The Gurdies Nature Conservation Reserve. With a name like ‘The Gurdies’ how could you not pop in for a look?
The paths were easy going until they weren’t.
With our packed lunch tucked in Lindsay’s backpack, we headed off down one of the tracks meeting along the way a small group of locals who pointed out some special plants. The reserve is populated with a number of varieties of eucalypts, grasses, heath, orchids - callooh callay! and birds. We wandered for hours over 7 km or so. Quite delightful.
One of my favourites - orchids. They’re hard to find which makes them all the more precious
The wild violets were so dainty.
Drosera the alien-looking plant on the left is carnivorous- so stunning and the flowers (a bit blurry) is some delicate.
The little white and pink is known some places as milkmaids. I’m not going to put in scientific names as it changes not the beauty of these lovelies.
The top two pix are of plants endemic to the reserve we were told. Not sure if that’s correct but they are certainly unusual. And of course there were numerous fragrant wattles.
Incidentally in the early 1800s the Strzelecki expedition on its mission to explore Gippsland’s interior passed close by here when it was pure wilderness. They emerged at what is now called Corinella starving and exhausted (they didn’t know about the Lerps and succulent grubs haha!!). They were saved from starvation by aborigine Charlie Tarra who feed them, sometimes in raw koala. Not an uncommon thing for aborigines to help those early white explorers - you’d think some of that knowledge would have been taken up but ......
We saw these handsome beast emerging not long after us but had seen lots of evidence of horses usages.
All traffic stopped on the way home as this little echidna wobbled its way across the road. It was slow progress but rather adorable
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