I headed out once again to Cape Solander. A month or so had passed since my last visit and with Spring well under way, I thought things may have changed a little- and they had!
I love the tiny rainforrest at the beginning of the path; huge straight trees, palms and pitosporum and ferns in the undergrowth and a little creek tricking in the half-light. Then it's sparsely treed forests of scribbly gum, turpentine,scraggy old peperita and the pink curly arms of the angophera. Lot's of cockatoo's screeching overhead and playing acrobatics on the grass tree flowers. We also saw the first of the channel-billed cuckoo's that visit each year from New Guinea and which promptly set about driving us all insane with their horrible screeching and calls.
Then you come to my second favourite part of the track. Just before you reach the heath, a small hill runs down with slightly stunted trees on each side. It's very protected and still and a haven for flowers.
A little further on you come to the wind blasted small tree's and shrub, also still at ground level and a haven for birds and lizards like dragons. I have seen snakes here at times too.
And the final part, my favourite (but not by much), are the heathlands which cover all the sandtone plateaus at the edge of the sea. There is the constant twitter and tinkle of small birds against the faint booming of the ocean against the cliffs. It is often breezy or windy here but if you get down low, it's still and warm and I imagine it is a lovely place to live if you were a bird. Tannin stained water trickles down toward the cliff edge and the sound of frogs is added to the chorus.
There is a safe spot to climb down the cliffs (away from the bits that make my legs go funny!) and you clamber over giant chunks of sandstone fallen off the underscored cliffs. You walk under these shelves reasoning that it would be silly for these pieces to crumble right now while you are under them!
Keeping well away from the pippi studded lower rocks, notorious for washing away fishermen, the cliffface is a magical world of fossil crusted rock, stalegmites, ferns, pools of rainwater, and the most amazing rocks of every hue and finish. Some are dry and potholed, others are wet and slimy (but only to look at)but it is all beautiful. And behind you , you have the ocean pounding away under a blue sky- magnificent!
Petrels and terns and pelican fly over the sea and ravens, swallows and spiders hang around the cliffs. Obviously you are not alone, but it's all so wild and open, you feel very much like you have all this to enjoy for yourself.
