Eremophila scoparia
Eremophila scoparia known as silver emubush, is a flowering plant in the figwort family, Scrophulariaceae and is endemic to Australia. It is a broom-like shrub with narrow, hooked leaves, small sepals and deep lilac-coloured to white petals and is common and widespread in southern parts of the continent. Eremophila scoparia is a broom-like shrub which grows to a height of between 3 m, its branches and leaves are covered with yellowish or silvery-grey scaly hairs although individual scales are indistinct and the surface may appear glabrous. The leaves are arranged in opposite pairs and are linear to cylindrical in shape, S-shaped in side view 4–25 mm long, 0.8–2.5 mm wide and have a hooked end. The flowers are borne singly or in pairs in leaf axils on a stalk 2–6 mm long which has the same scaly covering as the leaves. There are 5 linear sepals which are 1.5–3.5 mm long, covered with the same scaly covering on the outside but are hairy on the inside surface. The petals are joined at their lower end to form a tube.
The petal tube is blue, pink or white on the outside and white with yellow spots inside. The outside surface of the petal tube and its lobes are covered with scaly hairs, the inside of the lobes is glabrous except for branched hairs near their edges and the inside of the tube is densely filled with long, soft hairs; the 4 stamens are enclosed in the petal tube. Flowering occurs throughout the year but from August to October; the fruits are dry, oval to cone-shaped spherical fleshy, 3.3–5 mm long and have a scaly covering. This species was first formally described in 1810 by botanist Robert Brown who gave it the name Pholidia scoparia and published the description in Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae. In 1860, Mueller changed the name to Eremophila scoparia and published the change in Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of van Dieman's Land; the specific epithet is a Latin word meaning "broom" or "thin twigs". E.scoparia is known by the common names broom bush, scotia bush, wax bush and broom emu bush.
Silver emu bush occurs in Western Australia, South Australia and New South Wales. In Western Australia it is found between Merredin and Echuca in the Avon Wheatbelt, Great Victoria Desert, Mallee and Nullarbor biogeographic regions. In South Australia it occurs in the North-Western, Lake Eyre, Gairdner-Torrens, Flinders Ranges, Eyre Peninsula, Northern Lofty and Murray botanical regions, it is found in New South Wales south from Wilcannia. It grows on a wide range of soils, is common in mulga and chenopod communities and is the dominant shrub. Eremophila scoparia is classified as "not threatened" by the Western Australian Government Department of Parks and Wildlife; this eremophila pale to deep lilac-coloured flowers. It can be propagated from cuttings or by grafting onto Myoporum rootstock and grows best in well-drained soil in either full sun or part shade, it is tolarant of drought and of the harshest frost and can be pruned to maintain its shape or to rejuvenate an old specimen
Mallee (Victoria)
The Mallee is an ill-defined district, sometimes incorrectly referred to as an economic region, of the Australian state of Victoria. The district is located within the Loddon Mallee region. Definitions of the district vary; these trees dominate the surviving vegetation through most of Mallee, except for swamps and areas along waterways, the rare stands of intact Casuarina. At the 2011 census, the four local government areas that are thought to comprise the ill–defined district had a combined population of 81,544; the area of these same four LGAs is 40,183 square kilometres. In the context of the Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia, the Mallee is spread over parts of both the Murray Darling Depression and Riverina bioregions; some definitions of the Mallee extend the district into South Australia, called Murray Mallee. The Mallee is one of the nine districts in Victoria used for weather forecasting by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; the Victorian Department of Environment and Primary Industries defines the district as a 39,300-square-kilometre region for agricultural production purposes encompassing the Buloke, Mildura City and Swan Hill City local government areas.
Another common definition is that the Mallee is the part of Victoria dependent on Mildura and Swan Hill. The Victorian Government has had many departmental regions combining the Mallee with the greater Bendigo area, the current one being named the "Loddon Mallee" region; this region includes adjacent areas as well as the Mallee. This region is used by all state government departments, there is a central body for the region located in Bendigo. In 2005, there were attempts to push for a separate region in north-west Victoria in the belief that this would deliver more services to the district. For tourism purposes, the term Wimmera Mallee is used to describe the Wimmera district and small parts of the Mallee that are distant from the Murray River. A separate tourism district known as Mildura Swan Hill covers the rural cities of Mildura and Swan Hill; the Mallee is, for all practical purposes flat and low-lying: in fact for long geological periods the whole region has been inundated by the ocean.
Most of the Mallee consists of sand dunes that have been deposited as a result of movement of sand from the interior of Australia during arid glacial periods of the Quaternary. The soils are very infertile and sandy: the better ones on more stabilised sand dunes in the east are loamy and pink to light brown and have been able to support wheat and barley growing as a result of the development of superphosphate and other fertilisers. In the west, the soils are unconsolidated sands, much less alkaline than in the east, not able to support any grain cropping; the Mallee has no surface drainage: the native vegetation has so high a rooting density that the rainfall of most years is absorbed and the porous sandy soils mean that any excess in an exceptionally wet year will recharge groundwater supplies which tend to be saline. Flow from the Wimmera River to the south supplies Lake Hindmarsh and occasionally, overflows to the north; the Murray River is, the only source of fresh water for the region and is overburdened by intensive irrigation.
The climate of the Mallee is driest in Victoria owing to its inland location. Rainfall is only produced by the most vigorous frontal systems or by occasional penetration of tropical air in the summer. Average annual rainfall shows a well-defined north-south gradient: Mildura averages only 267.9 millimetres per year but Hopetoun in the south receives around 370 mm. Variability, however, is quite high: in 1973 the Mallee averaged as much as 650 mm but in 1982 only 115 mm. Temperatures in summer are very hot: during the Early 2009 southeastern Australia heat wave, Hopetoun reached 48.8 °C and the average maxima in January and February are 32.7 °C. In July, maximum temperatures average 15.4 °C, but minima average 4.4 °C and frosts are common. At the 2011 census the Mallee had a population of 81,544, most of which live close to the Murray River in the district's two cities and Swan Hill; these and other settlements within the municipalities based on these centres contain over two-thirds of the region's population.
Hopetoun and Birchip are the major towns in the south. ^ 1 The Shire of Buloke is included in the Wimmera districts. The Mallee is a agricultural region: apart from possible mineral sands in the west and salt from certain ephemeral lakes there are no mineral deposits of value and industry is on a small scale and confined to food processing. Wheat and barley are grown on the less infertile soils in the southeast of the region, but fertilizers superphosphate are essential for success and yields only a quarter of those in most of Europe or North America - in drought years, they can be as little as one twentieth of European wheat yields. Fruit growing along the Murray River has in modern times overshadowed grain crops as the Mallee's major source of revenue. Oranges and grapes are important and the region produces a large part of Victoria's wine though most of it is inexpensive cask wines. Dairying on irrigated pastures is important in the south of the region, but is threatened by its high wate
Thelymitra azurea
Thelymitra azurea called the azure sun orchid, is a species of orchid, endemic to south-eastern Australia. It has grass-like leaf and up to ten dark azure blue flowers with darker veins; the lobe on top of the anther has a warty tip. Thelymitra media is a tuberous, perennial herb with a single erect, channelled, dark green, linear leaf 100–270 mm long, 3–8 mm wide and folded lengthwise. Up to ten dark azure blue flowers with darker veins, 13–27 mm wide are arranged on a flowering stem 130–450 mm tall; the sepals and petals are 6–13 mm long and 3–7 mm wide. The column is blue to purplish, 2.5 -- about 2 mm wide. The lobe on the top of the anther is dark purplish with a toothed or warty yellow tip; the side lobes have purplish, mop-like tufts on their ends. The flowers are open on warm days. Flowering occurs from September to December. Thelymitra azurea was first formally described in 1917 by R. S. Rogers and the description was published in Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of South Australia.
The specific epithet is a Latinised version of the French word azure meaning "a blue colour", referring to "the beautiful colour of the flowers". The azure sun orchid grows in heath and forest in western Victoria and south-eastern South Australia, including Kangaroo Island. Data related to Thelymitra azurea at Wikispecies Media related to Thelymitra azurea at Wikimedia Commons
Australia
Australia the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area; the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea and East Timor to the north. The population of 25 million is urbanised and concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Australia's capital is Canberra, its largest city is Sydney; the country's other major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians for about 60,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, it is documented. After the European exploration of the continent by Dutch explorers in 1606, who named it New Holland, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788, a date which became Australia's national day; the population grew in subsequent decades, by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored and an additional five self-governing crown colonies established.
On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy, comprising six states and ten territories. Being the oldest and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils, Australia has a landmass of 7,617,930 square kilometres. A megadiverse country, its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east and mountain ranges in the south-east. A gold rush began in Australia in the early 1850s, its population density, 2.8 inhabitants per square kilometre, remains among the lowest in the world. Australia generates its income from various sources including mining-related exports, telecommunications and manufacturing. Indigenous Australian rock art is the oldest and richest in the world, dating as far back as 60,000 years and spread across hundreds of thousands of sites. Australia is a developed country, with the world's 14th-largest economy.
It has a high-income economy, with the world's tenth-highest per capita income. It is a regional power, has the world's 13th-highest military expenditure. Australia has the world's ninth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 26% of the population. Having the third-highest human development index and the eighth-highest ranked democracy globally, the country ranks in quality of life, education, economic freedom, civil liberties and political rights, with all its major cities faring well in global comparative livability surveys. Australia is a member of the United Nations, G20, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Trade Organization, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Pacific Islands Forum and the ASEAN Plus Six mechanism; the name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis, a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times. When Europeans first began visiting and mapping Australia in the 17th century, the name Terra Australis was applied to the new territories.
Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as "New Holland", a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 and subsequently anglicised. Terra Australis still saw occasional usage, such as in scientific texts; the name Australia was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who said it was "more agreeable to the ear, an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth". The first time that Australia appears to have been used was in April 1817, when Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledged the receipt of Flinders' charts of Australia from Lord Bathurst. In December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office. In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known by that name; the first official published use of the new name came with the publication in 1830 of The Australia Directory by the Hydrographic Office. Colloquial names for Australia include "Oz" and "the Land Down Under". Other epithets include "the Great Southern Land", "the Lucky Country", "the Sunburnt Country", "the Wide Brown Land".
The latter two both derive from Dorothea Mackellar's 1908 poem "My Country". Human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun around 65,000 to 70,000 years ago, with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea-crossings from what is now Southeast Asia; these first inhabitants were the ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. Aboriginal Australian culture is one of the oldest continual civilisations on earth. At the time of first European contact, most Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers with complex economies and societies. Recent archaeological finds suggest. Indigenous Australians have an oral culture with spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime; the Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of their reefs and seas. The northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited s
South Australia
South Australia is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of 983,482 square kilometres, it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, fifth largest by population, it has a total of 1.7 million people, its population is the second most centralised in Australia, after Western Australia, with more than 77 percent of South Australians living in the capital, Adelaide, or its environs. Other population centres in the state are small. South Australia shares borders with all of the other mainland states, with the Northern Territory; the state comprises less than 8 percent of the Australian population and ranks fifth in population among the six states and two territories. The majority of its people reside in greater Metropolitan Adelaide. Most of the remainder are settled in fertile areas along River Murray; the state's colonial origins are unique in Australia as a settled, planned British province, rather than as a convict settlement.
Colonial government commenced on 28 December 1836, when the members of the council were sworn in near the Old Gum Tree. As with the rest of the continent, the region had been long occupied by Aboriginal peoples, who were organised into numerous tribes and languages; the South Australian Company established a temporary settlement at Kingscote, Kangaroo Island, on 26 July 1836, five months before Adelaide was founded. The guiding principle behind settlement was that of systematic colonisation, a theory espoused by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, employed by the New Zealand Company; the goal was to establish the province as a centre of civilisation for free immigrants, promising civil liberties and religious tolerance. Although its history is marked by economic hardship, South Australia has remained politically innovative and culturally vibrant. Today, it is known for numerous cultural festivals; the state's economy is dominated by the agricultural and mining industries. Evidence of human activity in South Australia dates back as far as 20,000 years, with flint mining activity and rock art in the Koonalda Cave on the Nullarbor Plain.
In addition wooden spears and tools were made in an area now covered in peat bog in the South East. Kangaroo Island was inhabited; the first recorded European sighting of the South Australian coast was in 1627 when the Dutch ship the Gulden Zeepaert, captained by François Thijssen and mapped a section of the coastline as far east as the Nuyts Archipelago. Thijssen named the whole of the country eastward of the Leeuwin "Nuyts Land", after a distinguished passenger on board; the coastline of South Australia was first mapped by Matthew Flinders and Nicolas Baudin in 1802, excepting the inlet named the Port Adelaide River, first discovered in 1831 by Captain Collet Barker and accurately charted in 1836–37 by Colonel William Light, leader of the South Australian Colonization Commissioners"First Expedition' and first Surveyor-General of South Australia. The land which now forms the state of South Australia was claimed for Britain in 1788 as part of the colony of New South Wales. Although the new colony included two-thirds of the continent, early settlements were all on the eastern coast and only a few intrepid explorers ventured this far west.
It took more than forty years before any serious proposal to establish settlements in the south-western portion of New South Wales were put forward. On 15 August 1834, the British Parliament passed the South Australia Act 1834, which empowered His Majesty to erect and establish a province or provinces in southern Australia; the act stated that the land between 132° and 141° east longitude and from 26° south latitude to the southern ocean would be allotted to the colony, it would be convict-free. In contrast to the rest of Australia, terra nullius did not apply to the new province; the Letters Patent, which used the enabling provisions of the South Australia Act 1834 to fix the boundaries of the Province of South Australia, provided that "nothing in those our Letters Patent shall affect or be construed to affect the rights of any Aboriginal Natives of the said Province to the actual occupation and enjoyment in their own Persons or in the Persons of their Descendants of any Lands therein now occupied or enjoyed by such Natives."
Although the patent guaranteed land rights under force of law for the indigenous inhabitants it was ignored by the South Australian Company authorities and squatters. Survey was required before settlement of the province, the Colonization Commissioners for South Australia appointed William Light as the leader of its'First Expedition', tasked with examining 1500 miles of the South Australian coastline and selecting the best site for the capital, with planning and surveying the site of the city into one-acre Town Sections and its surrounds into 134-acre Country Sections. Eager to commence the establishment of their whale and seal fisheries, the South Australian Company sought, obtained, the Commissioners' permission to send Company ships to South Australia, in advance of the surveys and ahead of the Commissioners' colonists; the Company's settlement of seven vessels and 636 people was temporarily made at Kingscote on Kangaroo Island, until
Red kangaroo
The red kangaroo is the largest of all kangaroos, the largest terrestrial mammal native to Australia, the largest extant marsupial. It is found across mainland Australia, avoiding only the more fertile areas in the south, the east coast, the northern rainforests; this species is a large kangaroo with long, pointed ears and a square shaped muzzle. They are sexually dimorphic as the males have short, red-brown fur, fading to pale buff below and on the limbs. Females are smaller than males and are blue-grey with a brown tinge, pale grey below, although arid zone females are coloured more like males, it has two forelimbs with small claws, two muscular hind-limbs, which are used for jumping, a strong tail, used to create a tripod when standing upright. The red kangaroo's legs work much like a rubber band, with the Achilles tendon stretching as the animal comes down releasing its energy to propel the animal up and forward, enabling the characteristic bouncing locomotion; the males can cover 8–9 m in one leap while reaching heights of 1.8–3 m, though the average is 1.2–1.9 m Males grow up to a head-and-body length of 1.3–1.6 m with a tail that adds a further 1.2 to the total length.
Females are smaller, with a head-and-body length of 85–105 cm and tail length of 65–85 cm. Females can weigh from 18 to 40 kg, while males weigh about twice as much at 55 to 90 kg; the average red kangaroo stands 1.5 m tall to the top of the head in upright posture. Large mature males can stand more than 1.8 m tall, with the largest confirmed one having been around 2.1 m tall and weighed 91 kg. The red kangaroo maintains its internal temperature at a point of homeostasis about 36 °C using a variety of physical and behavioural adaptations; these include having an insulating layer of fur, being less active and staying in the shade when temperatures are high, panting and licking its forelimbs. The red kangaroo's range of vision is 300°, due to the position of its eyes; the red kangaroo ranges throughout central Australia. Its range encompasses scrubland and desert habitats, it inhabits open habitats with some trees for shade. Red kangaroos are capable of conserving enough water and selecting enough fresh vegetation to survive in an arid environment.
The kangaroo's kidneys efficiently concentrate urine during summer. Red kangaroo eat green vegetation fresh grasses and forbs, can get enough when most plants look brown and dry. One study of kangaroos in Central Australia found that green grass makes up 75–95% of the diet, with Eragrostis setifolia dominating at 54%; this grass continues to be green into the dry season. Kangaroos primarily consumed this species, along with Enneapogon avanaceus, in western New South Wales where they comprised much as 21–69% of its diet according to a study. During dry times, kangaroos search for green plants by staying on open grassland and near watercourses. While grasses and forbs are preferred, red kangaroos will eat certain species of chenopods, like Bassia diacantha and Maireana pyramidata, will browse shrubs when its favoured foods are scarce. However, some perennial chenopods, such as round-leaf chenopod Kochia are avoided when abundant. At times, red kangaroos congregate in large numbers. Red kangaroos are crepuscular and nocturnal, resting in the shade during the day.
However, they sometimes move about during the day. Red kangaroos rely on small saltbushes or mulga bushes for shelter in extreme heat rather than rocky outcrops or caves. Grazing takes up most of their daily activities. Like most kangaroo species, they are sedentary, staying within a well-defined home range. However, great environmental changes can cause them to travel great distances. Kangaroos in New South Wales have weekly home ranges of 258–560 ha, with the larger areas belonging to adult males; when forage is poor and rainfall patchy, kangaroos will travel 25–30 km to more favourable feeding grounds. Another study of kangaroos in central Australia found that most of them stay close to remaining vegetation but disperse to find fresh plants after it rains; the red kangaroo is too big to be subject to significant non-human predation. They can use their robust legs and clawed feet to defend themselves from attackers with kicks and blows; however and eagles will kill and eat joeys. Joeys are thus protected in their mother's pouch.
The red kangaroo did have major predators that are now extinct. Extinct predators included the marsupial lion and the wonambi. Kangaroos are adept swimmers, flee into waterways if threatened by a predator. If pursued into the water, a kangaroo may use its forepaws to hold the predator underwater so as to drown it. Red kangaroos live in groups of 2–4 members; the most common groups are their young. Larger groups can be found in densely populated areas and females are with a male. Membership of these groups is flexible, males are not territorial, fighting only over females that come into heat. Males develop proportionately much larger arms than females. Most agonistic interactions occur between young males, which engage in ritualised fighting known as boxing, they stand up on their hind limbs and attempt to push their opponent off balance by jabbing him or locking forearms. If the fight escalates, they will begin to kick each other. Using their tail to support t
Wyperfeld National Park
The Wyperfeld National Park is the third largest national park in Victoria, located in the Mallee district 450 kilometres northwest of Melbourne, The national park was declared in 1921 and expanded to protect 357,017 hectares of mallee and heathland. For management purposes, the Wyperfeld National Park is managed with the Hattah-Kulkyne National Park, Murray-Sunset National Park, Lake Albacutya Park and Murray-Kulkyne Park as part of the Victorian Mallee Parks. Like most of north-western Victoria, Wyperfeld was a shallow sea from about 25 million years ago until recent times; the current landforms took shape as the sea retreated, leaving a vast expanse of sandy sediment which, as it dried, was formed into sand dunes during the period 40,000 to 15,000 years ago. Before European settlement, the network of ephemeral lakes filled and emptied, on average, about every 20 years remaining dry for about half that period at a time. More agricultural irrigation and drainage projects in the surrounding areas have cut off a significant part of Wyperfeld's water supply, the lakes have not been filled since 1975, had drained again just two years later.
In good years, the Wimmera River fills Lake Hindmarsh to the south of the park, which overflows along Outlet Creek, which fills Lake Albacutya to the immediate south of the park, flows further north into Wyperfeld itself, forming a series of smaller lakes which support rich floral and faunal communities based around black box and river red gum. The park has seen no inflow of water for many years, despite downstream flooding in 2011; the reserve is part of the Wyperfeld, Big Desert and Ngarkat Important Bird Area, identified as such by BirdLife International because of its importance for the conservation of malleefowl and other species of mallee birds. Protected areas of Victoria "Wyperfeld National Park". Parks Victoria. Government of Victoria
