Ficifolia

Ficifolia sounds like a swearword, but it is just a type of Gum Tree. This morning we walked at Bibra Lake which has some very nice tracks and many flowering gums.

Gum trees get a bad press in some countries and California seems to have a love/hate relationship with them. Most of the gums we saw on our recent trip to the U.S. were large stately trees.

Around Bibra Lake there is a variety of gums and most are in flower at the moment. Some very large gums are loaded to breaking with white flowers and the bees reckon they are pretty good. The smell of the white flowers reminds me of a chicken coop....not nice!
Some of the other varieties are spindly, but still have nice flowers.

Some pics here where I will not attempt to name the species:

At the entrance to the walking paths there are plastic dog poo bags supplied and most dog owners take them, however it would seem that many people do put their hand in the bag and pick up the steaming log, only to toss it on the ground next to the path. BDO!

It never rains but it pours

Literally, yesterday. There was a break from the rain in the late afternoon when we were able to get out and finish pruning the roses (there is a green pickup this week). No complaints from us - send her down, Huey.

Metaphorically, computers again. At long last the container has arrived, so the ones that are packed ready to go to Zimbabwe can finally be moved from the garage and workshop. We are really glad that it happened this week - there would have been all sorts of problems in trying to organise this while we were in the US.

And the rain has revived Bibra Lake. There is still a long way to go before it is full, but most of the central mud bank is now under water and it looks like a lake again. North Lake is still struggling, but there are isolated fingers of water. Today there were dozens of swans there, swimming in the water patches and fossicking for seeds in the growth that still covers most of the central area of the lake.

Eucalyptus Lehmanii

Kevin contacted the Agriculture Department regarding this scrubby bush that has been intriguing us for months and got an an official identification. It is apparently quite common, but we have not found any other specimens during our walks.

Today we spent quite a bit of time examining and photographing the stages of its flowering cycle. We were lucky - the whole cycle was present.

Formation of flower buds.


Ripe buds.


Partial flower.

Full flower.

Flower's end.

Seedpod.

We probably should also have taken a photo of the dried up seedpods that were still on the bush, but we didn't.

We've been Googled

I had a phone call this afternoon from a young lady who introduced herself as Ivona. She is a journalism student at Murdoch University and was researching a local news story on, you guessed it, Bibra Lake. Her story was to be mostly on the plight of the waterbirds at the lake, but she thought it would be good to be able to quote a local on what has happened to the lake.

As it happens she didn't use much of what I said, but you can read her article here.

I think I should point out that although we do indeed go walking every day we certainly don't manage to walk around North Lake, Manning Lake AND Bibra Lake every morning!

I had not thought to google the blog. Might try it in a day or so. Kevin has googled himself before and found lots of references, but he has been sending photos to all sorts of sites for the past three or four years.

Regarding hits on the blog, we are a bit disappointed with the site meter we are using. It is supposed to show the location of people who look at the blog, but we can't seem to find the people we know who do look at it regularly. A friend in Sydney (Hi, Albert) has told us that he is reading it every morning, but we can't find him on the log, nor some of the other friends in Perth who we know read it. How do we know? They usually comment about something we've written.

It's good to know you are not talking to yourself, but we would like the record to be more precise.

Bibra Lake is no more

Most of the local wetlands dry up in summer. Market Garden Swamp stops being swampy before or just after Christmas and Manning Lake dries out shortly afterwards.

The bigger lakes usually retain their water all through summer, but this year has been particularly bad. First it was North Lake about a month ago. On February 23rd Kevin posted a photo showing the lake covered in green weed, with no water in sight. The weed has now grown tall and yellow and the small area of water that was there has dried up.

Now Bibra Lake, which is at least four times larger than North Lake, has gone. There are a couple of largish puddles, but most of it is grey mudbank.
We took a photo from the same spot at the beginning of February. The water had started to retreat even then, but the lake was still quite full.

The grassed areas on the western side of the lake are still bright green. The Council regularly waters them with ground water from bores.

According to the paper today one of every 2.5 litres of water used in WA comes from bores. Certainly almost all local government owned sports grounds and recreation areas are watered from them. Like the director of the Conservation Council I am convinced that the drain on local acquifers and the lowering of the water table through bores has contributed to the parlous state of the lakes. We can only hope that this winter, and the next few, will be very wet and that the lakes will live again.

Today's Collection

When we take a walk around the section of Bibra Lake called the Golf Park we invariably collect more rubbish than from any other walk we do. I posted a few days ago about the amount we collected and the variety of things we found.

Today we collected almost as much if not more. An interesting thing about discarded bottles: Coke, Jim Beam, vodka, water almost always have their lids screwed on. Maybe the litterbugs can't be bothered dropping or throwing away two things at the same time.

We found some interesting stuff today. First was a pair of white high-heeled shoes near the bank of the lake. We wondered about the possibility of a body when we found a bundle of pantyhose. No sign of blood though. Then Kevin found two black bundles, both the same. I pulled one of them to bits just in case they were bloodstained undies or something similar. I was a bit spooked by this time. The bundle was one leg of a pair of vinyl trousers that had been scrunched up and pushed into the leg of lycra tights to form a kind of dome. The other was identical.

I have come up with a scenario to explain all this. A young guy decided to go to one of Adventure World's adult parties in drag. Because the carpark was full he parked at the end of the Golf Park. As he staggered towards his car at the end of the evening he divested himself of some of his accoutrements. First the padding he wore to resemble boobs. Then the pantyhose. Then the shoes. They had had a bit cut out of the side of them to make them wearable on male feet. He probably had a little nap in his car before driving home.

What do you think?

Bah! Bah! Litterbugs!

Three and a half bags full!

This morning we walked the section of the Bibra Lake foreshore called the Golf Park. As usual we took a couple of plastic bags with us. Picking up rubbish has become a sort of game with us, though Kevin is much more enthusiastic than I am, and always finds at least some. Today's effort ranked as one of our best - or worst, depending on your point of view.

It started at the tree in the shade of which we parked the car. One empty Jim Beam bottle and 5 stubbies. Straight into the bin just across the parking area. Then along the path, collecting as we went. Kevin did better than me, though I did score an empty drink can carefully wedged between the trunk and a branch of one of the bottlebrush trees. Bonus - no bending. By the time we reached the bin opposite the entrance to Adventure World Kevin's bag was full, mine half full.

We tipped the rubbish out of the bags into the bin and headed back through the park. This was once a Par 3 golf course, but is now basically a treed and grassed area. One section of it is a practice area for chipping and putting. Some of the strokes we have witnessed resemble driving more than chipping - but what would we know? For once we didn't see any plastic bags of dog's poo. We draw the line at picking those up, but someone must do it, because sometimes they are gone the next time we walk that way.

We did not find much litter until we were almost back to the parking area, where we each collected a full bag. This was once a local Lovers' Lane. The clientele these days seems rather more diverse. As well as numerous stubbies and empty plastic drink bottles we found a used syringe, a vial of distilled water and a cardboard box which had once contained a piece of equipment for use in male masturbation.

Before and after: bad news, good news

Near our home are a few small lakes. The main lake is Bibra Lake which has given its name to our suburb. The smaller lake just north of Bibra Lake is named North Lake (of course). We walk around North Lake about once a fortnight. We have noticed the gradual drying up of the lake over many weeks.

It seems that a group of 34 Filipino guest workers at the nearby shipyards at Henderson were given the right to sew wet grain rice in the muddy bed of the lake. The results look great and it looks as though it is about two months off harvest. The ground will be, I think, still too soggy for a harvester to go in there and we are just wondering how they plan on harvesting the rice. I guess it will end up being harvested by traditional methods…by hand with long knives. Should make for some pretty unique photographs when it happens.

North Lake looking west some 5 months ago.

North Lake looking east today.


About the rice and the guest workers; I was just joshing. The pics of the lake before and now are real. Please don’t go ringing the council to complain.

Walkabout with a camera

This morning we took a camera when we went for our walk along the path that leads to a little jetty and bird hide on the opposite side of Bibra Lake. This is one of our favourite walks.

There was a lineup of young cormorants along the railing. They let us get quite close, then peeled off one by one. Kevin thought of fighter planes, I thought of a chorus line.

Something was a big attraction in the water for a range of birds, all concentrated in a small area of water and busily eating.

On the way back we noticed this hole. It seems much too big to be a rabbit's, but a little too small to house a wombat. Obviously we are very ignorant of what native animals live in this area. We often see scratchings in the ground and droppings that resemble those of sheep, though much smaller.