Another botanic garden: Mt Tomah

I was showing a visitor around last week, and returning from a day in the Blue Mountains, we called in at the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden at Mount Tomah.

It's been a long time since I was last there, and the gardens have matured nicely.




As is the way with these places, it's divided into lots of sections. There's a formal garden, a rock garden, a bog garden, rhododendrons, woodlands, and a Gondwana walk. Plus, interestingly, an explorers' walk. Not the usual line-up of explorers though. These were 14 plant explorers who went collecting in Asia over 300 years. There's also a conifer section, with, not surprisingly, some fine specimens of the ancient, recently rediscovered, Wollemi Pine. (A bit of a 'Jurassic Park' theme to go along with these.)

The formal garden was looking a bit on the informal side, I thought. The problem seemed to be the brush turkeys which had made themselves at home there!





More at: https://www.bluemountainsbotanicgarden.com.au/

Waratahs, Wollemi Pines, and the Illawarra Escarpment

It was the last Sunday in winter, and one of those glorious Sydney winter days. There were a ludicrous number of them this year. Where better to be than on the Illawarra Escarpment Walk, looking down on places like Stanwell Park, Colecliff, and Scarborough?

We were on the lookout for wild waratah flowers. Should have been some out by now, we thought, and we'd come across lots along here in the past. Our state's floral emblem can be a little unpredictable and elusive though.

We did come across one fine specimen, but it was in the garden of the cafe at Sublime Point, so maybe doesn't count.


One (somewhat unexpected) floral discovery was a Wollemi Pine tree. This is the 'dinosaur tree', not seen for 70 million years, since it went extinct in dinosaur times, or so they thought. It had been hiding from the dinosaurs in remote canyons in the Wollemi National Park until its rediscovery about 20 years ago. It has since come out of hiding, and managed to get itself widely propagated and dispersed around the joint, by the helpful modern humans. It doesn't plan to go extinct again any time soon.















Below: Looking south to Wollongong, Port Kembla, and beyond

Mt Annan Botanic Gardens

I'd been there once before, about ten years ago when it was a fairly new creation. Since then the Mt Annan Botanic Gardens have grown up and matured nicely. I found lots of nice little (and not so little) features to admire and explore.

It's near Camden, to the south west of Sydney, and it's 416 hectares in area, and Australia's larget botanic garden. It's run by the same Royal Botanic Gardens & Domain Trust that runs the main Sydney one and the Blue Mountains version at Mt Tomah. Mt Annan's specialty is the display of 'plants from across Australia in both formal and informal settings within a typically Australian landscape'.

There are sculptures, barbecue areas, sundials, picnic areas, a visitor centre, a blue tree, and a cafe. There's a memorial to the aboriginal stolen generation, and there's the Australian Plantbank, which hosts one of the largest native seedbank collections in the world.

There are also lots of Wollemi pines, the 'living fossil from the dinosaur age'. It had been thought to have been extinct for eons, but was found in 1994 in one steep sided valley in the depths of the Wollemi National Park. It's been planted all over the place now, and seems to be rather a happy and hardy species.

And I loved the Sturt's Desert Peas, from central Australia. Bright red, in full flower, and not seemingly worried to be so far from home.












Mt Annan (the mountain itself) is actually a bit of a molehill. I strolled up it, and you do get nice views of the rest of the site, but a rather drab view of the surrounding monocrome grey suburbs.

I might come back more frequently in future.