Lees Road - above and below the escarpment

Lees Road runs along the area of grey soil covering the sandstone plateau (below the Robertson Basalt), and runs out to the edge of the coastal escarpment. It leads out towards Knights Hill, the southern end of the Illawarra Escarpment.

Sandstone escarpment, with Knights Hill rising in the background.
Note the small sandstone gully with a patch of Coachwoods (in flower).

The bright green line of rainforest vegetation is markedly different
from the greyer colour of the Eucalypt forest.
This week, the Coachwoods were in flower
making them far more obvious than normal.

From the Lees Road lookout one sees down over the lower levels of tall wet Eucalypt forest, below the escarpment. There is also a "Warm-temperate Rainforest Gully" there, populated with Sassafras, Blackwood Wattles, Coachwood Trees, and Cabbage Tree Palms. These rainforest trees are largely covered with huge vines, especially Wonga Vines and Anchor Vines, both of which easily grow to the tops of the large rainforest trees - indeed they virtually smother some fo them. That results in what is called a "closed forest".

Click to enlarge this next image.
You can see the tops of Cabbage Tree Palms.
There are also sheets of vines covering some trees.
The Coachwoods flower on fresh growth,
which helps them stand out over other levels of forest growth.

The forest along the top of the escarpment is known as "Gully Gum forest". It grows in a very narrow band along the very edge of the escarpment. Along Lees Road, the original forest which was growing on the next layer of soil - the richer (than sandstone) black soil (Wianamatta Shale soils) has largely been cleared for grazing.

So, you will see in these few photos that there is a great habitat differential between the forest immediately below the cliff line and the open land above the cliffline (but less than 500 metres away from the cliff line).

To demonstrate this, I am showing photos of two "dry country" birds - a Pipit (a Grassland bird) and a Dusky Woodswallow which I normally only ever seen in drier country than Robertson. Neither would be expected to be seen anywhere near warm-temperate Rainforest (dominated by Coachwoods).

A Dusky Woodswallow (Artamus cyanopterus)
sitting in an Acacia binervata

A dull photo, but it shows the diagnostic white bar along the edge of the wing. This bird is common around Canberra, but not Robertson, which is generally to wet for them.And here is an Australasian (Richard's) Pipit - a bird associated with open grasslands and farmland.The Robertson district is a land of contrasts. All this within 500 metres distance.