Pakistan, opened up the desert outback of northern, central and western Australia. One evening we went to see the phenomenon locally described as “the staircase to the moon”. At certain combinations of tide, moonrise and moon phase, the full moon rises from the mudflats and sandbanks of the bay, the reflected undulations in the sand and mud presenting a peculiar “staircase” effect. That night the moon appeared bright red through the mist; I thought the effect was over-promoted, but the evening was misty, with smoke blowing from bushfires inland. The sunsets over the Indian Ocean were better. There was much more: dolphins and humpback whales offshore, two pairs of ospreys (sea eagles) sharing a single nest on a lighthouse, dinosaur footprints in the bright red sandstone, pelicans and fiddler crabs, bee-eaters and bower-birds, tales of the bombing of Broome in 1942 (Australia’s Pearl Harbour), and a taste of mango beer from a local micro-brewery. All members of the expedition enjoyed and benefited from the excursion. Patrick Armstrong Hon Secretary, West Australian Sub‐Branch, Suffolk Naturalists Co‐ordinator, Field excursion programme
GEOSUFFOLK’S PLIOCENE FOREST INTERPRETIVE PANEL On June 16th this year GeoSuffolk members led a Suffolk Naturalists’ Society field trip at Rockhall Wood geological SSSI in Sutton. This site has important exposures of Suffolk’s unique rock, the Pliocene Coralline Crag, birthplace of our modern flora and fauna. Dating at about 4 million years old, Coralline Crag has an abundant fossil marine fauna; some extinct, many extant. There are also records of fossil pollen, including from a bore hole put into the Coralline Crag at Orford by Professor Richard West in 1968. The pollen record shows that land areas close to the Coralline Crag sea were forested, and with a much more varied tree flora that at the present day. Most of the fossil pollen can be identified only at generic level, and there are many species of tree belonging to these genera which are native today in forests around the world. Under the guidance of Barry Hall, horticulturalist and member of GeoSuffolk, and with permission from the landowner and Natural England, we have planted a number of these ‘Pliocene’ trees in a designated area of the Rockhall Wood site. Familiar genera such as Pinus, Ulmus and Quercus stand shoulder to shoulder with exotics Pterocarya, Sequoia, Sciadopitys (today represented by only one species, S.verticillata, endemic to Japan) and many more in this small recreation of the Pliocene ‘Paradise Lost’. 18
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