Be Careful What You Wish For

Ever since we visited Scott Conservation Park last winter I've been looking forward to going back there. We had done the short one-hour walk which I had enjoyed immensely, but there was a longer one which advertised itself as 'the orchid walk', best seen in spring. Every time we decided to go for a walk I'd suggest this one, but Steve always had other suggestions. But after last week's bush walk in the Hindmarsh Valley where we had spotted a couple of orchids, I was fired up to see more of these lovely wildflowers. After persuading Steve that it would be a wonderful day out, my wish came true and we arrived at the start of the walk, around 30 kms from home north of Currency Creek. 

Hmmm. The first thing we noticed were the mosquitos buzzing around. It'll be ok once we start walking I thought. A few strides later and we were confronted by a set of steep wooden steps that led down to a very muddy creek. I remember this from our previous walk, but that time, the creek had been dry so we merely walked across the dried-up bed. Now we could see there were half a dozen rocks thoughtfully spaced out across the water but seemingly put there by someone who didn't realise that a rock for walking precariously over water should be flat and smooth with a uniform round shape. I just couldn't face falling into the water, especially if I couldn't get a good grounding on any of the rocks. Annoyed, we retraced our steps and decided to start the loop walk from the other end. We got back in the car and drove to the second entrance. 

The walk was through scrubby bush and nothing like I remembered from the last visit. Perhaps it was the sunny day that rendered everything brittle and faded like an overexposed photo. 

And those pesky mosquitos returned.  We were forever batting them away and stopping for photos was a precarious exercise. I was scouring the track for orchids but none was to be seen, although I did rather like the vivid blues and yellows of the tiny flowers that spread across the forest floor. Because of the sun these flowers look very washed out. 

I tried to take some in the shade which was a little better.

And I did like this lovely pale green flower.

Steve spotted a bright yellow one.

On we trudged. It was not turning out to be a very pleasant walk at all. We couldn't see any orchids and now huge black ants scurried across the path for a few metres. It was difficult to avoid them so we hurried on hoping none decided to hitch a ride on our trousers. 

I was only halfheartedly checking the undergrowth when I though I spotted an orchid. It was so tiny.

And then I saw some more.

That was the last I saw.  The bush then gave way to sunny open expanses but then the track narrowed back to where there was a bit of shade and greenery - but no orchids.

We crossed another creek but this time, thankfully, there was a proper concrete bridge. But we were so disgruntled by now as the track just went on and on through nondescript bush; it seemed nothing like the previous visit and there were more mosquitos than orchids. So we turned around, retraced our steps ... and drove home, wondering why a place could be so inviting at one time and rather ordinary another time. 

Oops

Back home I did what I should have done before we set off - check what wildflowers we might see. By looking at the photos on the very informative site showing native orchids of the Adelaide Hills region, I was able to identify that we had spotted the wallflower donkey orchid (the one with the yellow 'donkey ears' sticking up). The swathes of those tiny blue and yellow flowers that to me did not look like a traditional orchid turned out to be varieties of sun orchids. So it really was 'an orchid walk' after all. I'll have to return to my previous blog now to identify all the orchids we really did see on our Mount Billy walk that I dismissed so readily as 'only wildflowers'.