Notes from a Small Valley A Natural History of Wolli Creek II Vivid and Beautiful

This is the second part of my short introduction to the natural history of the Wolli Creek Valley in Sydney, Australia. The Valley contains the last substantial remnants of the natural environment in Sydney’s inner south-west. Even though it is quite small it contains a variety of habitats, ranging from tidal mudflats, saltmarsh and mangroves to reed-lands, open woodland and even fragments of rainforest. They, in turn, provide refuge for an impressive range of native wildlife, especially birds and reptiles.

Part I, Prehistory, published in 2014, gave an overview of the Valley’s geology and what local fossil and archaeological records tell us of its ancient past. This part, Vivid and Beautiful, describes how the Valley may have appeared to a visitor in the early 1790s - shortly after the First Fleet brought the Europeans to Sydney in 1788 but before they settled along Wolli Creek from 1804.