A Wednesday Walk on a Saturday!

As we have driven along the last stretch of the Captains Flat Rd over the last week it has been noticeable that the Fabaceae are flowering.

A closer look shows that these are Dillwynnia sieberi. 

 This bloom at 750m led us to contemplate that there might be more flowers along the bottom of the escarpment at about 600m.  So we trotted off for a stroll along the route of the Queanbeyan by-pass (which in the reign of Peter Hendy MP is likely to come to pass).

After parking at the end of Old Sydney Rd we set off basically walking the route shown in red.

It is interesting to look at this map and see how close the proposed new development gets to Greenleigh: how they are going to fit the bypass through there is a mystery!  Also, given the slope of the land, how they are going to build in there is a mystery.  Whatever with a very pro-development Council, a Liberal State MP and a Liberal Commonwealth MP the chances of anything other than divine intervention stopping this ar about nil.

Grrr.  On to plants.  The first that we noticed was the heavy growths of Amyema sp. (mistletoe).

 These were noticeable for the very large fruits.

Following our expectation of lower elevation = more flowers we found some Lissanthe strigosa just starting to burst.

There was also an extensive display of Leucopogon fletcheri, but that has already happened at home so the shutter was kept shuttered.

The commonest flowering wattle was Acacia dawsonii with the vernacular name of Poverty Wattle recognising the sparseness of the flowers.

Back to the Fabaceaea.  There was indeed a good showing of Dillwynnia sieberi at the bottom of the hill, together with Daviesia ulicifolia ...

 ... and Pultenaea subspicata.

These intricate little flowers (yep, they show up better when zoomed than in the bush) are Dodonaea viscosa.

Talking of small, here is one of the very few Pomaderris sp. flowers we found.  I suspect that after another week the gullies will be in full 'glory,.

 Indigofera australis was in short supply but was approaching budburst.

By this point we had climbed quite high and looking to the est could see a squall coming.  We didn't beat it back to the car.  Our speed was assisted by passing the back fence of a house with some very stroppy pig-dogs.  Needless to say Tammie's reaction to their growling was to head towards them with murder in her heart: terrier anyone?