While pursuing my undergraduate biology curriculum at Kent State University (Ohio), many years ago now, I had the opportunity to enroll in a local flora botany course taught by Professor J. Arthur Herrick. Dr. Herrick was a classical botanist; teaching was his mandate and his love. Following a rather straightforward syllabus, Dr. Herrick would lecture, direct laboratory studies and on several occasions would lead his class into the field. Once in the field Dr. Herrick, like Dr. Jekyll, changed. The change was not demonic, but rather spiritual. His knowledge of local, regional and continental North American botany was unchallenged. On one such outing, I recall Dr. Herrick philosophizing with the class by noting the importance of "being in the field ... where the botany is," he continued by firmly stating, "one cannot learn botany solely in the lecture hall or laboratory ... one must brush elbows with nature." With Dr. Herrick's philosophy in mind, my wife, Susan, and I headed back once again to the land of Oz to "brush elbows with nature."

Our first trip to Australia involved a thirteen month sabbatical during 1987-1988, culminating with the 7th IPC held in Brisbane. My studies while in Australia, I feel, provided the most rewarding and exciting time of my career. Working with Dr. Mary Dettmann was not only an honour, but fulfilled a need to expand my appreciation for Gondwanic floras and especially the angiosperm sequence at the close of the Mesozoic in southeastern Australia.

Mary and I examined the pollen and spores recovered from two boreholes drilled in the Otway Basin, offshore Victoria. The results of our research are published in several papers and our collaboration continues. Part of our continuing effort involves an examination of Paleogene floras of the Perth Basin, Western Australia. Thus, during our summer 1991, Susan and I undertook a collection program to acquire cores and cuttings of the Kings Park Shale (?Paleocene, Perth Basin, WA). Additionally, we had decided to visit several sites in Western Australia and Queensland with living communities, rather relic communities, where we could still study and photograph a "Cretaceous environment."

Western Australia is a friendly State. Our base was Perth, perhaps the most beautiful and for sure, the most isolated city in the world (Perth's nearest neighbouring major city is Adelaide, an isolated 3,000 km to the east). In Perth, our first few days were spent at the Geological Survey of WA where Dr. John Backhouse and Dr. Phillip Playford (yes, the brother of Dr. Geoff Playford) were open and courteous in allowing us to collect core and ditch cuttings from seven boreholes sunk into the Kings Park (shale) Formation. Dr. Backhouse collected with us, from core shed storage, providing all the necessary collection data including depth, dates collected, lithology, etc. With our samples in hand we said goodbye to the Geological Survey and next visited Dr. Basil Balme (University of Western Australia, Nedlands) where we once again collected additional material from the University's storehouse off campus. Basil collected with us from the extensive borehole samples of eight wells. It was enjoyable working, talking and later lunching with Dr. Balme. Susan and I were like "freshmen" again, learning from our professor, Dr. Balme, as he filled us in on the Kings Park lithologies and suspect flora. Kinda' like talking to Steven Speilberg on directing a movie. With our newly collected specimens carefully boxed, we posted our treasure to Ottawa to await our return and our processing program.

Now it was time to "brush elbows with nature" and see a bit of the Western Australia flora. WA, as it is affectionately called, is a wildflower paradise. Our August visit was deemed just a bit early for the full wildflower spectacle, but our travels of more than 5,000 km around the State provided us with more than enough to see, study and photograph. Our road travels took us north along the Indian Ocean coastal highways and more frequently along the sideroads and trails. North from Perth, we visited Moora, Cervantes, Kalbarri and Shark Bay (site of living subtidal stromatolites composed of diatoms, green algae and lime-secreting Cyonobacteria). The vegetation appears dry, low and often windswept; sclerophyllous-type plants are the rule. We saw many species, especially proteaceous taxa including, of course, Banksia, Adenanthos, Grevillea, and Hakea. Quick lens and filter changes allowed us to photograph in detail these beautiful and environmentally important endemic plants (some estimates place WA's flora as 75% endemic).

We were beginning to get a "feel" for the flora and could sometimes predict with fair accuracy what kind of vegetation or community would be "just over the next ridge" or "below in the river valley." Our preparation for flora gazing was provided in part through texts, "coffee table" books and brief descriptions by amateur botanist, Mrs. Cynthia Playford. A couple of days were also spent at the Kings Park and Botanic Garden in Perth. The KPBG is world-renowned as one of Australia's foremost botanical gardens. The Director, Dr. P. R. Wycherley, and Dr. Eleanor Bennett, Display Botanist, provided us free access to all the garden facilities, including the glasshouses and herbarium collections where I was able to learn names and acquire excellent collections of some of WA's most rare and often endangered taxa.

South of Perth the vegetation change is pronounced. The southern forests are exquisite, majestic and wet. The southwestern corner of Australia receives about 1200 mm of rain annually. The many species of Eucalyptus including the Marri, Karri, Tingle Tree, and Jarrah stand as sentinels recording the millennia of isolation and watching as this area becomes an increasingly popular tourist attraction. The southern forests are indeed popular, although during our visit in late August (Australia's winter), the RV's and trailers were wanting. All the better for us as we could freely bushwalk the many trails and stream courses in what gave us the feeling of "being the first" to truly observe this gift of nature.

On one occasion, after about 20 days of "learning the land," and feeling perhaps overconfident, Susan and I set out to climb the Devil's Slide, an exposed dome of the Porongorup Ranges. This range, although small, lies just north of Albany, WA, and boasts the oldest exposed granite (1100 million years old) on the surface of the earth. We did make the trek to the top of Devil's Slide, where keeping low to the ground to avoid the strong gusting winds, we sat and enjoyed the view across the open farmland toward the Stirling Ranges about another 30 km farther north. As I noted earlier, we were perhaps a bit overconfident, for we had left our topographic sheets of the range back in our right-hand drive, rented Mitsubishi. Assuming I could always retrace our steps to where we had parked the car, I continued instead into new areas of the range, occasionally forgetting my orientation as a new (to me) and excitingly showy inflorescence would catch my eye. Eventually, we realized that we were lost. We had, after about four hours of hiking and scrambling, managed to completely circuit the range and were now on the opposite side down the face and into the valley below. We could, I now pretended, still retrace our steps. We had less than three hours of sun and probably a four to five hour return hike. We were not going back the same way we had come.

Fortune or fate stepped in. In an otherwise fairly isolated region, we came upon the home of Mr. and Mrs. Al McKenzie, who were enjoying a quiet Sunday afternoon tea. After relating our tale of misadventure and savouring a cup of much needed tea, the McKenzies drove us back to the park ranger station and our automobile. My embarrassment in my lack of "bushwise" techniques was soon dispelled when the McKenzies told us that each year at least three or four people, some experienced Aussie bushwalkers, end up at their doorstep ... seeking direction.

Eventually our WA botany course had to come to an end. But before it did, Susan and I shared experiences, some captured on film, which will remain as sweet memories for many a cold Ottawa evening. We left Perth aboard QANTAS and flew over the Great Australia Bight towards the east and back to Sydney. We had only ten days left in Australia and decided a few days in sunny Cairns, Queensland, would suit our needs.

Mary Dettmann met us in Cairns and together the three of us shared the beauty and mystery of the wet tropics of Northern Queensland. Mary, in anticipation of our excursion to the north, had previously made arrangements for a rent-a-car and through cooperation with Telecom Australia received permission to visit some otherwise inaccessible areas of virgin wet tropical forests. I cannot here express or detail my thoughts while in the tropics. Nature's playground! Life as it should be!

Mary, Susan and I saw in only a few days more than textbooks or classrooms could ever hope to explore. Sometimes guessing, sometimes completely baffled, and sometimes wishing for more time, but always recording our observations on paper and film, we travelled for four days through some of the most spectacularly beautiful country I have ever seen.

At best I can relate one experience which has implanted on me a better understanding and appreciation of our world. Telecom Australia operates a cable car just south of Cairns to service their communications equipment atop Mount Bellenden Ker (approx. 1500 m). With previous arrangements in place and after signing an injury release form, we were taken on the 20-minute ride to the top of the mountain. Passing from 25°C through the clouds to the summit where temperatures dropped at least 10°C we pulled on our sweaters and entered cautiously the wet, quiet, cloud forests of Bellenden Ker. Although the crew working on the mountain had in previous years marked a "sort of pathway" through the forest, the feeling of getting lost was always on our minds. The trail was not at all obvious. Fortunately, Mary is an experienced bushwalker. Amber, reflective discs were occasionally nailed to a tree bole, but one needed to see the next reflector before losing sight of the previous one. We walked, slid, and/or climbed over moss-covered, slippery rocks and semi-wet creek bottoms, always watching for the next reflector while chatting back and forth about this species or that "unusual" fern or strange epacrid. My film was being spent as fast as I could position my portable table top tripod on a fallen log or larger rock surface. I shot at least 5 rolls of 36 that afternoon.

At one point I slipped, protecting my cameras, and came to rest on my belly at the bottom of a small incline. While I rested and gathered myself, I turned to look back from where I had fallen. Still low to the ground my view gave me a perspective upward, back into the forest structure, open enough by the creek bed to allow for a photograph using a short time exposure. The darkness and mistiness of the cloud forest coupled with the soft variations in shades of green was truly awe inspiring. The camera did a slow click ... I hoped for proper exposures. It worked!

Unspoken, yet understood, Mary, Susan and I were experiencing a part of Australia's past. Here in the rainforest we were among the plants that have fossil records in southeastern Australia's latest Cretaceous. The feeling, the peacefulness, the slight movements of leaves and stem tips, the moisture, the smell, the deep quiet of stillness conjured an environment long since forgotten. We had travelled back in time.

All things must pass and Bellenden Ker ended ... we came back to the future. Our Australian journey would soon be over. It was not without sadness that Susan and I said our "goodbyes" to Mary, and were once again aboard QANTAS at 38,000 feet over the Pacific.

A few days later we were back in Ottawa. The memos were piled high on my desk, the journals backed up for three months, the samples from Perth were waiting in my lab. The phone rang. A friend was calling to welcome me back.

"How'd it go?"

"Very well," I responded.

"Tell me all about it," he queried.

"Well, let me just say for now, that Susan and I brushed elbows with nature."

"Huh?"

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* Current address: Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, 811 South Palm Avenue, Sarasota, Florida 34236, USA

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Note: This item orginally appeared in CAP Newsletter 15(1):4-8, 1992.