once in a while for a bath, which he obviously enjoys. Cuddly? His keeper thinks so; his keeper is quite fond of the big guy.








I am a pushover for bats, or flying foxes as they're called downunder. At the Bat House up near our place in Cairns, we met Pushkin the bat up close a few years ago and I am taken with their intelligence and antics.












Keeper talks at Australian zoos are very well done. The keepers, uniformly young and passionate about their work, do a great job as animal ambassadors. At ARP, the keeper asked for volunteers to come into the enclosure to hold some of the reptiles. This little mate volunteered and got to hold a blue-tongued lizard; the creature knew the ropes and was very calm. Proud parents looked on and were clicking away with photos.













The towel was supposed to wrap around the lizard, in case of scratches or , er, well, accidents at the back end. The lizard was amazingly patient with it all. Other volunteers had a python & a shingleback lizard. A big snake came out for photo ops and while the keeper walked around the enclosure sharing info about his cuddlies, the big python sort of slithered around unfettered.







Now, who wouldn't call the fairy penguins cute? They are so earnest, and is breeding season, so although they come out to eat and hang out in the shade, they really all wanted to head up to the nesting boxes for some serious work.














Ah, now to the more iconic of Australia's fabulous fauna. A lounging Eastern Gray kangaroo is indeed a master of relaxation.

















Koalas are definitely under stress in the wild due to habitat degradation, but because they are so well known, every zoo manages to keep a bunch happy and healthy. Their food requirements are very narrow, so if the right kind of eucalpyt isn't available, the poor little guys starve. This guy, however, is getting his appropriate measure of leaves.















Their fur looks as if it would be soft, but it is really spiky. The keepers say they are great when dry, but smell really strong when they are wet. Dry day, this one.












And, finally, one of my fave of the Aussie icons, the common wombat. The hairy-nosed wombat is more rare, and most zoos have a couple of the common guys. Incredible diggers, they are pretty solitary in the wild, not very fast movers. Their backsides, under the fur, are a solid cartiledge plate, so when they shuiffle into their burrows with backsides toward the door, predators can't get a good bite. Their worst enemies. of course, are cars and people. This guy was rescued as an orphan when his mum was killed by a car, and he's not up to full wombat health yet.














This little girl is also a rescued orphan and the folks at ARP hope that when the little boy is recovered, they will be a mated pair. She is awfully cute; how could he resist her? They are marsupials, that is mammals who keep their babies in a pouch until it's time for them to be on their own. But because they are such diggers, the opening on the pouch is toward the south end of the animal so baby doesn't get covered with dirt when mum is busy excavating.


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Pittwater Hostel

Just across Pittwater from the Northern Beaches Peninsula is one of the best-kept secrets in the Youth Hostel Association network: Pittwater Hostel. Don't let the name throw you off; hostels are for travelers of any age. Donna and I took the Church Point ferry around Scotland Island, in the center of Pittwater, and hopped off at Halls Wharf.

You can see how busy it is! At the end of the pier, is the most inviting wait area, in the shade. Residents of Scotland Island and around the small bays of Pittwater use the ferry as anyone would use a bus. The ferrywoman knows people by name and passengers visit with each other for the day's news.

The hostel is a good 1000 meter walk uphill along a well-traveled track. Guests need to bring in their own food, but the hostel is well supplied with dishes, cooking utensils and big refrigerators. It's a hot trek on a muggy day. Because water and  therefore washing linen is a problem in water-starved Sydney surrounds, managers Michael and Sarah ask guests to bring their own linen for the beds.

The wide verandahs of the hostel overlook Pittwater, inviting some quiet time. There are several well-maintained walking tracks from the hostel, going different directions into Ku-ring-gi National Park, for anything from a quiet morning ramble along the shore of Pittwater to an all-day tramp into the park. Early morning is wonderful, with birdsvand animals everywhere. Kayak hire is available from the hostel.

The kitchen is great for prepping food, but no one wants to eat inside. Tables on the terrace and verandah have plenty of room for eating, visiting or reading.

Rock wallabies are spotted early and late grazing on the grassy terraces below the verandahs.

We spotted this litte guy on our walk up the hill.

When it's time to go, hike down the hill to the wharf and let the ferrywoman know you want to be picked up by pulling a flag out of a holder inside the ferry shelter and sticking it in pipe holder on the outside of the building. She can spot it clear across Pittwater.

Only trouble with this wonderful location is that more than one night is required to enjoy the tracks, the birds and animals, and the solitude.


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Blitzing Sydney

Hurray, visitors from America! Donna arrived safely for some R and R downunder. Of course, so did the rain from the tail end of tropical storm Olga. So, more rain in Sydney in the last week than in the last seven years. But it's warm.

We started dodging raindrops while walking in the Royal Botanic Gardens, always a treat. The flying foxes (bats) were happily squabbling in the trees above the cafe. Nice. Donna actually managed to stay up till about 830pm, better than I do after that long flight.

The gray skies didn't diminish the impact of one of Sydney's famous icons, the Opera House. What a beautiful building it is.

Another royal treat: high tea at the Queen Victoria Building! Four pages of tea choices. We felt like royalty for sure.









Donna does love a flight seeing trip, so we took a seaplane from Rose Bay (one of Sydney's most expensive housing areas) for a 30-minute flight up the northern beaches and around the Sydney Harbour. Our fellow passengers were a lovely couple from Ireland, here for their daughter's wedding in the Hunter Valley. We dodged rain squalls.







The bridge and harbour are a sight from the air. Several large cruise ships had called in during our three days, tipping out hordes of American cruisers into the city. Sydneysiders take it all with a grain of salt.

If you know where to look, you can see our house in Newport from the air. But of course, otherwise it's not very exciting. However, you can see how close we are to the beach.





Donna and I are off for a road trip for the next 10 days, including Australian Reptile Park, a private lecture and gallery tour at the Masterpieces of Paris exhibition in Canberra, and hopefully a get together with a friend of Royce Saltzman's, whom I met while making up Rotary at the Sydney Cove club last week. Small world! Time to head for the ferry from Church Point across Pittwater for a stay at the Pittwater Hostel, reputedly one of the most lovely hostels in the YHA system. Too bad it's raining, but oh well, we're going anyway!

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