With the end of our long road trip in sight, and after exploring the south-west coast and nearby ranges with their heathlands and forests, we made a dash for something quite different.

I'd long heard of Dryanda Woodland, most particularly as one of the very few locations where the Numbat - a termite-eating marsupial, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbat - has survived. But Dryandra Woodland is much more than a refuge of the species. It comtains a very important remnant of the once vast temperate woodlands of southern Australia. Having made it to the south-west of Australia for the first time, I wasn't going to miss this special remnant.

When Europeans arrived in Australia, temperate woodlands covered hundreds of thousands of square kilometres extending almost across the southern half of the continent from west to east. Most of these woodlands have now been cleared for agriculture (mostly wheat-growing), and remnants variously logged and grazed. Understoreys are often highly disturbed. And almost all have lost their small-medium ground-dwelling mammals, once a rich assemblage, to predation by the introduced Red Fox and Feral Cat.

The 28,000 ha Dryandra Woodland reserve is an outstanding exception for reasons I'll explain with photos. Not that it has altogether escaped damage. Parts were cleared and planted with Brown Mallet - a native eucalypt whose wood is valued, and some was logged to fuel steam trains in the early days of European settlement. But other parts .... are so very special.