This is the sixth part of my Highlights. I love mangrove swamps: and enjoyed exploring those on the Boardwalk at Nudgee Beach on the shoreline of Moreton Bay, and also the swamps along the riverside walk at the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens.
Mangroves play a vital ecological role: they help to stabilize shorelines and reduce the devastating impact of natural disasters such as tsunamis and hurricanes. They also serve as breeding and nursing grounds for marine fish and shellfish species. I find them particularly beautiful at the late afternoon high tide: dark mysterious mud, the bright gleam of water through the trees, the deep rich salty odour of the swamp.
The riverside path through the City Botanic Gardens is also a place of deep contentment: that exquisite, cool, organic odour of shadowed waters lapping against drenched mangrove timber beneath the over-arching leafy canopy. You’ll recognise this same smell in rockpools on the English coast: rich, secret, mysterious.
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