Yule 1999 Newsletter Editorial

Welcome again to another edition of your state newsletter, PAN. I hope that you find something here to spark some interest or help you relax over a cup of tea...

I had the agony and pleasure of climbing Mt Warning while away on holidays. Mt Warning is located in Northern New South Wales, west of Murwullimbah. Mt Warning is known by local aborigines as ‘Wollumbin’, which means ‘fighting chief of the mountains’. The local people believe that lightenring and thunder around the mountain are warring warrios and that landslides were wounds obtained in battle. Mt Warning was so named by Captain Cook to warn sea goers about the offshore reef he ‘found’ when sailing along the coast in 1770. Mt Warning was dedicated as a national park in 1986, and was also listed as a world heritage rainforest area. It is part of an ancient volcano that was once active millions of years ago. The climb is 4.4km up a very steep climb, and the last 200m is a scramble up the rock face clinging onto the guide chains. The day I climbed it, it was wet and windy, and when I got to the top I could see about 10 feet all around! But it was such a buzz to climb a mountain that is home to some of the most beautiful rainforest trees I have ever seen. The trail winds through stands of old brush box (Lophostemon confertus), Rosewood, coachwood (Ceratopetalum sp), giant stinging trees, water gums (Tristaniopsis laurina), figs (Ficus sp) and carabeens. The rainforest contains vines that wind and twist (in an anti clockwise direction - it’s called the coriolis effect, and is guided by the same force that sees our water going down the drain in an anticlockwise direction). There are brush turkeys that walk along with you, owls that hoot as you pass by, and frogs nestled on rocks near the small streams that trickle down the mountains. Epiphytes crown branches of trees, who’s canopy you can not see as it stretches high into the air. There are many varieties of fern and palms under the main canopy.

I also had the pleasure of walking in the Nightcap National Park, out the back of Nimbin. Another day of scaling mountains to view the Tuntable Falls and the brush boxes of Mt Nardi. Nightcap is the southern caldera rim of Mt Warning. These forests are dominated by brush box and eucalypts. In a few places the evidence of logging remains. A sad sight, but one replaced by awe and wonder when a fallen tree is home to new seedlings, moss, lichens, bracket fungus, new shoots, snakes, lizards and a host of insects providing food for birds and assistance in decomposing the leaf litter in the forest. The forests are so alive, and when walking in them, it is hard not to feel so alive, so calm, so connected. I strongly urge you to get out an spend some time with the old growth trees if you can.

I then came back to Sydney, where the apricot tree is dropping its leaves, and other deciduous trees in our local area are beginning to change colour. The skinks in the yard are fighting for the remaining sun as it shifts its shadows as it moves through the sky.

Don’t forget, please try again to ring me if I haven’t returned your call if you left a message on my answering machine. I’ve been having some trouble with it and hope that it is fixed now.

What’s happening in your backyard, or on your balcony this season?
Blessed Be
Adrianne (NSW Co-ordinator)