​The location is 19kms from Narrogin on the Tarwonga Road. Driving south, soon after passing the Highbury West Road intersection, the next uncleared land is Highbury B block. Look for the Telstra sign and turn left onto a track on the top of a rise. The trail leads further into a Telstra tower (note, it is easy to get lost if you try to follow any side trails.)
Stop by the large granite rock on the right (‘Telstra spot’). 

​The landscape and soils at the Telstra spot are unusual in having varying depths of grey gritty sand over grey clay with granite outcrops. The gnarled jarrah trees near shallow clay and rock are very unusual and there is a lovely range of shrubs around the rock including August flowering blue hakea (Hakea lehmanniana).
​The slope on the north side of the track has an attractive range of vegetation ranging from winter-wet low kwongan scrub on shallow sand over grey clay with larger plants and sheoak woodland where the sand is deeper. Good orchid country. Dotted in amongst this are lichen-rich low granite outcrops with rock pools and a beautiful but tiny red bladderwort (redcaps Utricularia menziesii) that I haven’t seen elsewhere in the Narrogin district

The slope on the north side of the track has an attractive range of vegetation ranging from winter-wet low kwongan scrub on shallow sand over grey clay with larger plants and sheoak woodland where the sand is deeper. Good orchid country. Dotted in amongst this are lichen-rich low granite outcrops with rock pools and a beautiful but tiny red bladderwort (redcoats Utricularia menziesii) that I haven’t seen elsewhere in the Narrogin district.
There is an illegal trail bike track provided for you to walk on. Be sure to smile for Parks and Wildlife hidden cameras that may be installed to catch trail bikers and illegal woodcutters

​To get to the ‘Forestry Road spot’ drive further down Tarwonga Road on the southern edge of the reserve and turn into Forestry Road. The Forestry road turnoff is easy to miss as it looks more like a fire access track. Park near the corner as there can be deep and boggy pools further down.
This is a water gaining spot with a wonderful show of orchids and other wildflowers in October. Of note is the tall late October flowering heart leaf poison Gastrolobium bilobum. This is the only spot in the district that I have found this poison, but it was more common in early settlement days because it was common in granite soil country that was favoured grazing country for early settlers. The lovely Pustkuchen ruin near here was abandoned because there was  such a huge germination of this poison after a wildfire on the land that the owners abandoned the farm.
Look carefully on the eastern edge of the poison to find silky blue orchids, Cyanicula sericea, purple pansy orchids Diuris longifolia, and a few little red kangaroo paws.
The mixed display of everlastings and other spring flowers is delightful
 
For more images click individual images in this Google photos album

Keen to learn more I googled madly and became very confused, but finally found this simple guide to the world of bugs.
Adult spittlebugs are called froghoppers and are a subgroup with other hoppers because the winged adults are very aerodynamically shaped and jump with the fastest jumping speed in the insect world (too fast for most predators).
Incidentally hoppers in turn are grouped with cicadas into suborder Auchenorrhyncha (because adults have hard forewings which held roof-like over the membranous hind wings on the back.
And all of these are grouped with aphids, scales and true bug because they all have piercing sucking mouthparts and go through 5 nymphal stages to the winged adults (Order Hemiptera).
 Simple isn’t it ?.

No doubt, you know that plants have two fluid conducting systems in their trunk and stems (a bit like our arteries and veins). Shallow phloem channels carrying sugars down from the leaves to provide energy for plant cells are targeted by aphids and scales, which they in turn secrete from their bum as a sugary treat  for ants.
Spittlebugs also tap into the deeper xylem channels that transport water and minerals up from plant roots and provides them with more liquid to make their spit.
 
Back to spittlebugs – there are two groups
Family Clastopteridae: Machaerotinae - Tube Spittlebugs (above). Their nymphs build and live in tubes.
Family Aphrophoridae  Spittlebugs. Nymphs produce bubbly 'spittle' on the stems of shrubs or small trees to protect them. Check for them before cursing those uncouth bogans who expectorate on our plants

​Greetings fellow Foxies,
Malyalling reserve is an attractive 52-hectare bush reserve that was a hub of activity for surrounding residents in the early 20th century. Read about this at the information bay on the corner of Kirk Rock and Wickepin-Yealering roads.

The School
A short track on the south side of Kirk Rock Road leads to a plaque commemorating the first one-teacher Malyalling School from 1910 to 1925. These schools were dotted all over the agricultural areas where an intrepid teacher taught all primary grades of children in fairly primitive conditions. Student numbers were often low to the extent that underage children were enrolled to meet the minimum number required.
The image below is particularly significant for my wife Aileen, as the teacher is Sir Fred Chaney who went on to become the minister for the navy in the Fraser federal government at the time of the Voyager disaster. The Chaney’s were also Aileen’s childhood neighbours in Kensington, and she has fond memories of playing with Freddy (AO), Michael (AO), and Rick Chaney. 
​A quaint school garden of introduced Sparaxis bulbs with rock borders remains.
When these schools closed due to lack of pupils they were carted off to another spot. I met a disgruntled grey nomad at Malyalling who was sick of going out to historic WA sites, only to find a plaque on a rock (can’t blame her).

​The Rock
The adjoining low granite rock has a nice covering of lichens and native plants, and gives a view of farm land to the south. Granite sun orchids and tiny little laughing leek orchids flower there in spring. Surrounding York gum-jam woodland is infested with wild oats (probably brought in by horses ridden by school kids and families attending events), but you can find fringed mantis orchids and donkey orchids around the base of the rock. Please take care to avoid lichens on the rock, particularly when they are dry and brittle

​The sports ground
A hub for local sport from 1920 to 1960,it is covered in regrowth. After much hunting around I found the football shed and tennis net support posts, the oval, and cricket pitch,
The largely intact morning tea shed was unfortunately littered from an evening drinking session by a fire.

​Bushwalking, bird watching and wildflower opportunities
There are some lovely areas of bush in the reserve. A highlight is the York gum woodland patch containing spring flowering blood spider orchids and stark white orchids, and orchid rich bushland on the other side of the road where I found an ant orchid. Splendid open salmon gum- wandoo forest on the south east area is a good bird watching and bushwalking area. I found a really unusual morel fungus there.
 
A flora survey of Malyalling and Rich Road reserves can be downloaded below

​Overall
The average tourist, arriving here without information will be disappointed, but with on-site interpretive panels and a brochure, it would be a nice spot for them

Greetings fellow Foxies,
 In mid-October I saw a small gleaming structure like a pearl-laden pendant attached to a dead quandong twig that I thought was an empty pupal case. The pearls were eggs accompanied by a dumpy insect that I thought was a type of scale. Wrong again!
The insect was a flightless female moth, that had laid the eggs after emerging from a pupal case inside the silky and hairy frame. 

​The insect was a flightless female moth, that had laid the eggs after emerging from a pupal case inside the silky and hairy frame. I found two information sources

• This Butterfly House blog. Clouded Footman Anestia ombrophanes
• My Pestguide Bioblitz report: They are the caterpillars of a very interesting moth, Marbled Footman, Anestia ombrophanes Meyrick, 1886 or Anestia semiochrea (Butler, 1886) (Lepidoptera: Erebidae). The two species may well be the same species described about the same time by two entomologists. The species is native and widespread but rarely observed in the Southern part of Australia. The caterpillars are black with a complex pale-yellow pattern and a row of pink spots on each sides and covered in long black hairs. They feed on primitive plants such as: Lichen, Green Algae (Bracteacoccus species) and Black Algae (Gloeocapsa magma). The adult female has a length of about 1 cm. She is wingless and flightless and has a large grey body with pink spots. The female stays near her cocoon, and the male copulates with her there.

​I was aware of flightless female wasps that dragon orchid flowers mimic to fool male wasps to pollinate them in a fruitless attempt to mate. But flightless moths! Amazing.
As strange as it seems, flightless females can carry more eggs than those with wings but need to be well camouflaged to avoid predators and have a good dispersal mechanism for the many emerged young.
I took the egg mass home to take better closeup images, and discovering that the female was still alive, left it in a safe place.
When I looked again a week later, there were lots of teeny caterpillars hanging down from silken threads, presumably waiting for a wind to disperse them.
I quickly made up a buffet of various plant materials but suspect that they all crawled away. Such is life.