Western Tasmania and tiny things

Next week I am off to north western Tasmania, The Tarkine Wilderness as many would know it by. My work fellows and I are off looking for something no bigger than 2.5mm long by 2mm wide. This little creature is a hydrobiid snail and we hope to discover the presence of one or two (more if we are lucky) threatened species in water catchments. What are hydrobiid snails. Read this to get an idea. click here.

To get to these creeks where these snails may occur, you need to cross hell and back. Tasmania's rainforests contain some very difficult vegetation to bash through. Coming from Queensland where you might bash through some Lantana for a while, or detour past a thorny dry rainforest community, nothing still comes close to what is in front of you out in beautiful western Tasmania. Gahnia and Bauera is arguably the worst. The best way to get through this dense thicket is to fall forward and pick yourself up in the extreme cases. However horizontol (Anodopetalum biglandulosum) is my pick for the toughest. My frame lends itself more to bashing through gahnia/bauera thickets, than climbing over 1 to 4m high horizontal branches and popping up and down looking for craps to crawl through. Last year my colleague and I could not climb under due to a mushy waterlogged deep clay bog and flowing creek, so we had to climb up to 4m in the air carefully guiding ourselves over this horizontal.

If you want to take that windows desktop picture, this is the country to do it. Literally every 5 mins you could stop for one of those perfect pictures. Here are a couple from my last trip.

Hope to survive and blog soon!!!