^°^*'J Excursion to Whittlesea. \ig 



EXCURSION TO WHITTLESEA. 



Whittlesea, though httle further from town than Ferntree 

 Gully, owing to its limited train service requires a whole day 

 for a visit ; consequently, when the leader found five others, 

 including two ladies, at Spencer-street station on Saturday 

 morning, 27th September, he felt amply repaid for the effort 

 it was necessary for all to make to reach the meeting-place at 

 a somewhat early hour. The rich alluvial fiats in the im- 

 mediate vicinity of Whittlesea are not promising to the 

 naturalist ; but three miles away one begins to reach the foot- 

 hills of the Plenty Ranges, where, as our outing proved, the 

 bird-lover or the botanist can always find something of 

 interest. We had arranged to visit the Toorourrong Reservoir 

 and the adjacent valley of Jack's Creek, which, being within 

 the reservation of the Metropolitan Board of Works, are 

 forbidden ground unless visitors are provided with the permit 

 courteously granted by the Board on request. A vehicle had 

 been arranged for so as to save the three-mile walk to and 

 from the entrance gate. Here we got the first indication of 

 what we were destined to see many signs of during the day — 

 the devastating fires which swept through the reserve last 

 January. The exotic trees at the entrance suffered so severely 

 that they have had to be removed and new ones planted. A 

 visit was first of all made to the lake, the surroundings of which, 

 fortunately, seemed to have escaped the fire fiend. Those 

 who had not seen it before could not but express their delight 

 at the beauty of its situation, nestling amidst a setting of deep- 

 blue hills, and promised themselves another glimpse in the 

 subdued fight of the evening ; but we fingered so long in other 

 places that there was no time for a second impression. 

 The Jack's Creek valley was now our objective, and while 

 the fires, no doubt, did much damage, which will require years 

 to re-clothe, the clearance doubtless helped the smaller plants, 

 and we were gratified to find numbers of such orchids as 

 Caladenia carnea, C. congesta, and C. Menziesii where previously 

 had been under shrubs, while in one place the larger violet, 

 Viola hetonici folia, formed quite a bank of flowers. Fortunately, 

 in places the track still wound through bush untouched by 

 fire, and we were enabled to conceive what the hillside was 

 like before the calamity happened. The native laburnum, 

 Goodia lotifolia, and the Austral Indigo, Indigofera atistralis, 

 added colour to the scene, but we were a little too late for the 

 acacias, of which several species fringe the track. Here and 

 there the Pultenaeas, P. scabra and P. Gunnii, with Daviesia 

 iilicina, showed a few of their characteristic brown and orange 

 ])ea-flowers, but they, too, had suffered severely. At Smith's 

 Gully, the shady resting-place at the foot of the final hill, we 



