BLUE TRAIL 12: Far from the familiar, Mount Armstrong district

It’s most inappropriate to nail notices to magnificent Eucalypts like this one. Even so, there is something poetic about this sign on a back road from Oberon to Taralga, deep in the south-western part of the Blue Mountains Conservation Society’s Area of Interest. A little collection of farmlets, seemingly struggling wineries and a motor cycle park dot the sections of this road that are not lined by part of the Blue Mountains National Park.

Ironically, it is in such parts of the Southern Blue Mountains that humans may finally come to terms with that enigmatic character in Australian ecosystems, the Dingo. Some naturalists hypothesise that attacks on farm animals are perpetrated by rogue adolescent male dingoes. So the argument goes, if the dingo’s social structure is left undisturbed to restore its role as apex predator of the bushland, a sustainable relationship with human land users will develop.

© Don Morison