A visit to The Gully

Going Places with Ernie Dingo – my current favourite TV series on SBS.  Ernie Dingo explores Australia's iconic destinations from the Kakadu National Park to the Great Barrier Reef. He introduces the people who live there in a symbiotic relationship with nature. Ernie is a native Australian who is very attached to his country. He meets people who share his passion with the land. He visits natural treasures and has conservation with locals and explains the tradition of aboriginal people. It is very well done, never over the top, informative and beautiful. Ernie knows a lot of stuff, especially about wildlife, history and plants and he actually connects with people. It is a gentle programme and I thoroughly enjoy the views, conversations and learning about the Aboriginal People and their culture.

The Gully

View of the valley

A couple of week’s ago he was in the Blue Mountains and that was even better as some of the places are familiar. He went to a place called The Gully (to give it it’s Aboriginal name) and this was a place we had not visited. So next week inspired by that programme we found out exactly where it was and made tracks. It is just on the edge of Katoomba. It is called Catalina Park. The traditional owners of this area as the Gundungurra and Darug peoples and they used this area as summer place. It has a water source with wild life and plants for food and medicine – an ideal place to spend hot summers. After white settlement they were forced to settle permanently here. The history states even some white people settled here but it was hard life specially in winter. Houses were made of flattened tins and any thing else they could find. Winter time they used newspaper to keep warm. I have immense respect for them as I would never have survived such conditions.

The Gully Walk

Then, in 1957 some local business men decided to make a race course there to attract tourists and forcibly removed the people. The trauma caused to the land and to the community of people who were living in and around the Gully was profound and still reverberates. The construction of the race course which actually failed to generate the expected tourism devastated the area.

Lake

Duckling

Mother keeping an Eye

On 18 May 2002 it was declared an Aboriginal Place. Today the racecourse track still exists but nature is slowly claiming back the land. There is a lake in a big depression with a path around it and a creek flowing along one side. The creek area is also swampy and the vegetation is low and covers the water to keep it from evaporating in the heat. There is a grassy area with a few benches for sitting and enjoying the peace. A perfect place for a picnic. Now there are plaques in place along ‘The Gully Walk’ around this special place depicting the tragic story of life and times of the people who lived there both Aboriginal and the white. Some of those people and their descendants are still about locally. The traditional owners along with the local council are to look after this place and conserve the area.

Flowering Grass along the race track

Flowers on the grasses

Buds on the grasses

That was the background of the place. The visit was a surprise sprung by my husband. Instead of the usual Saturday morning shopping trip I was expecting he said let’s go see The Gully. We packed some ginger beer and water in the cool bag and stopped to buy sushi for the picnic lunch. We went around the back way, that is to say not by the motorway but via Old Windsor road to Windsor, then Richmond, Kurrajong, Bilpin up Mount Tomah and then Mount Victoria, Blackheath and Katoomba. On the way we stopped to buy some fruit from the shops around the orchards in Bilpin. Some lovely apples and pears were got as well as some local honey.

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We found The Gully pretty easily and parked. Seemed there were only one or two other people there as ours was the third car there. There was quiet and the silence only pleasantly disturbed by the birds chirping in the trees. The feeling was pretty peaceful but reading the plaques about the sad history was poignant. One can almost feel the emotions due to hardships faced by those long gone. And yet there seemed hope as those people were resilient. The walk was a fairly good path with bushed and trees. I saw many which were new to us, so of course photos were taken. The lake in the middle has a pair of ducks with 6 little ducklings floating about enjoying the warm air. After a walk we sat down on the bench beside the lake to have the sushi. But by the time we had eaten one we realised there were small clouds of tiny black flies everywhere and so we decided to move to the car so as not to get added protein in the meal.

Wild strawberries

Wild Strawberries 

Flowers along the creek

Pretty blue flowers 

These look a lot like honeysuckle but of course they are not

Fern in the swamp

Finished lunch and had another little wander outside and looked at the tall trees. Then started our way back.

Beautiful Flowers

A closer look

Three shades of of green with yellow in between

Colours contrasting

Close up of flowers

Winter in my Garden

Down Under we are topsy-turvy and I still am amazed after 4 years that flowering of plants is right through the year and even at different times. Now I can hear you think, ‘they would follow your seasons… duh!’ This does not hold much water as it probably is more to do with temperatures and rainfall. So let me just start with winter – a good weather and time of year as any to start this journey in my garden.

The tree at the end of the garden with large seed pods  from one of the creepers. With so many of them about it is hard to say which one these belong to as this is the first year we have seen them.

Winter begins on 1^st of June and around that time I found some buds showing up on the daffodils and snowdrops. This is a different variety of daffs than I have seen before and must have been planted by the previous tenant. For the first year I had no leaves even to indicate there were these blubs in the ground. 

The daffodils actually show up as clusters on a single branch. 

The snowdrops are in a small patch round the back next to the water boiler and were a pleasant surprise.

We did get a few roses growing in the single bush by the kitchen window. The opening of the buds catalogued by my husband is included here.

In the front garden there is a bush / creeper. Well I was not sure what it was as it sent out these long branches that reached up to the roof pretty fast and I had to keep cutting them back. The first year there were no flowers, so I had no idea what the plant was. The next year there were one or two small yellow flowers and looked like roses. This year, after good pruning of last 3 years, there was a explosion of beautiful pale yellow almost creamy roses and it turns out to be a rose creeper that could cover the walls if I leave it to grow. But then I do not think it would flower so well.

Another surprise was the nistercium plant. There is a small plant growing next to the thorny pink rose bush and in the past I have had a few nicely orange and yellow flowers show up. But strangely this year, most likely due to large amounts of rain through summer and autumn, I believe, there has been an explosion of this plant. It had sent out creepers all around and flowered like crazy. The leaves growing large also like the lily pad leaves. 

The blue flower in here is from another plant. There was a nicely branching plant I saw at the edge of someone's garden. I picked a small branch to pot to grow this succulent type of plant and I got these pretty delicate blue flowers.

The other one that sends vines all around the garden, across the fence and on to the neighbour’s and our garage is the morning glory. 

The white flowers are fromanotehr creeper and I have yet to find out what it is!

There are also a couple of bulbs of spectacular orange-flowered amaryllid. There are some pretty delicate purple / blue flowers that I am sure are a kind of weed.

The grass is green and full of clover especially when the sun warms up the ground after heavy rains. The rain and odd hailstorm are wonderful to watch.

The winter time is when we get our harvest of limes. There tree has huge thorns and was badly in need of a prune. Having cut it back for the last 3 years we got a decent harvest of about 15 limes this year.

Finally, also this winter we discovered out resident blue tongued lizard. Seems to be living under the house and comes out to bask in the winter sunshine.