You know, some people look at the Australian landscape
and they think it's harsh and inhospitable.
But plant lovers know it is an absolute treasure trove -
you just have to know where and when to look.
As I explore the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park,
my tour guide is Dr Cassia Read, a local ecologist and garden designer
who specialises in the amazing species of this unique forest.
Just within a few square metres,
we have so many different species growing.
I mean, for instance, yeah,
look at this gorgeous orchid that's come up from nowhere
and right beside it, the murnong, the yam daisy,
climbing up out of the ground and unfurling.
We call it 'upside-down country' here, because they effectively
turned the whole landscape upside down in the hunt for gold
It's extraordinary to think of,
but when you look back at photos of this landscape
there was hardly any trees on the hills at all.
And so this here is all regrowth
What are the main species of this forest?
It's dominated by the beautiful ironbarks,
these dark-trunked, gnarly eucalypts,
and then we've got this rich understorey.
At the moment, your eyes are caught by the wildflowers,
there's a huge diversity of peas and wattles,
and coming up at the moment are lilies and orchids,
all these little herbs that cover the ground.
And there are relationships between these plants, aren't there
Yeah, the orchids have fungi that are helping them
get nutrients out of the nutrient-poor soil
and they're also sometimes tapped into the plants around them
and helping them get those valuable sugars.
'Cause if you look at the orchid
they don't have much leaf
and they're relying on this community to keep them going.
The peas are also a real feature of this landscape this year.
I feel like it's the year of the pea.
We've had some great winter rains and this year they've just gone off
And when you come out in the late afternoon with the sunset,
it actually looks like the bush is on fire.
There's just this incredible fiery glow.
And there's a whole lot of different species of pea
that actually have the same colour
so you can get a bit confused.
People call them the generic egg and bacon,
but once you get your eye in,
there's a big diversity of peas out here too.
A lot of these plants...
'Cause they're growing on, as you can see, skeletal soils.
There's hardly any litter or deep, rich soil layer here.
And so they have a lot of strategies to cope with no nutrients.
So the peas and the wattles,
they've actually got their own little factory on their roots
to fix nitrogen out of the air
and give them that essential fertiliser
that many of us are adding to the garden.
They've got it right there in their roots.
This is another one of my little favourites tucked in.
It's another gorgeous little shrub that pops up at this time of year
You'd never know it was here in summer.
And then it's just grown up with the winter and early spring rains
They call this one pink bells.
And right next to it, one of one the most amazing and iconic plants
and again with an incredible strategy for surviving in tough conditions
This plant is actually a little carnivore.
And if you look closely at the tips of its little leaves
you can see they're sticky.
They've got these little sticky glands.
And what they're doing is they're catching little gnats and mosquitos
that are coming past or landing on them
and then they're devouring them,
and it gets its nutrients out of those insects.
And they will have some beautiful flowers quite soon.
They have little pink blossoms.
There's one just budding up over here, Millie,
just coming out - this tall sundew
There's quite a few species of sundew out here,
and people don't realise,
but this one's a climbing one,
and you can see it's also using those sticky leaves
to hold itself onto the rock,
or it will hold onto the plants around it and climb up through.
Cassia, we've moved... not far, 10 or 20 metres,
and the vegetation's totally changed
It's extraordinary, isn't it? I know.
So many new species have just come into the ground layer here.
And also a bigger shrub layer.
Yep, lots of daphne heath,
and we've got some beautiful downy grevilleas through here as well,
which weren't down the slope.
And then, just a host of billy buttons carpeting the ground here
And they're, of course, a daisy,
which a lot of people wouldn't realise.
But, you know, daisies renowned
as being a great providers
for so many insect and bird species
If you're out here on a calm, warm day,
you'll see all these little native bees
and little hoverflies and different flies
all coming and visiting these daisies for nectar.
And you can see that, I mean,
there's just a storehouse of food here for them.
Oh, wow.
You look even more closely, and there's even more species here
It's just worlds within worlds.
I mean, we saw so many species within a few metres
when we're looking at the daisies and lilies
and then we look in a few inches
and we're seeing such a variety of moss and lichen
right down at the micro level.
And you wouldn't know that they were there in summer -
like, they all shrivel up and close down.
And then, as soon as you get rain falling...
They're called resurrection plants
And they just send out their leaves open up, and the ground goes green
How many species do you think we're seeing here?
There's a moss called Barbula calycina,
another little cute one called Entosthodon,
there's a Polytrichum, and then we've got a bunch of lichens,
so maybe up to about 10 species.
And they're only the ones you can see, Mille,
'cause if you actually take, say, a knife
and you just lever off a little bit of the earth,
there's all these other things that you can't really see,
but they're holding the soil together
and stopping particles falling away
And so there's threads of algae, threads of fungi
all holding it together.
So, it's quite a community in a small area.
What can we learn from these landscapes?
One thing we can learn is to maybe
not look to the showy, big-foliage big-flower plants for beauty
that often require a lot of water and nutrients,
and to appreciate the subtler things
that cope with a harsher, dry climate,
the smaller-leaved things that have a huge amount of beauty
in their delicate flowers and their delicate foliage,
and they're built to be resilient
Doesn't matter where you live in this beautiful country,
there will be nature to explore and enjoy
and, of course, to learn from for your own garden.
But it is more than that.
This place, it's known as the Goldfields
because of a moment in its history
But I think we all know where the real gold is.
Just make sure you tread carefully