Queensland's Channel Country#1: landscapes and plants

I've mentioned here before my love affair with south-west Queensland, a vast and varied area which is somehow noticeably 'different' from adjacent NSW and South Australia. An important reason for this is that a large part of it forms the bulk of the bioregion known as the Channel Country for the complex network of braided flood channels that cover the area of some 200,000 square kilometres. All these channels flow away from the sea, mostly ending in waterways such as Cooper Creek, and the Diamantina, Georgina, Thompson, Barcoo and Warburton Rivers, which ultimately flow (occasionally!) as far as Kati Thanda - Lake Eyre in South Australia. Waterholes may be deep and almost permanent in streamlines, or ephemeral after rains.

We can really only get a sense of the complex tapestry of the channel pattern from above; here is an aerial photograph, courtesy of Wikipedia.

 However it's only down on the ground that we can get the detail of the tapestry.

Little Black Cormorants Phalacrocorax sulcirostris massing at Cooper Creek near Windorah.

Early morning on the Barcoo River in Welford National Park.
Here, and in subsequent photos in this series, the dominant waterside
trees are River Red Gums Eucalyptus camaldulensis.

Waterhole on Morney Creek, west of Windorah.

Ephemeral waterholes in the inter-dune swales west of Windorah.

Frances Waterhole, Welford NP.

Sawyer Creek, Welford NP.

Channel Country bioregion, map courtesy Wikipedia. This post focuses on the
Queensland portion of the bioregion, which accounts for most of it.

As in many previous such posts I've got enough material for two posts, so shall do that again rather than turn this post into a marathon. So today some landscapes and plants, next time some animals.

We've looked at some water features - rivers, creeks and waterholes - that are probably the essence of the Channel Country, but there is a true wealth of landscapes in between them. I've already mentioned the River Red Gums that are quintessential to the waterways, and here are a couple of other important Channel Country habitats - arid and semi-arid woodlands, dominated by a few more key tree species, and grassy plains.

Mulga Acacia aneura east of Windorah. This habitat covers some 25% of arid Australia.

Mulga flowers; the long thin phyllodes may vary, but the flower spikes are
distinctive (though not unique to Mulga.)

Gidgee Acacia cambegei and Coolabah Eucalyptus coolabah, growing near Morney Creek,
a hundred or so kilometres west of Windorah.

Gidgee is a favourite of mine, though one of its other names is Stinking Gidgee, suggesting that others are not so keen. It does have a strong odour, especially after rain, but to me it's like vegetable compost and not especially unpleasant. I've camped near many a Gidgee stand, and it's also perhaps the best firewood I know - it's dense and burns hot and slowly, so we use very little in an evening. It tends to grow in dips where water occasionally collects, and near watercourses where it gets overflow water from time to time. Coolabah, which appears often in Australian folklore and song (though I suspect that most of us wouldn't recognise it), has similar requirements, growing by occasionally wet watercourses and out on mostly dry floodplains. 

Flowering Gidgee, Morney Creek.

And just because I can, here are a couple more photos of these trees, River Red Gums at dawn and Gidgee in the evening, at the same site at Morney Creek.

There are also swathes of grassy plains, especially to the west.

Mitchell Grass plains Astrebla spp., Welford NP. There are only four
Mitchell Grass species but between they cover a huge area of cracking clay
plains across dry Australia.

Spinifex Triodia spp., near Farrans Creek 150k west of Windorah.
By contrast with the Mitchell grasses, spinifex grows on sand,
both plains and dunes.

Such dunes can be found rising from the plains in many parts of the Channel Country (and beyond of course) and can be rich red where there is iron present or paler, yellow to almost white.

Morning dune still covered in tracks, west of Windorah.

Vegetated dune (in fact nearly all them are) near Farrans Creek.

Which seems to provide a segue to introduce some other interesting and attractive plants of the Channel Country, though obviously it will be a very random and limited selection! There are no natural barriers between the Channel Country's habitats and the surrounding deserts and arid woodlands, so many of these plants grow widely across arid Australia. Some other trees first.

Ghost Gum Corymbia aparrerinja, west of Windorah.
(Though there is a chance that this is actually Dallachy's Ghost Gum C. dallachiana.
The Atlas of Living Australia suggests that this would be too far south-west,
but the nearby Welford NP Management Plan lists C. dallachiana
as the ghost gum there. I should have looked properly!)

Desert Bloodwood Corymbia terminalis east of Windorah.

Emu Apple Owenia acidula Family Melicaceae, east of Windorah.
In the same family as Red Cedar, this small tree adapted long ago
to a drying Australia and let the rainforests retreat without it. The fruit
is apparently edible, though I've also heard that it's hallucinogenic,
so won't be trying it any time soon. It is found widely in drier
Queensland and Central Australia.

Lolly Bush Clerodendrum floribundum Family Lamiaceae. The 'lolly'
name is for its looks, not edibility. This small tree has a surprising
distribution, growing at the edge of rainforest on the east coast,
and right across the dry tropics. This one was on the edge of a dune
in a sandplain in Welford NP.

Lots of shrubs of course.

Sandhill Wattle Acacia ligulata, Farrans Creek. Found throughout the Channel Country
and indeed most of dry Australia.

Desert Rattlepod Crotalaria eremaea, on a red dune east of Windorah.
This pea shrub is always found on sand, especially dunes, throughout Central
Australia, south-east to the Channel Country.

Green Birdflower Crotalaria cunninghamii, another in this genus, also
closely associated with dunes and sandy deserts. It's one of the most
strikingly unexpected flowers I know.

And another spectacular dune-dweller, Sandhill Grevillea G. stenobotrya,
Welford NP. Found from the Channel Country to the Indian Ocean.

And one of my very favourite Australian plant groups, up there with orchids and banksias, the eremophilas (ie the 'desert lovers') are found in various habitats in the Channel Country and well beyond it. The common names often include emu-bush (for a mistaken belief that their seeds rely on passing through an Emu's digestive tract to germinate) and turkey-bush (probably a reference to bustards, which were often referred to as 'Plains (etc) Turkeys', and possibly for the same reason as 'emu-bush').

Bignonia Emu-bush Eremophila bignoniiflora, west of Windorah. It grows
throughout the Channel Country along water courses and on flood plains.

Harlequin Bush Eremophila duttonii, Welford NP. Very striking when in flower,
found on sandy soils throughout central and south-eastern arid Australia,
and scattered in the Channel Country.

Crimson Turkey-bush Eremophila latrobei, west of Windorah.
Very widespread in inland Australia and a very beautiful flower.

A yellow form of Spotted Emubush Eremophila maculata, east of Windorah.
The species grows across most of the continent, and can have flowers that range from pink
through to red, as well as yellow and even mauve (though I've not seen many of those).
Moreover they may or may not have darker spots in the tube. It is the basis of most
eremophila hybrids sold in nurseries. Below is a more typical red form.

Rose Cottonbush Gossypium australe, west of Windorah. In the hibiscus family,
this lovely shrub is also closely related to cotton and to the very similar
Sturt's Desert Rose G. sturtianum, the Northern Territory floral emblem.

And of course there are many herbs, including a large number of ephemerals that flower following the rains. Daisies feature heavily among these.

Tangled Burr Daisy Calotis erinacea near Windorah, above and below.
A very common and widespread desert burr daisy; see also in the
photo of the dune at Farrans Creek above.

Soft Billy Button Pycnosorus pleiocephalus, a plant of the south-eastern drylands,
here at Morney Creek close to its northern-most distribution.

Large White Sunray Rhodanthe floribunda, also at Morney Creek.

And finally examples of some more very attractive Channel Country herbs, albeit subtly so in some cases, from six different families. All these were growing in the Windorah area.

Flax-leaf Indigo Indigofera linifolia (Family Fabaceae) which is found in a range of habitats
across the deserts and into the tropics, as well well beyond into southern Asian and Africa.
(I don't know how carefully those far-flung populations have been compared; if not it may be
reasonable to suppose that more than one species is involved.)

Poison Morning-glory Ipomoea muelleri, (Family Convolvulaceae) also widespread
in central and northern Australia. The foliage and seeds are said to be toxic to stock,
though Indigenous people from the Kimberley are reported to eat the tubers.

Long Tails Ptilotus polystachyus (Family Amaranthaceae). This genus, widely
known as mulla mullas or pussy tails, is common and often forms extensive swathes
after rain, right across the arid lands.

Small-beard Fanflower Scaevola parvibarbata (Family Goodenicaceae)
is a herb of the eastern inland.

Lifesaver Burr Sida platycalyx (Family Malvaceae) is quaintly named for the shape
of the fruits, which form a torus when completely dry. This genus too is
widely found inland.

Nardoo Marsilea drummondii growing alongside Cooper Creek after flooding.
This herb grows in floodwaters and subsequent muds, the dormant spores having
being triggered by inundation. The spore-bearing bodies, the sporocarps, lie
dormant for decades if need be, awaiting the next flood.

Nardoo played a key role in one of the great Australian folkloric tales of heroic tragedy - the Victorian Exploring Expedition of 1860-61, better known as the Burke and Wills Expedition, which sought to find a route from Melbourne to the north coast. The tale has been told many times and you can easily find the details if you wish. However the essence for our purposes today is that it did end tragically - six of the seven remaining expedition members died on Cooper Creek in the Channel Country on the way back. It was not an inevitable tragedy though, it was very largely due to the ignorance, arrogance and intransigence of their leader, Robert O'Hara Burke.

 

While awaiting rescue on the Creek, the expedition used the abundant nardoo sporocarps as flour and ate lots of freshwater mussels and, we were always told, starved to death. It doesn’t make sense. The local Indigenous people ate both these items, and even showed the Europeans how to prepare them. And in that is the essential clue – because Burke of course could never conceive that a mere native could tell him anything of value.

To cut it short, they died amidst obvious plenty, not of starvation but of beriberi – the symptoms, of leg paralysis, extreme sensitivity to cold and breathlessness, are described perfectly by Wills in his journal. Beriberi is vitamin B1 (ie thiamine) deficiency. By coincidence both the mussels and nardoo spores contain thiaminase, an enzyme which destroys thiamine. Over time the locals had learnt this, doubtless painfully, and had worked out techniques to destroy the thiaminase. They roasted the mussels on the fire; Burke and co ate them raw. The Aboriginals made a watery paste with the nardoo spores - the water neutralises the enzyme - but the explorers made a dry flour with them. 

 

Ah well, perhaps a red herring in today's post, but hopefully of some interest. 

 

The Channel Country's story is much bigger than this one and it is grand and glorious country. If you didn't already know about it, I hope that I may have piqued some interest in you to consider planning a trip out there. Meantime I hope to see you again next time when I will introduce some of the animals of the Channel Country.

NEXT POSTING THURSDAY 13 FEBRUARY: link here

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The Magnificent Mallee; long despised, finally treasured. #1

 This is a topic close to my heart. I grew up in South Australia, and Adelaide is nearer to
remaining mallee than any other state capital (with the possible exception of Melbourne).
Dad loved it, and I spent time in the mallee long before I encountered any real forests,
let alone wet ones. It seems strange then that it has taken me this long to tackle it
here, but maybe I've never felt ready to do it justice. Such excuses however can lead to us
to never doing anything worthwhile so, prompted by a recent camping trip to
north-western Victoria, here's my tribute to a uniquely Australian habitat.

"No-one knows who made the mallee, but the devil is strongly suspected", at least according to an anonymous writer in The Bulletin in 1901. 

Mallee to the horizon from Warepil Lookout in Hattah-Kulkyne National Park,
north-western Victoria.

The Bulletin disparager came from a long line of whitefella mallee-bashers. Surveyor-General John Oxley (admittedly pretty much always a glass-three-quarters-empty character, judging by his journals), wrote of the mallee country along the Cocoparra Range in south-western NSW in 1817 as "country of the most miserable description... abandoned by every living creature capable of getting out of there". (The local people were understandably uninterested in making his acquaintance.) Others wrote similarly. Later reports however revealed the real reason for the general antipathy. Charles Sturt in 1833, the first to enter the vast South Australian-Victoria mallee lands, of which Hattah-Kulkyne above is but a remnant, described it as "barren and unproductive as the worst of the country we have passed through". An 1851 report to the Victorian Government Surveyor reported that "throughout the whole of the scrub there is neither stone nor timber fit for any useful purpose". The crime of this lovely, subtle and uniquely Australian landscape was that it wasn't apparently 'useful', so there was no point to it. 

Sandhill Wattle Acacia ligulata flowering in mallee in Wyperfeld NP, north-western Victoria.

Nor was this attitude limited to the 19th century by any means. The term 'desert' was applied to the spectacularly rich and highly floral mallee heath country of eastern South Australia and western Victoria - the Ninety Mile Desert in SA, Big and Little Deserts in Victoria. Now, I love the desert lands, but there was no affection in these labels. They couldn't grow wheat or wool, so were effectively sterile.

But there were mallee farmers, and they were tough. Low rainfall, low soil nutrients (ie by European farming standards) and the incredible resilience of the mallee eucalypts, which resprouted from massive underground lignotubers (of which more in a moment) immediately after clearing, made the farmers' lives hell. Moreover the lignotubers ('mallee roots') simply broke their ploughs. In time though ingenuity, technology and science proved too much for even the ancient mallee habitats. Mulleinising in the 1870s meant clearing the bush by dragging water tanks on chains between horses (later tractors), then burning, rough planting and again burning the stubble to knock the regrowth back again. Taller wheat strains just kept their heads above the regenerating scrub. About this time too a Mr Smith of Maitland on South Australia's Yorke Peninsula invented the 'stump jump plough' so that it wasn't necessary to grub out all of the stumps. The invention of superphosphate at Roseworthy College north of Adelaide in the 1880s allowed continuous cropping to assist in controlling regeneration. After this over a million hectares of mallee in the higher rainfall, sandy loam soils north of Adelaide, on the Yorke Peninsula (where almost no original vegetation now remains) and in Western Victoria, were rapidly cleared. 

Millions of hectares more followed in the periods after both world wars, in western NSW, the far north-west of Victoria, Eyre Peninsula and out towards the Nullarbor, and in the south-west of WA. The pace slowed though as erosion issues and soil degradation followed, though the discovery of the role played by missing trace elements (especially cobalt and copper) triggered another burst in the 1950s and 60s. Ironically the Ninety Mile Desert was now redubbed Coonalpyn Downs... It wasn't until the 1970s that mallee conservation became something to consider.

So, perhaps belatedly on my part, what is 'the mallee'?

This map (courtesy of the Australian National Botanic Gardens) gives an indication of
the current (green) and estimated former (pink) distribution of mallee woodlands,
mostly in the semi-arid 200 - 550mm rainfall zone. However we should note that the
current range by no means implies continuous or undamaged mallee.
Most is fragmentary, and what remains doesn't reflect the
original diversity of the different mallee habitats.

The word apparently echoes one used by people in western Victoria to describe the multi-stemmed habit of eucalypts that grow in these low rainfall, low nutrient regions.

Mallee form, Mungo National Park, western NSW.

This form comprises a massive underground lignotuber (ie literally a woody tuber), a 'mallee root' up to a metre in diameter from which grow several equal-sized 'stems' which are actually branches. The foliage grows only at the tips of these branches. The key trigger appears to be low phosphate levels; it seems that low soil phosphate levels inhibit the cell growth which would otherwise lead to stem or leaf formation, and diverts it to carbohydrate production which is converted to wall material in the lignotuber. The lignotuber thus holds considerable nutrient reserves (but not water, despite a much-repeated myth). Roots grow from the lignotuber and these may hold water, a fact which was of course well known to Indigenous people. The lignotuber confers a remarkable resiliency, as the mallee farmers discovered. In a 1920s experiment scientists defoliated one-year-old seedlings 26 times in succession before they, not the eucalypt, gave up the battle.

The top of a large lignotuber protruding from the ground, with the branches growing
up from it. Hattah-Kulkyne National Park.

Some 130 species of eucalypts grow as mallees. However, only about 20 of these always grow thus; the other 130 surprisingly adopt the form only if the conditions - especially the low-phosphate soils - require it. Lignotubers are known in other plant groups elsewhere in the world, but what is unique to Australia is the ability of these species to adopt a mallee form only if the conditions are right. I have stood on dunes in the south-east of South Australia among mallee Pink Gums E. fasciculosa, and looked out at tall single-stemmed trees of the same species growing in the deep soil of the paddocks. This was before digital camera days I'm afraid, but here's another example.

Gum-barked Coolabah (though it has several names across its broad inland distribution)
E. intertexta, near Cobar, western NSW.

The same species growing as a mallee at Redbank Gorge,
western Tjoritja (MacDonnell Ranges) National Park.

This raises another point too; that mallee eucalypts can be found well outside of the area designated on the map above, provided of course that the soil conditions are right.

Port Jackson Mallee E. obstans, Currarong, north end of Jervis Bay, south coast NSW.
This mallee grows in sand and sandstone along the coast from here to Sydney.

Blue Mountains Mallee Ash E. stricta, Blackheath, Blue Mountains, NSW.
This one too, well out of the mallee zone, grows on shallow sandy soils on ridges.

And this in turn leads us the secondary use of the term 'mallee', which I have more than hinted at already. Almost inevitably the habitat that produced the mallee tree's unique form became in time known as simply 'the mallee'. But in this sense too there is not just one uniform 'mallee'. The model may have been updated since, but in Victoria back in the 1990s there were 31 major communities and some 100 vegetation sub-communities recognised. However for our purposes I'm going to look at just three basic mallee habitat 'types', defined by their dominant understorey (though course nature is never interested in being put in our boxes, so it's not always so clear cut).

Mallee-Heath, as the name suggests, has an understorey of heathy shrubs (banksias, hakeas, grevilleas, casuarinas and callitris for example) and grows in deep sand in higher rainfall areas of the zone. For this reason it was one of the first regions of the mallee zone to be cleared for agriculture. Here are a couple of surviving examples.

Sand Stringybark E. arenacea, Little Desert NP, north-western Victoria.
(This species was, until 1988, included with the more widespread Brown Stringybark, E. baxteri.)

Yalata Mallee E. yalatensis, Nullarbor Plain, South Australia.
This very attractive mallee is found around the fringes of the Nullarbor
and, curiously, in an isolated population far to the east near Mannum,
on the Murray River in South Australia.

Mallee with a sparse heathy understorey (with also some saltbush I think),
Gawler Rangers NP, north of the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia.

Fire in Mallee-Heath (as well as the following Mallee-Spinifex) is especially ferocious. All above ground vegetation is burnt and the volatile oils burn in great gas flares above the vegetation. Regeneration though is probably the most rapid of any tree formation in the world. A new stem cluster appears immediately, growing far faster than in other situations because of added potash in the soil, the resources in the lignotuber and reduced root competition for nutrients.

Regenerating burnt mallee, Gluepot Reserve, north of the River Murray in South Australia.
(Actually this was not at all the fiercest mallee fire, as the dead stems are still standing,
though most other plants have gone.)

Mallee-Spinifex also grows on deep sands but in lower rainfall areas. Spinifex refers to various species of the very prickly hummock grass Triodia spp., also known as Porcupine Grass, which forms very important animal habitat, especially for reptiles and invertebrates, but also small birds and mammals. Beyond the mallee, spinifex dominates some 25% of the Australian land area. Here are examples of Mallee-Spinifex from five different states and territories!

Sharp-capped Mallee Eucalyptus oxymitra in harsh gravel on exposed hillsides at the
start of the Ormiston Pound walk, western Tjoritja (MacDonnell Ranges) NP,
central Australia in the Northern Territory.

Normanton Box Eucalyptus normantonensis growing as a mallee form over
spinifex by the excellent dinosaur museum at Lark Quarry, central Queensland.

Mallee with a dense spinifex ground cover, Mungo National Park, south-western NSW.

Thick-leaved Mallee E. pachyphylla growing in a sandy spinifex plain,
Great Sandy Desert, central eastern Western Australia.

Huge (ie long unburnt) spinifex hummock in mallee, Wyperfeld NP, north-western Victoria.

The third broad mallee type is Mallee-Chenopod, ie various species of saltbushes, bluebushes, samphires etc. This is in low rainfall situations where the soil is sandy-clay. For some reason I find this habitat especially aesthetic.

Mallee with a bluebush (Maireana spp.) understorey, Red Banks Conservation Park,
mid-north South Australia.

Late afternoon over mallee-bluebush at Caiguna, west of the Nullarbor Plain
in south-eastern Western Australia.

Samphire (probably Tecticornia spp.) growing on a clay pan in mallee-bluebush
near Normantion, central southern Western Australia.

And I'm going to end this first instalment of a short series with some portraits of mallee species which I (totally subjectively) find particularly pleasing and/or interesting.

Blue-leaved Mallee E. gamophylla, Plenty Highway, central eastern
Northern Territory. The striking blueish rounded leaves are
juvenile leaves which remain in that form. It is found in sandy
country mostly dominated by spinifex.

Curly Mallee E. gillii has similar foliage. It grows in just two areas of
inland ranges; in the Barrier Range near Broken Hill,
in far western NSW (above) and in the Northern Flinders Ranges
of South Australia (at Weetootla Gorge below).

 Port Lincoln Mallee E. albopurpurea, Coffins Bay, South Australia.
This lovely mallee is found only here at the tip of Eyre Peninsula and on
Kangaroo Island. It was formerly regarded as a subspecies of E. landsdowneana
from the Gawler Ranges to the north.

Bushy Yate E. lehmanii, Cape Le Grande NP, in the east of south-western WA.
A spectacular mallee from Albany eastwards as far as Israelite Bay in hill country and dunes.

Mottlecah E. macrocarpa (above and below), Yandin Hill Lookout,
north of Perth, WA. Its flowers are possibly the most dramatic of all eucalypt flowers,
and can be up to 10cm across.

Red, Oil or Acorn Mallee E. oleosa has one of the most extensive distributions of
any mallee species, found from the south-west of WA to eastern Victoria. It flowers
profusely and its leaves were formerly harvested for their high oil content.
Here it is growing on the eastern fringe of the Nullarbor Plain.

Thick-leaved Mallee E. pachyphylla, here deep in the Great Sandy Desert of
central eastern WA though it is found widely in central Australia.

Moort E. platypus, Ravensthorpe, south-west WA. The name means 'flat or broad foot',
for the oddly shaped buds. It grows only along this section of coastline.

Bell-fruit Mallee E. preissiana, Stirling Ranges, south-west WA.

So, the first part of my ode to the marvellous mallee. I hope you've stuck with me through it, and that it has either aroused some good memories of your own, or perhaps sparked some curiosity in a habitat that you may not be familiar with. I'll be looking at some other plants and some animals of the mallee in forthcoming posts - not sure yet if it will two or three parts in all. Hope to join you then, and thanks for coming this far into the mallee with me.

NEXT POSTING THURSDAY 7 NOVEMBER

I love to receive your comments and in future will be notifying you personally by email when a new posting appears, if you'd like me to. All current subscribers have been added to this mailing list and have already been contacted. This will mean one email every three weeks at the current rate of posting. I promise never to use the list for any other purpose and will never share it.
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