Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    ENGLAND IN THE TROPICS: The Magic Of Chlorysta Creek
    ENGLAND IN THE TROPICS: The Magic Of Chlorysta Creek
    ENGLAND IN THE TROPICS: The Magic Of Chlorysta Creek
    Ebook106 pages1 hour

    ENGLAND IN THE TROPICS: The Magic Of Chlorysta Creek

    By JOHN ALDRICK

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    These delightful stories are based upon an area on the sunshine coast of Australia known as "England In The Tropics" because of its landscape similarities, the difference being mainly climatic. The environment here is quite beautiful, with gently undulating fields, magnificent trees, sunny skies, and chuckling little creeks. Chlorysta Creek made

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJOHN ALDRICK
    Release dateFeb 11, 2023
    ISBN9780645606362
    ENGLAND IN THE TROPICS: The Magic Of Chlorysta Creek
    Author

    JOHN ALDRICK

    John Aldrick graduated from Melbourne University with a degree in Agricultural Science and a post-graduate Diploma of Education. He taught in secondary schools and later gained a master's degree in Tropical Geomorphology at the University of New England. Geomorphology means 'study of the surface of the Earth'.

    Related to ENGLAND IN THE TROPICS

    Related ebooks

    Children's For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Pure Waters

      May 5, 2022

      Pure Waters
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      River Treasure

      Mar 10, 2022

      River Treasure
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Breakaway COUNTRY

      May 2, 2019

      Breakaway COUNTRY
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Coastal Discovery Sea Lochs

      Mar 26, 2021

      Earlier in this series we learned about channels, the gateways between two bodies of water. One of the iconic features of this environment is their fast currents, made by huge volumes of water being forced through the channel every six hours as the t

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Home in Appalachia

      Jun 17, 2020

      Home in Appalachia
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Secrets Of The Snowy

      Dec 30, 2019

      Secrets Of The Snowy
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Birth and Death of a Landscape: A trip to a Louisiana river delta reveals an ecosystem that is growing up.

      May 12, 2016

      To reach the youngest land in the United States you need a boat. Robert Twilley still vividly remembers the first time he made the trip. The Louisiana State University coastal ecologist piled into a 24-foot Boston Whaler with a bunch of geomorphologi

      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      BEAVERS Wetland ARCHITECTS

      Aug 27, 2020

      BEAVERS Wetland ARCHITECTS
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      FLIGHT of The SPOONBILLS

      Dec 19, 2022

      FLIGHT of The SPOONBILLS
      14 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Chasing Waterfalls

      Jan 14, 2022

      Chasing Waterfalls
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Close To The Edge

      Feb 29, 2024

      Braced against the rolling of the boat, I sipped scalding tea from the mug cradled in my cold hands and watched the misty blue hills of Scotland materialise ahead. Wandering Albatross, our 43ft steel cutter, raced ahead of a brisk west wind. Restless

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Hope Springs

      Jul 27, 2023

      Hope Springs
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Future Is In The Water

      May 20, 2024

      The Future Is In The Water
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Wild Prospects

      May 2, 2024

      ‘GRAYLING, dace, brook lamprey, brown trout, stone loach, chub, minnow, stickleback… they all live here,’ he says. I nod, approvingly, slightly in awe. But in my head I’m wondering how I only know about half these names. I am somehow missing somethin

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Grand designs

      Oct 21, 2021

      Grand designs
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Paradise Ponds

      Apr 7, 2022

      Paradise Ponds
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Reviving A River

      Jul 27, 2023

      Reviving A River
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Twilight Of The Nautilus

      Aug 11, 2021

      We were all very tired. My crew and I had been tracking nautiluses off tiny Ndrova Island in Papua New Guinea for close to a week. Every day we spent 16 hours on small dugout canoes and then got eight hours of fitful sleep on the deck of a Melanesian

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Where Are They Now?

      Jun 3, 2021

      Where Are They Now?
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Immersed in Martuwarra

      May 5, 2022

      Immersed in Martuwarra
      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Northern Exposure

      Jun 17, 2020

      Northern Exposure
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Into The Deep

      Nov 13, 2024

      Into The Deep
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      River Of No Return

      Mar 2, 2021

      River Of No Return
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Wild Shores

      Jun 29, 2023

      Wild Shores
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Twilight Of The Nautilus: What the scientist who has studied the iconic sea creature for 45 years now sees.

      Dec 27, 2021

      Happy Holidays. In this special issue we are reprinting our top stories of the past year. This article first appeared online in our “Harmony” issue in August, 2021. We were all very tired. My crew and I had been tracking nautiluses off tiny Ndrova Is

      9 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for ENGLAND IN THE TROPICS

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      ENGLAND IN THE TROPICS - JOHN ALDRICK

      The Natural World

      The environment of these adventures is not England, but it is very much like it. The landscape is quite beautiful; gently undulating fields with farms and houses dotted across it in a most attractive manner, magnificent big trees with dense green canopies, winding roads and lanes, a rainy climate and chuckling little creeks. It was elevated enough to have a slightly cooler climate than along the coast nearby, and always, year round, it was a brilliant verdant green. All it lacked to be England was the typical network of hedges and stone fences that criss-cross the British Isles, because this was not stony country, and the fences were made of wood and wire. And it was not a cold country, it was warm and balmy. This was subtropical Australia

      Chlorysta Creek

      Chlorysta Creek was permanent, it ran all year round. It was a very beautiful creek with crystal clear water, and made a happy background murmur as it flowed steadily along. Brilliant sunshine beamed upon it, twinkling sparkles danced across the rippling surface, and at night, the reflection of the moon. Some parts were smooth and dark, quite deep, with an almost oily looking surface, and others were so shallow that shafts of sunlight reached right down to the bottom and lit the stream floor to almost daylight brightness. Smooth round stones lay upon the bottom amongst patches of sand, where almost transparent little shrimps loved to creep and forage. In places, the stream narrowed and became so shallow that rocks protruded above the surface, and there were little whitecapped swirls as the water chattered and babbled over a steeper rocky place.

      There were two dams, one on each side of an access driveway that had a concrete causeway across the stream, and a culvert with two big pipes underneath it. The upstream dam was small, and not many animals lived there. The lower dam was much larger and was the focal point where most of the animals lived, although of course many of them rambled further afield as well. The water in the big dam was very deep.

      Not far upstream there was a huge low-lying swamp with soft and peaty ground, full of moss and tall tussocks of swamp grass. The swamp was formed long ago, because there was a hard, rocky bar not far below the big dam which was very resistant to erosion. A foaming waterfall cascaded over the bar. After rain, the bar held back runoff water and allowed the sediment it carried to settle out, especially in the swamp. This swamp was very important because it acted like a sponge, collecting and retaining water after heavy rain and releasing it slowly, so that no big flood peaks occurred further downstream in the Creek, where the big dam was. The swamp was the home of frogs and snakes. Many small animals such as water rats, yabbies, small crabs, and leeches also lived in this marsh, and of course so did hordes of mosquitoes and tiny gnats. Water birds including moorhens made their nests and laid their eggs there because there was so much vegetation to provide protective cover. Bush stone-curlews lived around the swamp, famous for their distinctive eerie, wailing, night-time call, which is of significance to the Aborigines, who thought that they were the spirits of the dead calling out.

      Dense tropical scrub with snaking surface tree roots grew along some stretches of the stream banks, and clumps of lush ferns basked in all the sunny bits. The banks near the water’s edge on both sides of the Creek were covered in tall grass and reedlike sedges, with small intervening patches of bare soil. Many of the smaller animals could pass by undetected along these banks, and were happy that they could see clearly through the grass stems, because it was easier to spot anything that might be dangerous. At dusk in spring and summer multitudes of beautiful green bottle cicadas clung to the trees and droned their deep majestic chorus from all along the stream. The Creek was named after these cicadas, which belong to the insect group called Chlorocysta. A huge area of thick tropical forest with vines and clinging epiphytes grew further down the valley.

      In the big dam, lovely, blue-flowered water lilies grew in a cluster along one side, and reeds along the other. Tiny floating duckweed plants, each just two or three little round leaves with a wisp of trailing roots were scattered in the slowly circling backwaters, where fallen leaves were prone to gather. Duckweed is an excellent food for fish and other animals. There was also a small reddish aquatic fern called Salvinia which floated on the water surface, it could spread very quickly, and was capable of doubling the area it covered in just a few days, and could block out sunlight from the water underneath. Fortunately, it didn’t like running water, and as fast as it grew it was washed away downstream.

      The animals of the Creek

      There were three main communities of animals, a land one, a water one, and an air one, and although they converged in the frontage zone along the Creek banks and intermingled with each other, the difference in their habitats kept them a little bit apart. They didn’t have much to say to each other, as they hardly ever met. Some of them lived in two or all three of these habitats, such as the moorhens, the water dragons, the frogs, the wood ducks, and the mosquitoes. The platypus and the red claw crayfish never left the big dam. The platypus could be seen every day, but not for long at a time. There would be a quick swirl of water, a still moment while he dabbled at the surface, then another swirl and he was gone. The red claw stayed on the bottom, where he could be clearly seen when the sun was shining through the water. The freshwater turtle, who was really a terrapin, was often seen basking on his favourite log, just above the water.

      The echidna and the bandicoot were the biggest land animals, that is if you don’t count the fox, who was always around somewhere, but he skulked around amongst the shrubs and was hardly ever seen. The diamond python, a very big boa, didn’t live in any particular place, he made himself at home wherever he chose to in the areas of tropical scrub and forest.

      There was also a colony of flying foxes perched in the treetops along the Creek who flew out to feed in the late evening. Of course, they weren’t foxes at all, they were very big bats, and they didn’t eat meat, they ate fruit. What many animals didn’t know though was that a hungry dingo lived at the far edge of the downstream tropical forest, and at night he used to howl, and roam the country far and wide. Most of the animals were active during the day, thoroughly enjoying the warm sunshine, but some were nocturnal; they slept through the day and came wide awake and alert at night. The diamond python seemed to sleep most of the time! Some of the older animals said that there used to be koalas nearby, but very few of them were left anymore because their trees had all been chopped down.

      One of the more prominent members of the animal community was the eastern water dragon. He wasn’t really a dragon, he was a type of lizard, but he was covered in thorny spines, especially on the back of his head. He had patches of vivid colour around his neck and his body was banded with dark stripes, so he certainly looked like a dragon! He

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1