16 CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER 



lawyer vine toying with the rod-like aerial roots of the 

 mangrove. 



The plateau is the park of the island, half a mile broad, 

 and a mile and more long. Upon it grows the best of the 

 bloodwoods (Eucalyptus corynbosa), the red stringy bark 

 (B. robusta), Moreton Bay ash (E. tessalaris], various 

 wattles, the gin-gee of the blacks (Diplanthera tetraphylla). 

 Pandanus aquaticus marks the courses and curves of some 

 of the gullies. A creek, hidden in a broad ribbon of jungle 

 and running from a ravine in the range to the sea, divides 

 our park in fairly equal portions. 



Most part of the range is heavily draped with jungle 

 that is, on the western aspect. Just above the splash of the 

 Pacific surges on the weather or eastern side, low-growing 

 scrub and restricted areas of forest, with expansive patches 

 of jungle, plentifully intermixed with palms and bananas, 

 creep up the precipitous ascent to the summit of the range 

 870 feet above the sea. So steep is the Pacific slope 

 that, standing on the top of the ridge and looking down, 

 you catch mosaic gleams of the sea among the brown and 

 grey tree-trunks. But for the prodigality of the vegetation, 

 one slide might take you from the cool mountain-top to the 

 cooler sea. The highest peak, which presents a buttressed 

 face to the north, and overlooks our peaceful bay, is crowned 

 with a forest of bloodwoods, upon which the jungle steadily 

 encroaches. The swaying fronds of aspiring palms, adorned 

 in due season with masses of straw-coloured inflorescence, to 

 be succeeded by loose bunches of red, bead-like berries, 

 shoot out from the pall of leafage. In the gloomy gullies 

 are slender-shafted palms and tree-ferns, while ferns and 

 mosses cover the soil with living tapestry, and strange, 

 snake-like epiphytes cling in sinuous curves to the larger 

 trees. The trail of the lawyer vine {Calamus obstruens}, 

 with its leaf sheath and long tentacles bristling with 

 incurved hooks, is over it all. Huge cables of vines 

 trail from tree to tree, hanging in loops and knots and 

 festoons, the largest (Entada scandens] bearing pods 4 feet 

 long and 4 inches broad, containing a dozen or so brown 



