August 2025 Activity Details - Friday meeting, and Sunday outing to Goombungee "tip".

 CLUB MEETING: 7 pm, Friday 05 September 2025

An urban possum
Photo: L. Beaton

St. Anthony’s Community Centre, Memory Street, Toowoomba. The speaker's presentation is followed by official business and supper. 

Robert Ashdown presents "Wild in the suburbs"

Rob Ashdown has recently retired after more than a decade as Education Officer with the Queensland Museum and more than two decades as Senior Ranger with the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. He now has more time to pursue his interest in photography, which has been a passion of his for many years. 

There is no escape from wild creatures. Whether we like it or not, they do their best to share the space we humans jealously call our own. Species other than human have their own territories, and their maps and tracks are often laid quietly over the top of ours. A myriad of other creatures go about their lives around us in often surprising, resilient and resourceful ways. For most people in the suburbs, wildlife encounters usually feature the more 'charismatic' animals that wish to rearrange our gardens, steal our vegetables or move in with us, including possums, magpies, carpet pythons, flying foxes and brush-turkeys. These creatures are all part of the urban biodiversity life that makes life in the burbs a better, if occasionally challenging, proposition.

CLUB OUTING: Sunday 07 September  2025. Goombungee ‘tip’

We will try for Goombungee wildflowers again and keep our fingers crossed for mild weather.

The Goombungee Waste Management Facility holding protects a large area of pristine native vegetation beyond the rubbish sites where public access is not available. By special arrangement, guided by Lisa Churchward we are privileged to have entry to the area for this outing where it is hoped boronia, prostanthera, acacias and hovea - to name just a few will still be in flower. 

See Full times and details here.

August Outing Report - Highfields Falls Bushland instead, Sunday 03 Aug 2025.

Adapted from the TFNC newsletter report of F. Mangubhai with contribution on galls from D. Johnson.

Galls on a young wattle plant
Photo: F Mangubhai

The planned outing to Goombungee had to be cancelled because of the amount of rain during the night. Instead, we were to meet at the James Byrne end of the Highfields Falls Bushland. Ten members and a visitor arrived by 9 a.m. on a sunny but cold morning.

It was an easy walk with a chorus of birds to keep us company. The stops made on the route were mainly to try to spot birds which were flitting about, quite often high in the canopy. These spots were where the sun broke through, as well as at the top of the waterfall, and again at the bottom of the Falls. Recent rains ensured that there was a good flow of water. Opposite the descent to the bottom of the Falls was a tree where Powerful Owls used to roost, but there was no sign of any owl, nor any giveaway signs on the ground to indicate they might have been there. 

One of the non-avian things that caught our attention was some large galls on a quite small wattle tree (see photo). It was not the gall that poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was referring to in these few lines:

I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree

Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;

Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

But it is a bit of a curse for the wattle tree. The gall is a reaction to insects such as mites, thrips and wasps, laying eggs in the plant tissue, and their larvae release chemicals (like cecidotoxins) that stimulate abnormal cell growth, forming the gall. The gall is essentially the tree’s defensive response - a kind of botanical scar tissue - triggered by foreign substances or organisms. It walls off the invader, but in doing so, creates a nutrient-rich shelter that ironically benefits the pest. Gall shapes vary on different Acacias. [For more information on galls: gall history in Aus.pdf.]

Bird list for Highfields Falls Bushland Park (compiled from members' observations)

Straw-necked Ibis; Pacific Baza (probable sighting); Brown Quail; White-headed Pigeon; Galah; Sulphur-crested Cockatoo; Rainbow Lorikeet; Little Lorikeet; King Parrot; Pale-headed Rosella; Laughing Kookaburra; Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike; Eastern Yellow Robin; Grey Shrike-thrush; Grey Fantail; Eastern Whipbird; Superb Fairy-wren; White-browed Scrubwren; Brown Thornbill (probable sighting); Varied Sittella; White-throated Treecreeper; Noisy Miner; Lewin’s Honeyeater; White-naped Honeyeater; Brown Honeyeater; Mistletoebird; Spotted Pardalote; Red-browed Firetail; Olive-backed Oriole; Australian Figbird.