March 4 - The Transit of Venus and banksias!

The rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena has fascinated polymaths like Ptolemy, Horrocks, Kepler. And you say, so ....? It is what brought Joseph Banks to Australia.  If Linnæus, Swedish naturalist and father of modern taxonomy, had his way Australia would have been called Banksia in honour of the man who collected and described a vast collection of plants from this new country - 1770 and exotic flora! 

Joseph Banks noted in his diary: “The countrey this morn rose in gentle sloping hills which had the appearance of the highest fertility, every hill seemd to be cloth’d with trees of no mean size.” 

Well of course he was talking about the east coast of what was to be NSW, but the south east coast of Gippsland is a veritable jungle of dense trees named banksias for this prodigious botanist. No idea of their particular species, but when we stopped for lunch in Cape Conran National Park we were surrounded by them and I spent a wee while poking around checking them out. 

A banksia returning to the earth, mouths agape.

A poor old specimen

The bark like cankerous elephant skin.

A wee May Gibbs Banksia man

The flower an astonishing thing

Zoom in! Quite fascinating- and the ants thought so too!

Not the prettiest of trees but ancient and dependent in part on fire for their survival



This wee creature had me spell bound watching his gymnastics on a blade of grass