Tuesday 24 July 2007

Bowen

It rained in Bowen today. This is an unusual combination of words. I know it rained (briefly) because I was clambering over rocks at King's Beach, trying to find some nerites to photograph, when the skies opened and I got soaked.

The outcrop at the end of King's Beach is a good site for Nerita plicata and N. costata. They prefer the wave-lashed rock faces at the mid- to low-tide level. Not the best place to be clambering about when it's raining, the tide is on its way in and there's a lively onshore wind. But I did find a solitary (and probably lost) N. costata. There were also the usual run of planaxids, nodilittorinids and oyster-eating whelks.






And if the molluscs aren't exciting enough, Bowen has recently been turned into a film set. Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman had been in town to make a movie about ... something. (I really should pay more attention.) They've gone now and Bowen has returned to its relaxed self. Apart from the odd pretension.