Today I added two photos to my albums. The first was of a red flowering gum leaf which had fallen onto the grass verge from one of the slender trees which lined the road. It caught my eye because of its shape and the subtle beauty of its colours against the vibrant setting of the hues of the grass. The species is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia and typically grows to a height of ten metres.

The second was of the huge clearing in the rainforest bordering Eagle Heights Road, which I decided to photograph a year after it was wrought by Cyclone Alfred. The cyclone made landfall a little north of Brisbane. Whenever I drove past, I sensed its scale. I took the photo a few metres in from the road. I thought that the leach I noticed crawling on the carpet between the bedrooms, had hitched a lift on my shoe, but seeing its engorged state made me look for evidence of a bite. The sock above the ankle of my right leg had a patch of blood on it. This was my first leach bite in more than five years.

I wanted to photograph the cycad for several days. It had been relocated to the edge of a block which was cleared of buildings and vegetation. It was beginning to establish itself when a fierce wind split the trunk, causing part of it to fall to the ground. The trunk can grow to a diameter of 80 cm. Its outer layer is covered by the persistent remains of leaf bases.  The cycad is an ancient, long-lived and slow-growing species, which is endemic to coastal south-eastern Queensland and north-eastern New South Wales. The cylindrical cone is among the largest of all cycad cones.

The fungi, which I photographed today, were among several growing on or near the same tree stump in Central Ave which I photographed in April 2025. I sent the mycologist three images, hopefully of different species, and I await a reply from him.

I photographed a bumper crop of Bunya pine cones in the park opposite my unit, the first since 2018, and a month earlier than then. I believe there are more cones on the ground now, but far fewer Sulphur-crested cockatoos to gorge on the feast. The cones in the photos are a fraction of the number of cones scattered around the park’s four Bunya pine trees. We are unbelievably fortunate in having two distinct kinds of subtropical rainforest in Southeast Queensland; namely the lush rainforest hereabouts and the cool subtropical rainforest of the Bunya Mountains, a three and a half hour drive away.