I've been hankering to do some walking in the bush for a long time now. I developed a love for the Australian bush from as young an age as 5 years when I used to wander around on the bush tracks near the caravan park that we lived in when we came back to Australia. I've continued to follow tracks through the bush for the rest of my life and it's always been a way for me to relax and just be myself without the worries of other people or the stresses of day to day life. When I moved to Dubbo I moved away from the bush that I love, and I had no idea that I could find it out here. Everything seems to be either flat red dirt or paddocks and fields where bush used to be. Terry had told me a few months ago that there were indeed still pockets of bush nearby and that he would show me some of them. Yesterday we finally got to go see some!
Mt Arthur is right next to Wellington, only about 20 minutes drive from Dubbo.
We had the dog and the camera packed in the car when we set off down the road for a ramble though some trees. It's a winding road to get to the parking spot at the top of the mountain and once you get there you are immediately greeted with some amazing sights.
There's the moss covered rock face that you park next to on one side. On the other side is a drop off and some tantalising glimpses of the view that is promised from the top, as well as a track leading off towards wild beauty.
Everything here is covered in mosses and fungi, it's so different to what I was expecting. It was very alive and magical to be wandering amongst. I stopped often to snap pics so Terry and Giz were often way ahead of me.
There they are looking over the lookout. This is what they were looking at.
Not a bad view eh?
Then they took off ahead of me again while I photographed some of the huge boulders that are scattered all over the hillside.
I caught up to them before too long though when Terry stopped to inspect something more closely.
What had he found?
'Hurry up slow coach .. I've got something to show you!'
I hurried up the hill to see ...
'It's probably prehistoric ya know'
While I went off to take more pics ..
Terry found the next treasure of the day.
Don't know what he is but he looks heavily armoured. I think I shall call him Tank.
More pics .. a tangled passage through the bush.
The landscape is nothing like anything I have wandered in before, not only the moss covering everything, there were also huge boulders everywhere you looked and a lot of branches and fallen trees littered the ground.
But not many of those downed branches and trees had cut marks, it was all natural litter, it was a healthy environment unlike some of the places I saw in Tasmania where the logging has been tragic to the land.
Some of the fungus was amazing ...
And of course the trees did fascinating things.
I even found some flowers in the middle of winter up here.
There was a sign that said this is a Rock Fern, it would have to be hardy to grow where it was right in the middle of rocks.
There were two different types of moss flourishing side by side on this rocky bank.
If you look closely you can see some roots growing through this amazingly coloured rock face.
Yep they do grow them hardy out here.
As I took pics of the rock face I was standing next to our car and noticed.
Yes that's growing there, no it didn't sprout while we were wandering, we have a Chinese Elm in our front yard that sends seeds everywhere and we often have to pull out baby elms, this one found a spot it thought we wouldn't find.
As we drove up to the mountain we had spotted this in the middle of a paddock, no idea what it may have been but it stands out.
The Cow in the paddock came over to see what I was up to when I stopped to photograph it on the way down.
It was a great day out, there's still a whole heap of tracks to explore up there so we'll be back. But the day was getting late as we jumped back into the car and headed home. Terry spotted this amazing sight in the sky and managed to get a great pic of it to top off the day. We're not sure what caused this anomoly through the clouds, in reality it didn't look right to be a jet trail, but it was something that carved it's way through the clouds and seemed to pull a trail of them behind.
I know it's a photo heavy post but there were so many pics that I liked it was hard to pick the ones I liked the most, if you'd like to see them all check out this little slide show.
