A study in red (and grey)

I was tempted by delightful coastal footpath on the west bank of the Spencer Gulf at Port Augusta but I only had time to check out a short section where it wound through saltmarsh. The busy railway lines are an ever-present background because these lines head in all directions for thousands of kilometres.

Saltmarsh and mangroves, Port Augusta

From a distance the saltmarsh looks like a sea of red but actually there are a number of species. The mangroves were looking very healthy as well.

Baby Grey Mangrove

Adult Grey Mangrove (click to view large to see the pneumatophores)

None of the succulent saltmarsh species were flowering unfortunately but they are still very beautiful when looked at closely.

And this one has me puzzled as well. I have no ideas on what it might be but the spiral leaf pattern is spectacular.

And one more, green this time.

Succulents

I'm back in cold Geelong after a week of beautiful week in central Australia but with lots of memories and images to sustain me. We live in an amazing country and exploring a small part of it with friends of similar mind was great fun.

We expected to see kangaroos but didn't see any, we expected to see emus but didn't see any. We expected to see lizards but only saw three. We saw very few insects despite the fact that there were so many plants flowering and seeding, we saw very few tracks in the sand and there were birds around but I thought I would see more honeyeaters. It's hard for a fleeting visitor to get a feel for what is 'normal' after a long drought but we got the impression that biodiversity isn't exactly normal in central Australia.

There has been a fantastic new book published focusing on Australian succulents, Australian Succulent Plants: An Introduction by Attila Kapitany, and a webpage that I must explore at  http://www.australiansucculents.com/ but in the meantime here are a few of the succulents we saw around Alice.