Category: Bush Walking
Spring has Sprung 2019
A Spring morning walk around Cowan brought hundreds of new colours to life: red waratahs, purple comespermum (pink matcheads), purple boronias (both the ledifolia and the pinnata, yellow hakea salicafolio, bright blue dampiera, brilliant yellow ispogon and the powerfully pink eriostomon Australiensis. Add to this the amazing sight of rare night-jar spotted just before dawn…
American Literature, Australian Literature, Bush Walking, Oz Lit, Visionary Imagination, William Blake, x Blogging
A Pome- from a recently discovered Manuscript of a play by W. Shakespeare
Spring is come The grass is riz Oi wonder where the flowers iz But Shakespeare was wrong this time: the flowers are blooming, exploding around Sydney now in the dead of winter!!. This is the amazing aspect of living on the 33rd parallel: the seasons cannot make up their minds: is it winter? is it…
Budjwa Bay Again
Back to my old haunt the wonderful Bay just West of Cowan. This an amazing spot to experience total silence- and yet so close to the city. Spiders were all the way down the track and ducking and weaving was the only way of ensuring that their food supply mechanism was not destroyed!
Morning Walk Down Lyre-Bird Gulley- Begins with Stone lyre-bird ends with Flesh lyre-bird.
The walk down Lyre-Bird Gulley (from Mount Kuring-gai down to Calna Creek and on to either Crosslands or Berowra Waters) now begins with this beautiful stone carving of a lyre-bird created by Noel Rosten (Australian Plant Growers’ Assocation) and his team of native plant enthusiasts from Asquith Boy’s High School. This lyre-bird and the gulley…
Bush Walk to Collingridge Point August 6th 2017
Collingridge Point is in the Marramarra National Park in the western flank of Berowra Waters, the side that used to be inhabited by the Darug tribe. The opposite shore was inhabited by the Guringai. This walk is one of the most wonderful wildflower walks in the region and to cap it, when you come to…
Bujwa: Autumn Dawn Morning Miracle
As we started down the bay track at around 4.30 am the silver gums glowed while the frogs sang loudly through the bush. Down at the bay the mist was thick: it was like looking down into an abyss, but the stillness was immense. And then the bird calls began from across the bay: lyre-birds,…
Autumn Walk to Budjwa Bay (Cowan)
The walk to Budjwa Bay in the early morning is always an incredible delight: the stillness that increases as you move down towards the bay itself, the early morning bird song and the wonderful efflorescence from autumn flowering plants like the Banksia Spinulosa and the Xanthorea Australis (Grass Tree/ Black Boy). Here is the Spinulosa…
Wisdom from my Doctor
I went for my regular check up this week and met my wonderful but rather ashen-faced doctor who told me he almost didn’t make it in today because a close friend of his had died the day before. I asked him what had happened and he told me that his friend (who was also a…
Jerusalem Bay- Taffy’s Lookout: Spring Day
This walk begins at Cowan Station and is part of The Great North Walk for the first half. The wildflowers this season have been the best I have ever seen. The walk down to Jerusalem Bay is nothing short of miraculous. Here at the start are a stand of 2 metre high Isopogons (Anethafolius). These…
MidWinter Spring!
Little Gidding I Midwinter spring is its own season Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown, Suspended in time, between pole and tropic. When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire, The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches, In windless cold that is the heart’s heat, Reflecting in a watery mirror A…
Teaching has finished: Back to Bushwalking!
Two recent wonderful trips: up to the heights above Galston Gorge and down to the edge of the Hawkesbury at Bujwa Bay. Sunrise over Galston Heights Angophora in a grass tree forest Mishapen Angophora renewing its lightning-lopped limbs Magnificent Angophora specimen on the way down to the Steele Bridge Galston Gorge Two Videos from the…
Sydney Spring Starts in August: What a Treat!
A walk across the ridge above Galston Gorge this morning reveals a landscape spectacularly clothed in colours and new life. Be sure to click on the images to get full resolution. Boronia Ledifolia (Sydney Boronia) covers the ground in bursts of pink: The white Grevillia is an unusual sight on this ridge: And here is a magnificent…
Welcome to Spring Semester, students in: Oz Lit, Twentieth Century & Visionary Blake
l am very much looking forward to working with you all in these three fabulous units. Oz Lit (otherwise known as Australian Literature) will take us on an amazing tour of the creativity produced in this, our, country over the past 200 years and more… Twentieth Century will engage us with the literature from around…
Bush Walking, Literature: An Introduction, Nineteenth, Shakespeare Plus, Visionary Blake, x Blogging
Grounding the Sacred: Don’t Miss This Event- Musicians, Artists, Novelists, Poets Engaging With the Sacred
Please Click to Register for this Amazing Conference Learn more at Grounding the Sacred through Literature and the Arts Conference.
Budjwa Bay: Muoagamarra Nature Reserve Near Cowan, NSW- Early Sunday Morning Walk
The image at the top of this site is Budjwa Bay as it manifested itself on this cold, wet winter morning. But the stillness, the freshness was deafening, except for the multi-coloured calls of the Lyre Birds from across the water. Here is a place to sit and absorb the quiet round about and hear the quiet inside. What…
Winter is upon us! But the Bush is still a fabulous place to enter…
Made it to the top of the ridge above Galston, early on Saturday morning. The air was fresh and there were beautifully icy mists swirling up from the Gorge to the valley tops (click on all images to get stunning resolutions): On the ridge tops there was an amazing array of winter flowering plant life:…
Saturday Morning Dawn Walk Down to Berowra Creek
My brother and I set off at the crack of dawn on a densely misty morning from Berowra Heights down to Berowra Creek, not far from Berowra Waters. The view from the top of the ridge, down across the gullies towards Crosslands is magic: It was dark almost all the way down, but we followed…
Hakea Sericea – Seed Cobs- Galston
After the morning mist has wreathed its diaphanous skirt over the landscape its passing is registered on every branch, leaf and seed. Here the Hakea Sericea with its testicular seed capsules points the way down to the Galston Creek: Left this one out from the previous post!
Sunday Morning Bush Bash
Made it this morning to the best spot overlooking the Hawkesbury Sandstone Plateau- just before dawn: Lot’s of autumnal wildflowers out, most spectacular this Banksia Collina, abundant all along the ridge tops: And the moist autumnal weather brings out a profusion of spider webs: Near the end of the walk ( around a 12 Km…
Easter Sunday Bush Walk to Jerusalem Bay
Blessed with the sunshine on this Easter Sunday, we went down to Jerusalem Bay through the magnificent changing landscape of a hanging swamp full of flowering tee trees, through the wet sclerophyll with pink croweas and nearly flowering darwinias. Then the track descends through rain forest with high Turpentine and coachwood trees. Reaching the “nose”…
Sunday Morning Walk to Cobah Point (Hawkesbury River)
This morning’s walk began at dawn over Kuring-gai Chase On the track to Cobah Point- early morning mist; while the temperature is already in the low 20s there is a definite sense of autumn in the air with all this mist, and – as you will see- with all the early morning spiders: Here the…
Nineteenth Century (Romanticism and Victorianism) Week 1
William Blake’s “The Garden of Love” and William Wordsworth’s two poems “Expostulation and Reply” and “The Tables Turned” provided a real gateway into some of the central insights of the Romantic Movement: their disaffection with mere book learning, with conventional morality and their belief in the power of nature and the resources of childhood to vanquish the…
Autumn Semester 2015
Hi All, I am looking forward very much to working with you in all of the following units: Nineteenth Century Literature (ENGL200); Shakespeare & The Renaissance (ENGL210); Introduction to Literature (Clemente- Mission Australia Students, ENGL104); Learning in the Community (HUMA247)and (ARTS232). This is the space where I will be posting my weekly reflections on our…
Michael Griffith: Home Page- Literature and Life Summer 2023 
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