Friday’s Footprints – Picnic in the Rain and Fantastic Fungi

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Creek at Magnet Mine

A day out was needed, so we packed a picnic and headed out past Waratah to the site of an old mining town/area. The weather was a bit dubious, but we figured we were waterproof enough and I think the bush looks prettier in the wet.

Once off the main road you come to this encouraging sign –

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Just a suggestion

So onward!!

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The road in is overgrown, a bit rough in places but very pretty. The drive over the creek is a little steep but not much of a challenge

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Would have been more exciting with a few feet more of water!

The flats along the side of the creek are littered with the remains of the mining era – from what I can find out was in its heyday, from around 1877 to 1940 where they mainly mined silver, zinc & lead.

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Don’t know what it is, but I like it

You can still find interesting rocks –

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Fabulous colours

Boots, bottles and broken glass are everywhere

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Abandoned boot
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There was an amazing amount of glass and bottles

Beautiful river driftwood was everywhere and I spent the first hour plotting how to convince Jeff that we needed to take a lot of it back with us to give it a good home.

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I wanted this one

Eventually I got distracted by mushrooms –

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It was a scramble up the hill to reach the small walking tracks that are lined with ferns and trees dressed in fluffy lichen

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Green walkway

It was dark, green and a little spooky

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But beautiful

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Standing in the middle of moss covered trees

Everything was covered in a carpet of green

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Tree, moss and man-ferns

I kept finding abandoned boots & shoes!

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Still a pair!

There were so many different types of mosses, lichen and fungi

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I have never actually studied fungi so I can’t tell you the names of all these beauties! Maybe it could be a winter sideline for me to get a book and do a bit of reading!

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Coral fungi

Eventually we realised it was after 2pm and the weird noises we were hearing was grumbling stomachs!

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Ham, cheese, kewpie mayo & homemade tomato relish in case anyone needs to know.

We ate in the back of the car under the boot hood as the rain started to get more than misty

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Rainy selfie

We drove down the muddy track further, where a lot of town remnants could be seen

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Remains of habitation everywhere

 

The creek running alongside the track was pretty

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Rain is starting to really set in

We went back up into the Myrtle forest to hunt out a few more fungi. I kept face-planting spider webs so I don’t know how many of these I brought home –

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Cute face huh?

I could have stayed for a lot longer but I was starting to get a bit precious & whingey about my camera getting soggy (Plus we wanted to get up the hill before it got too mucky and slippery)

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Everything smells so fresh and looks so good in the rain!

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Twisty trees

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This is very much off the beaten track of tourism, so is a great experience to just go and fossick around. Its peaceful, quiet and beautiful.

I’ll leave you with my favourite fungi – which I learned is an introduced species! But beautiful nonetheless!

Cheers

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Amanita Muscaria!

PS It’s 1am, its 15 degrees Celsius (59F) and it’s POURING with rain!! 🙂