Beautiful photos from Lofty. I’d love to be out on a bike if I was there, too. Click for full size.
Photos © Lofty. All rights reserved.
I’m a cyclist who loves the variety of the Australian bush, and sometimes I remember to take along my old Sony Cybershot. Sometimes I ride alone, sometimes with a group of mature aged reprobates like me. The first picture is of a pine forest lunch stop, just a rotted stump for furniture and the gentle sighing of light breezes in the tree tops for company.
The second is of a road sign that may indicate where your antipodean spirit hides.
The third is a juxtaposition between native and introduced forests of the region. The pine trees are “Pinus Radiata” or Monterey Pine, picked 120 years ago for great swathes of monoculture crops of building timber in the wetter areas of the state.
The last picture is of my cycling gang resting against a pipe line in the curiously named Beetaloo Valley, in the Flinders Ranges.
And my little cobweb encrusted corner of teh interwebs is here:
https://lofty76.wordpress.com/
if anyone is interested to have a look.
I used to ride my bike a lot, but not so much anymore. That first photo, however, brought back memories from about three weeks ago. I have a huge, old pine tree in my front yard. I needed to mow the grass, but I had to gather up what seemed like 10,000 pine cones before I could proceed. I told my wife that I wish someone would engineer a squirrel that would eat the pine cones instead of cleaning out the bird feeders we have.
Looks like you have a lot of great trails to ride on. Lucky for you!
The difference between native forest and a new plantation is stark.
The second is my favorite, though. Those smooth grey trunks again. If a tree trunk looks like that here, the tree is dead. Yet the gum trees(?) seem to be alive and well.
Ice Swimmer:
Same here. I’d love to touch one of those trees, run my hand over that smoothness.
Caine
It’s of course an illusion, close up the bark has small insect sized imperfections, bumps and scribble marks. Think of roughed up parchment or hand made paper with wood chips in it and you’re closer to the texture. I’ll shoot off a couple of pics of the Manna Gum behind our house and send them to you.
Irony of ironies is that while Monterey pine is the most popular pine species for plantations because it grows fast, it’s endangered in its native California.
It’s also one the few species of pine that can be used in making mechanical pulp (which requires a lot energy, but yields twice as much pulp/wood as chemical pulping) as it doesn’t contain as much sticky resin as pines usually do. Usually spruce is used for mechanical pulp for newsprint, magazine paper and cardboard
They’ve tried Monterey pine on a very small scale even here in Finland, but our domestic pine (Pinus sylvestris, Scots pine) and spruce (Picea abies, Norway spruce, the English names are clearly from UK) grow as well or better than foreign ones in the cold winters, short growing season and long, low intensity daylight during the season.
Lofty:
That makes it more beautiful to me. My favourite stick is one Rick made from a Juniper on our property -- it’s covered in insect engraving, and I could look at it all day long.
That’s still much smoother than most trees. Got the photos, I’ll get those posted later today or Friday.