Greetings fellow Foxies,
The town named Wolwolling came into existence with the construction of the Great Southern Railway in 1889 and renamed as Highbury in 1906. The town has a hotel/motel, a general store and a public toilet for visitors.
The townsite is on a rise adjoining the Arthur River flats that is underlain by east-west and south-east/north west trending granite and dolerite rock. Landscape trends can be seen on the map below with a dolerite dyke forming the gravelly mesa in the west and underlying gravelly duplex red morrel forest and strips of salmon gum in the gently undulating eastern reserve.
There are few rock outcrops in what is prime agricultural land with outstanding wildflowers. West of the Great Southern Highway most remnant bush has been extensively modified, but the eastern reserve is in remarkably good condition. I have identified two wonderful wildflower areas (1 and 2) and two others that more suited to committed enthusiasts (3 and 4).
A printed guide will be available at the Dryandra Country Visitor Centre next season.

 Stop 1 has a wildflower walk (about 1km grade 2 easy walk) that has a large array of orchids and other wildflowers in the water-gaining sheoak woodland. Good from May to November, but the best time is September when there is usually a carpet of Stark White Spider Orchids in the open wandoo flat on the northern side. From Great Southern Highway turn onto Highbury East Road then park in red morrels on the Jenkins Road corner. Cover up and use insect repellent as the mosquitos can be ferocious. This is a great birdwatching area and echidnas are active.

Stop 2 is a lovely patch of sandy surfaced open kwongan scrub immediately to the right (west) as you arrive from Narrogin.  You can turn park in the firebreak. A highlight here is the Caladenia longicauda/ Caladenia falcata hybrid and stark white spider orchids, and a range of everlastings and flowering shrubs.

Take the southern access across the railway line and park under red morrels to visit stop 3. A short walk through open bush intersects with an old track that passes through an unusual little saucer-like gravelly upland patch that is bounded on all four sides by slightly uplifted geological faults or dykes. Low prickly Allocasuarina microstachya tammas are interspersed by an unusual range of interesting shrubs and annuals.

To reach stop 4, turn west on to Campbell St from Great Southern Highway, drive up the hill past the tavern and park at the gates of the closed entrance on the curve. There is a track on the opposite side of the road with a Eucalyptus incrassata mallee gravelly rise that changes to a dense broombush (Melaleuca hamata) mini-breakaway slope. Nice show in November.
The slideshow below is just a taste of these lovely spots.

Greetings fellow Foxies,
Candy Block is a little known outlier of Dryandra Woodland on the Narrogin-Wandering Road near the turnoff to Cuballing. It is a great place to visit in the growing season to see some great flowers and interesting scenery. The whole area is underlain by really ancient (2.8 billion years!) granitic rocks that determine the pattern of ridges, waterways and present day soils. Compare this with much of the northern hemisphere that has lots of sedimentary rocks and was scoured by glaciers only 10,000 years ago.
Candy Block has more dramatic slopes and breakaways and gullies and more variable soils than the main block, that reflect variations in the underlying rock. In particular more resistant laterites on NW-SE dolerite dykes have remained while surrounding soils eroded to form dramatic mesas with steep gullies that makes for a great walking trail.
Thicker red lines show good driving tracks to enjoy the reserve. Please enter by the northern entrance as cars may slide and collide with oncoming vehicles while getting a run-up to tackle a blind steep loose gravel  ascent on the southern entrance.
Note that the narrow red lines are fire access tracks that may be rough, boggy or blocked by fallen trees.

The 1.5km Kwongan Trail is an easy walk through a yellow sand wildflower hotspot and other bush that includes attractive marri/ wandoo woodland and a powderbark/ wandoo spot containing Frog Greenhood, Beard, and Blue Sun orchids in mid/late October..

The yellow sand patch is a kwongan wildflower hotspot that reaches its peak in September to November.
The slideshow below gives a snapshot of this remarkable reserve.
Click here for blog on development of Petrophile circinata and Isopogon villosa
Spring orchids are less common. Cowslip orchids are widespread, greenhood, jug, snail greenhood, donkey, blue china and fringed mantis orchids occur in places in sheoak woodland.
 
Sections of Candy Block are baited monthly to control foxes and feral cats. If you discover a “sausage” style bait on the ground please do not touch, remove or disturb it. Pets are not permitted and all pets are likely to be highly susceptible if taking a bait.

Greetings fellow Foxies,

I found these plants on an unusual patch of yellow sand in Dryandra Woodland Candy Block that has Drummond’s Mallee and a large number of shrubs. In August I noted a low compact plant with lovely foliage that I called “carrot plant” while waiting for it to flower. Flowers in late October revealed it to be an uncommon species, Petrophile circinata. Circinate means curled around itself, presumably referring to the whorled leaf arrangement. Images below show the plant and flower.
As this species was coming into flower I noticed that there were a few very similar plants that had beautiful hairy red growth appearing on what I thought were dead flower stalks.
Gadzooks! The local experts were confounded until the growth expanded into the flower of slightly later flowering Isopogon villosus (villous means hairy with long soft hairs). The flowers emerge from thickened scaly clumps of old growth.
To my uneducated eye, vegetative growth of both species is similar, but Petrophile circinata leaves are a slightly darker green and leaf petioles have a distinctive linear fold in the petiole stem.
I usually have no problem distinguishing Isopogons (smooth fruiting nut) from Petrophiles (scaly nut), but these squat species are a real challenge. After a fair bit of excavation in the prickly growth I eventually found a rather confusing nut on the stem below the flowering clump.
The slideshow below follows both species as they flower.

Greetings fellow Foxies,
There have been changes at Railway Dam that deserve a follow-up to the
January 2014 blog.
These include the information bay, the recently installed memorial to World War 2 immigrants who are now an integral part of Narrogin, and my rediscovery of the abandoned Archibald Park jet boat course.
At great expense to the management I have created two walking trails in the reserve. The Dam Walk (white 650 metres 20 minutes), and the Archibald Park Walk (red 1200 metres 40 minutes).

When the first steam train passed through Narrogin from Beverley to Albany in 1899, it was a hamlet with few people. However within 30 years, Narrogin was a bustling town with the largest train junction outside of Perth. Over a third of Narrogin’s population were directly dependent on railway employment, and many sports had at least one railways team. These days are long gone.
Steam locomotives require large amounts of fresh water Built in 1912, Railway Dam was the third local water source (after the Narrogin Pool, and then a dam, both of which were near the now derelict railway station). This was only for railway use, and the town remained critically short of water until a pipeline from the Wellington dam at Collie was constructed in 1954

As land surrounding the dam was gradually cleared for agriculture, increasing salinity led to the construction of the spaghetti-like system of drains to separate fresh and saline inflows. The drains and weirs originally started up near Graham road. A weir and a separator on the south western edge of the reserve also redirected fresh (blue), or saline (purple) water to either the dam or the disposal drain that bypasses the dam. Where they crossed the saline channel went underneath the fresh channel.

A memorial and associated information commemorates a remarkable time in the 1950’s when European immigrants came from displaced persons camps to Australia. In return for free transport, they were required to spend 2 years working for the government. Conditions in the camps established to the south and west of Railway Dam were hard with no running water or sewerage. My friend John Zabajnik recalled that his family was lucky as they had a sleeper floor in their tent, while most coped with bare ground.
Many of these people obtained their own house, and remained in Narrogin to become leading citizens.

The file below contains a fascinating account of the times and these resilient people.

In 1992 a jet boat course was excavated on the northern side of Railway Dam. Twice a year, water was pumped into the circuit from the dam for a time trial event. Public interest rapidly waned and it was abandoned after a couple of years. Nature is gradually reclaiming the course that hopefully will become an ephemeral wetland.

A rush-covered mildly saline area between Railway Dam and Federal Street is a haven for tent-web and St Andrews Cross spiders (both harmless) that becomes an amazing spider city panorama on dewy mornings.