The Paperbark Forest is one of my favourite spots on the Peninsula. It's official name is the Everglades Lagoon Wetland, because it's next to the Everglades golf course.
The area of Woy Woy South the forest and the golf course are in was pretty boggy and swampy before it was developed for housing and golf. The streets on the northern side of the golf course are named Florida Avenue, Miami Avenue and Everglades Crescent, the street trees are paperbarks and the lanes behind the houses are ditches instead of the usual drive-able lanes.
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Strange red flowers on a large bush on the edge of the forest.
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The golf course visible through the thin end of the forest. It was a warm clear day and the golfers were puttering about happily and stopping for a yack in the shade of the trees.
The trees on the golf course are mainly paperbarks and banksias, plus some pines up the Veron Road end.
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Yellow whatsit bush. Broom, I think someone said last week.
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Wee blue flowers on the forest floor. Don't think they're native.
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Sheets of paperbark bark slowly peel from the trees, hanging down all through the forest.
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The bark is layers and layers of sheets as thin as onion skin with string strips between them.
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Into the forest, with the glint of the lagoon visible through the trees.
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The lagoon after La Nina's rain. Still and silent, but teeming with life. A lovely green jewel in a tiny hidden forest.
Other than the occasional cry of victory or despair from the golf course, it's quiet and still and only the sound of a bird slowly wading and the breeze in the crowns of the trees can be heard.
Paperbark Forest in 2005
Sydney & Kormoran found
Australia's great wartime mystery solved. The wrecks of the German warship Kormoran and HMAS Sydney have been found at last, off the coast of Western Australia. It's been 66 years snce all those boys, ours and theirs, were lost.
Kormoran on Wiki (Deutsch)
Sydney on Wiki
HMAS Sydney II and the Kormoran
HMAS Sydney website
SMH Faces of the lost found at last - SMH slideshow of the men who went down on her*
Video
Remembering life on board HMAS Sydney II
HMAS Sydney piped home in Geraldton
Historic protection for HMAS Sydney, Kormoran
* Who were aboard her when she sunk! What filthy minds you buggers have.
