Stick Cocoon Creature, Banksia Man, and Singing Tree

The eagle-eyed Christine stopped us yesterday on our hike in Ku-Ring-gai National Park, saying, "Thom, look at this."

I looked at this:

It was about four inches long. It was soft: you could squeeze it, like it was an empty sac. It smelled resiny.

"It's a cocoon," Christine said. "I remember them from when I was little."

I've just looked it up, and I quickly found a remarkably similar photo—even down to the way those outer sticks are configured: it's the cocoon (empty, pretty sure) of the caterpillar of a case moth, possibly the Saunders' Case Moth, Metura elongatus. Oh, you have to go here, too. And holy crap, here, too. (I've just realized, this is related to the "Walking Turd" from December, but a different species, clearly.)

Good eye, Christine.

Now here's Christine and a scary Banksia  Man. (Guess which ones which.)

Aren't she perty?

And a tree:

Oh, Vienna!

***

Christine suddenly burst out in song on the way home, singing along with a song on the radio that I'd never heard in my life.

A Fossil, A Fish, and a Sign

Christine and I were strolling around the rock pools at Collaroy yesterday, beside stunning, water- and wind-carved cliffs:

Christine walked straight up to a tiny fossil:

A little research tells that pretty little plant may be a Dicroidium zuberi, a type of seed fern that died and got rock-squeezed roughly 245 million years ago. How cool is that?

I spotted a tiny fish with yellow and black stripes:

And this I found the other day, while hiking a national park nearby, caught in the rain, sore and some miles to go:

A little welcome for me, from the protectors of this big sunburnt country.