Trekking Finds. Foraging. Fire, Food & Drink.

We left early this morning on a scout, it was overcast but I saw no immediate threat of rain. We travelled up over Dragon's Tol & went as far as Hazard Valley, the latter named for a close family friend who went under before he could get his cabin built in that valley. These attached images are from this scout.

This is a Polypore Bracket Fungus, likely a Lietiporus Portentosus or Ryvardenia Cretacea, they can be difficult to tell apart, but both make excellent tinder & are worth collecting if you are getting low on tinder.

This is another Polypore Bracket Fungus that grows in the North, America & England I believe. This is Piptoporus Betulinus or Birch Polypore.

An Australian Native Bee hive in a dead tree (New England NSW). Honey is a good food, can be added to water & keeps for years, & it has antiseptic properties & can be used on open wounds.

These native bees have no sting.

Goonagurra/Grass Tree, Kangaroo Tail, or Yacca. There is a similar plant that grows in America known as Yucca. This Yacca plant cant be used for making spear shafts, you can suck on the nectar or put the flowers in water to make a tasty drink. Natives have been known to let this ferment to make an alcoholic drink. The ends of the leaves once pulled can be eaten & the sap can be used as a glue. When the flower stems have dried, the inner core makes good tinder. Dried leaves makes excellent light kindling.

A Scouting Trip.

Last weekend my wife and I had to go scouting for wood. Being a forest and not woodland the trees are fairly close together so we had to find a route where by we could get the wagon in. We could have gone up the flats in the bottom of the valley, but there is a header stream that runs through this valley and the ground is soft and easily damaged.
We cut our way through to each fire wood source as we went, and occasionally stopped to take in the view and see what we could find. These images are from that fire wood scouting trip.

Ryvardenia Cretacea, a bracket fungi used as tinder. This one on a Stringybark Tree.

On the ground beneath the same tree we found another bracket fungi from last year which had fallen from the tree.

Two more bracket fungi growing on a Mountain Gum.

In the cleft in this Stringybark Tree, center of photo, is a bees nest.

A section of bark has been removed from this tree with an iron axe. Possibly to make a shelter or a cover for something.

There are three scars around this tree where it looks as though it has been cut with a stone axe, taking off two sections of bark. The third cut is quite high, so someone would have had to climb this tree to remove this bark.