Wednesday 1 August 2007

A taste of Chillagoe

The whole country is a vast undulating plain, dotted with rugged masses of curiously-outlined limestone ridges, rising to many hundreds of feet, straight out of the ground, giving the landscape a stern and oppressive grandeur; the deep fissures of these towering walls are filled with gnarled and hoary trunks of trees striking and grasping the massive fragments with their rootlets and creeping and twisting in and out of crevices. Below, the huge blocks of stone are overgrown with an intricate wilderness of shrubs and creeping plants; while high above, these dark and towering walls are destitute of any living thing, and their stricken, shattered-looking peaks networks of sharp pinnacles with needle-like points, stand grey and arid-looking against the intense blue of the sky.

Ellis Rowan, 1891

Limestone in Chillagoe - Mungana National Park


Brachychiton australis (not quite at its best)