Leader: Kim Wagstaff, 25th September 2022
OFF members and guests tackled the sometime sodden Curra Moors Track on Sunday on a bluer than blue spring day. Everyone agreed that they had never seen such a vibrant profusion of heath flowers. Everything from the strikingly beautiful waratah to the delicate sundews. Even an occasional Christmas bell made a surprise flash of red and orange/yellow invoking the spirit of May Gibbs and her bush babies. With so many different plant species in flower – each, of course, requiring careful investigation – time marched on but the loop track still seemed shorter than the nominated 10km distance.
Various vegetation types were encountered along the way, with tall turpentines, Sydney red gums and bloodwoods affording shade closer to the start, then giving way to much shorter Port Jackson mallees with their bold red branchlets and clusters of showy white gum blossom. These mallees are surrounded by rice flower, cone bush, a myriad of pea flowering shrubs, grass trees and epacrids to name but a few. With views over the smooth ocean towards Eagle Rock walkers were hoping for some aerobic humpback antics as the southern migration gets underway. Alas, it wasn’t to be today… but they were treated to a solitary immature sea eagle low in flight over our lunch spot and a flyby from 3 pelicans in a precise line pattern soon after. So, all in all, a wonderful day to be a “Royal” devotee