I'd like to acknowledge the Wandru Warong people as the traditional owners of the land where this recording was made. Over the past few months, I've been walking through reserves around Melbourne, NAM, and recording conversations along the way. I've met with traditional owners and First Nations peoples, conservationists, ecologists, and others who've chosen a place that matters to them. We walk and talk about nature, what lives there, what's changed, and what needs protecting. You'll hear our footsteps, the wind in the trees, the birds overhead, and the city not too far away. This is Finding Melbourne's nature. We're going on another walk, this time to St Andrews, on Melbourne's northeastern edge. We're not in a typical reserve, we're walking along roadsides, stopping, looking closely, and trying to spot something that most people drive straight past: orchids. I'm joined by Wendy Probitt, a longtime member of the Australian Native Orchid Society, and a director of the Australian Orchid Foundation. She spent decades searching for native orchids and knows these landscapes incredibly well. As we walk, Wendy introduced me to many of the orchids that occur around Melbourne, how to recognise them and why they matter. We talk about why roadsides are so important and why these plants tell us a lot about the health of a place. What were your first memories of orchids? Well, I guess it's it probably is that going to school in primary school, and I would have only, you know, I mean, obviously would have been 10 or under and seeing little orchids and and and I knew then, you know, so that will probably be my first memory. So it was just grew up with it. And I was just always fascinated by orchids. And I think in 1969 the Big Nichols book came out, so that was my Christmas present. Oh really? Yeah, the Orchids of Australia. And so of course then I was determined to see, and I'd started to figure out, and I got the first book I had was that little C. E. Gray's little book, and was sort of like, yeah, but not all the orchids are in this book. It took me a while to figure out, you know, what, you know, what ones I had seen and what I hadn't. But you know, I used to go and I'd sketch them and down in the railway yards. We're only hundred metres or so from the railway yards, and there was orchids in the bush there. In fact, even across the road from our house, there was a little laneway, and one year there were some diarous orientus flowering in it. So, oh yeah, so here's your um oh native pelagoniums, aren't they? Yeah, and you've got your ranunculus. Yeah, it's really a beautiful spot. Yeah, it's got lots of stuff. If somebody was listening to this, yes, and it's the first they've really heard about native orchids or anything, yes. Could you give us an orchid 101 sort of thing? They're very, very variable, yeah. But what defines an orchid, it has some unique flower parts, and what it has is it has something called a labellum. So with this, the flower has two whirls of three, so there's six. Um the outer ones are called whirl is called the sepals, there are three of those, and the inner whirl is called the petals, but one of the petals is heavily modified and that forms a lip called the labellum. And that is something that attracts pollinators, um, they may mimic other plants. So if you look at this, they're probably mimicking the pea plants, which provide food for um pollinators. You know, they get nectar and those sorts of things. And people didn't think that orchids provided nectar, but we've actually now found out that they do. And then so the sepals are often heavily modified, and the male and female reproductive parts are above the petals and sepals, and in an orchid they're combined into something called a column, which has both uh female part, the stigma, which is receptive to the pollen, and the anthards are above it, and some plants therefore can self-pollinate, but they have this very intriguing ability to attract pollinators either by food deception, pretending that they're offering food like a similar plant, like a pea, or in the case of the sun orchids like some native irises, or with the spider orchids, they actually put out a scent that makes the male wasp think it's a female. And that modified labellum is designed to look like a female wasp. And the male actually attempts to mate with his female, and in doing so gets pollen all over his head. So when you're looking at an orchid, you're looking at those features. So if you look at the big showy orchids like the cymbiliums and the phalaenopsis, you'll see that big labellum at the bottom, which is always very attractive and attracts the pollinator. Um, and there will be that column that has both the male pollen and the female sticky part. Yes? And so our orchids look very different. These are ground orchids, they're not ones that grow in trees. In Victoria, we only have five species that grow on trees, and about 400 that grow on the ground. They're terrestrial. But they're very intriguing because they're very adapted to microclimate. They need a very specific fungus in the soil to germinate the seed and to get the tubers growing again after they've died down over summer, and they can be very specific for a pollinator, like they'll smell like a particular pollinator and not an and won't be pollinated by anything else. And so they're just very good markers of the health of your ecosystem. But that being said, they also respond to disturbance, and we have a landscape that's shaped by fire, so often they are stimulated by fire. You can see them, it's easier for the pollinators who like to fly in a straight line to see them when the vegetation is gone. But of course, if you overexpose them, then they get grazed by all sorts of things, including things that we've introduced like rabbits, but also overgrowth of kangaroos. And um, so that's an issue. And of course, if it's drought, they might flower, but but there might not be enough food for the pollinators, so they don't get pollinated, or they get eaten and the seed doesn't get set. So they're really good indicators, and they're adapted to different habitats. You know, some things like the greenhoods might grow in the shady gully or the shady side of the hill, and the caladenias, the spider orchids will grow on the sunny side, and they like it to be well drained. So they're really good indicators of what's going on in your ecosystem. And and how do you describe this diuris that we're looking at now? Okay, well, they're often called donkey orchids, and the reason they're called donkey orchids is well, I mean they're yellow, which donkeys aren't, but they have the what's called the um petals stick out on a narrow stalk, but they have a big round yellow, um like a bit of like a plate, but I mean they're quite small orchids, only a few millimetres across these flower parts. But they stick up, so they're like ears, and so people call them donkey orchids because they've got ears, a pair of ears that stick out. And then in the centre, there's this sort of middle section that's got a column and it's got a few lobes to it, and then a little um labellum, which is quite tiny, and it's got some quite almost grass-like little um a few sort of like a tuft of leaves. They seem great. And you mentioned there's all different types of pollinators. Yes. What's some examples of pollinators? Well, with a diaris, my understanding is it's primarily bees, and that's because they're mimicking this pea flower that you can see here, where which has again got if you have a look at the same coloration, because that's got the sort of yellow and brown markings, and this has also got the sort of yellow and orange and brown, and so that they tend to be bee pollinators, whereas the spider orchids tend to be pollinated by wasps, and they're the ones that attract the wasp thinking that it's a sexual partner. He's tries, attempts to pull the labellum off and mate with it because he thinks it's a female, so they get sort of fooled. And um then the greenhoods are pollinated by fungus gnats, because the greenhoods tend to grow in damper environments and they're close to the ground where there's a lot of rotting leaf litter, and the fungus gn's retracted and they kind of crawl inside, and the greenhoods have a lip and a bottom that snaps up and traps the pollinator inside, and it has to crawl out through a narrow corridor, and in doing so gets pollen all over it. So they have these tricks to um trap the pollinators, and there's a lot of work trying to work out what the pollinators are, and you know, we have so many insects in this country that haven't been described, so you know you've got to um well there goes a bee, you see. Um and that's part of the working out what species are because sometimes they can look identical, yeah, but they will only um be pollinated by one species of wasp, and that's in fact how some of the studies are being done to work out the taxonomy or how they're organised or categorized and named is to take plants that you've grown up in a pot from one location, and Botanic Gardens does this because they grow them beautifully, and then go out and sit out all day and see whether a pollinator comes along and whether it attempts to mate and whether it takes the pollen away, and say, and then try to catch it. We were in the Grampians um a few days ago, and one of the PhD students of Nushka Reiter at the Botanic Gardens. She's great. Yeah, he he had this net and he was catching pollinators. Yeah. Oh, and look, you see, they've got these little ones too. Oh, gadenias, yeah, it's beautiful, it's a beautiful little diverse spot. Yeah. And so I can see why it'd be a good indicator when you've got something that's related to fungi, related to a particular pollinator, like it's all soil and drainage conditions, pH, yes, all of this. And you've got these, yeah. So, yes, so they're very good indicators, and it's almost like microhabitat and microclimate, you know, it'll grow here. And I mean, there's you know, one of the theories is we might have a lot. We've sort of got a lot of species because what's happened is we've cleared all the land in between, these isolated areas of your remnant bush land, and there isn't the free flow anymore of pollinators and seed in between. So have we really got species or we have we just artificially reproductively isolated plants? That's fascinating, that's a whole world. Yeah, you know, and getting the balance of fire right, you need some fire, but you don't want to burn too often and you don't want to burn it too hot, you don't want to destroy the canopy of the trees, and that's why getting indigenous rangers in who've got some understanding of the history is quite important to know when to do burns to clear the vegetation. Like what we saw in the Grampians after those fires, there were some spots where there were spider orchids, and there were hundreds, hundreds upon hundreds, and yet if you go back to that spot in a few years' time, you'll be lucky to find two or three. So it's sort of really interesting that it, you know, and I think the ethylene gases and other things stimulate the development. Plus, you know, where we were was just normally full of hackia, and the hackia would have been so thick you would not have got through it. And all there was was this absolutely charred hackia, but orchids everywhere because they got a chance to see the sunlight. I understand. And possibly soil disturbance. I mean, there's sort of in theory, you know, someone when I worked at Victoria University, we had the Canley grasslands, and the people in the environmental management area were sort of managing those. And they thought that that, you know, like small animals digging, release nutrients and free up, and that that helps um plants multiply and stimulate them, and possibly even indigenous harvesting of some of the tubers, creating a bit of disturbance, can then stir the plants up to multiply or flower. Um, whereas, you know, there's been some studies done where they were looking at a the one on the peninsula, the Terostylus cucolata, and at one site they actually dug them up and found there were just literally hundreds of tubers underground that don't come up. Those orchids don't even come up every year if there's not enough rain. They can multiply underground. That's amazing, yeah. So there's just so amazing, you know, depending on what species you're talking about. I asked Wendy for her secrets for finding orchids on roadsides. So, I mean, I always just sort of go slowly, if I can, if there's no one following me, to just see what's there. Because, you know, in a particular year, something may, you know, like as I've said, I've seen things that haven't been seen for 30 years. And you just happen to be there at the right year at the right time. So there's a real argument for getting to know your local spots and visiting them regularly without sort of trampling all over them, but just to know maybe once a month, you know. And that's really valuable having people in local areas who, and they maybe even they're taking the dog for a walk, hopefully on a leash, through a little area of bush or roadside, and you know, and and get to notice things because they're doing it. When you started working, did you want to start working with orchids or I did look, I moved into the city to go to university and I got very involved in I guess politics. I mean I did do a degree in chemistry and environmental science, but then I got involved in that sort of thing and particularly in the anti-apartheid movement. Yes. And worked a lot with um Zimbabwean students and ended up going to Zimbabwe for four years after independence to teach. Yeah. And then came back and well, I got married and I was working at the Blood Bank with the introduction of HIV testing for three years. Wow. And then I got a job at the university, which was split between environmental management and food technology, because I was I'd retrained to do a medical laboratory science degree because I'd thought of going back to Africa and working in doing laboratory work, which didn't happen. But then I ended out at VU and I of course got was kind of had a foot in both camps in terms of the environmental things, so got asked to be involved in orchid things because I was somebody that knew about orchids. Yes. Yeah, so I mean, and that sort of got back into it like you know, when in 95, 96 I moved out to Greensburg, got very keen on it, and then I was asked to co-supervise a couple of students and ended up starting a PhD on pterostylus cupolata, which I didn't finish because I retired and I was exhausted. But yeah, so I did try to, yeah, that's the Glossodia that's been bitten off. But there would have been some blue caladinias around here as well, because you can see all my yeah, just in there. Yeah, so so again I just thought there might still be a few out, but they don't last long. Yeah, and that's the thing about orchids too, isn't it? Sometimes they can only flower for very short periods. Well, you always go out on what you will well, some flower for a long time because they don't get pollinated, like the greenhoods can be in flower for months. But these little some of the little caladenias only last a few days, and things that get pollinated closed up very quickly. But what you actually find is whenever you're there, there are orchids that are in flower, there are orchids that have gone to seed, and there are buds that are coming. And you'll never get everything all at once, but that's good. That means you've got um always got something coming to look forward to. Oh, look, beautiful dragonflies. With climate change, I think things are starting to flower earlier and earlier because it's warmer and drier. And I mean, look, just look at these beautiful daisies. Magic, isn't it? Yeah. And so you s you you were started studying the pterostylus? The leafy greenhood, yes. And so I was just looking at, you know, identifying that, and I guess did some measurements and things because there are actually two subspecies, although it's interesting because with the mountain subspecies, um, it was sort of the one along the coast was called the dwarf greenhood, and the other one is a mountain species, and they'll separate it out. And one of the things is, you know, the ones in the mountains are meant to be taller and they had the flower sort of had a much longer pedicile and so forth. But I think have to say that having a look at things, that seemed to me to depend a bit on environmental conditions because I've seen Terastolus cucolata down on the Mornington Peninsula where that's very tall. Oh, there's a Caladinia Carneas as well. Oh, great, yeah, fantastic. Yes, I had recorded these many years ago, but haven't seen them for ages, so it must be just which spot I went to. I probably wasn't specific. But yeah, so with that, it may actually be in environmental conditions because if something's growing on a sand dune in full sun, it's as short as, like down in the hotways. But if it's growing in the shade, like some of these gullies in Mornington Peninsula where it's really weedy, the things can be a foot high. And the other thing is the pedicil, the flower starts to elongate and get taller once it's been pollinated. So I wondered also whether the ones in the alpine areas were um maybe they were more likely to get pollinated. Yeah, right. So there's all sorts of things like looking at what percentage flowering, and also there was some genetic works done, and the reality is what I found was I went, you know, and I did the mountain ones and the coastal ones, and you know, from like right down, you know, to these, you know, Gippslands and um all the way down to Nelson, you know, and western Victoria. And the biggest difference we found in the genetics was actually which season? One year to the next, rather than alpine versus coastal subspecies, which was kind of interesting. Yeah. But unfortunately I just got exhausted because I was getting towards the end of my oh, we might actually walk down here a bit, getting towards the end of my time there, and I was running lots of subjects. I mean I was a senior lecturer and I I was just exhausted. There wasn't enough time in the day to do everything. What were you lecturing at? Uh in pathophysiology, which is disease processes and also wellness, which I was very trendy, but actually turned in we turned into a public health and um occupational health and safety. Um I love that species, Austral Bears ears the other day. Yeah. There's some great little native things around here. It's really diverse. Yeah. This is great. Yeah, there's all sorts of stuff when you look. Um, yeah. Did you find any crossover between the orchid stuff and your health and pathology stuff? Well, not really, I guess. Well, I mean, I was sort of interested in reproductive health and sort of biology of cancer sort of things. So I did some, you know, cervical cancer screening. I was interested in the public health aspects and the information and education and that whole issue of women not really being told what's going on. And of course, there's some genetics of it. So I co-supervised a student who was doing a project on breast cancer and pesticides because I'd been interested in environmental pesticides like DDT and so forth. Oh, yeah. You know, years earlier when I'd done chemistry. So look, there's your um what's that a juger, isn't it? Yeah, a jugger of sugar. And there's your viola picture folia. Beautiful species. Yes. All on a roadside. It's beautiful purple there, and that you've got your red for your Canadia prostrata, and you've got your white early Nancy's, and yeah, it's beautiful here. Just might just go down a bit further. Just in a better. This is beautiful here. Yeah, and then you've got yeah, all sorts of things. So um, so like I said, sometimes I just like to wander and see if I can see anything. It's just there were some um greenhoods, and it might have been somewhere here, or it might have been way down there, but I just thought we'd just have a quick look in case. But you know, we might, if not, we'd just go back, just you know, have a look here a bit. Don't you find I've found that where your quick look just in case can end up being your big discovery? Well exactly and that's why it's to go in there and just see what's there without expecting anything. I mean sometimes I'm more targeted. I am looking for a particular rare species and I know it's meant to be there and I know what the sort of habitat is and you sort of get an idea of companion plants, you know, that grow with it. It's like I've done, you know, pollinator baiting for Nushger in the past and also with Colin Bauer earlier. And you sort of, you know, I try to write good notes and say what other species were around because you know that might be what the pollinator's living in or eating, you know, that might be its food source. So all of that's important because when you're reintroducing, you want to have the right companion plants to have that whole ecosystem there, you know. You want the pollinator and the food for the pollinator and the shelter for the pollinator. Because otherwise, if you just put the plants in there, you don't have anything to protect it or shade it, it's it's not gonna thrive. Yeah, so there's all sorts of things. Some of it's weeds, but it's great when it's not. You joined the Australian Native Orchid Society in 95. Again, it was that long service leave. I'm gonna join this Native Orchid Society, and I joined it about June, but I went on my first trip in um November. Yes. It was the Cut Weekend trip. We used the Cut Weekend trip used to be big. These days we tend not to do it because it's often dried out and there's not much out, but it was really wet. It was in Malacuta and it rained and it rained, and I didn't get there for the first day to get onto Alan Paisley's property, but I did meet up with them and no one knew me from a bar or soap. Who is this girl who's suddenly shown up? And yeah, that was my first trip. This is the famous street, St Andrews, which is the home of Caledinia in Akaila. Okay, so some years they grow all along the banks, and you can see them, but we'll just go up here and walk up here, which is the unfenced area. That area is now fenced where a lot of it is, and they use that to pollinate. The Royal Botanic Gardens uses that area to pollinate and collect seed for the Caladin Urenacila. So, what's the significance of this particular calidina? Okay, so Caladina Urena chilae, it's threat listed, it's critically endangered. Yes. It does, compared to other orchids that are critically endangered, there seem to be more locations. It grows at angle C. There is a population in the Grampians. It does grow, and I've seen a population out at Upper Beaconsfield, and it's also been recorded from you know um Mount Dandinong, sort of slopes. So that's a you know, it's a lovely spider orchid that's got a red lip and sort of cream um petals and sepals. And why do they call them a spider orchid? Because they've got these long spider-y flower parts, long and thin. There are five of them. Spiders obviously got eight because you know it's sort of like the long legs of a spider. And they're furry, they have a furry leaf and they can be a furry stem, I suppose. So I'm not seeing any here, but that's okay. We'll go and further down and have a look. And there's lots of other orchids here, it's very orchid-rich. Whereabouts are we? Um this is St Andrew's on the outskirts. Why is this these sort of areas so orchid diverse out on this sort of soil and so forth? Do you have anything? I'm not sure. I think it's my guess is it's where a couple of different um habitat. Oh, there's one. Can you see? Oh, we've got one. Oh, aren't they beautiful? They're beautiful, and they're quite variable. That they can sometimes have a white lip, yeah, and sometimes typically have the wine lip. Yeah, and they can be beautifully diffused. So yeah, that um in other years there's been a pat there's one that's been pollinated. Oh great. Um so that's a wild population. Oh, this is a wild population, and they've caged most of it, but they leave some outside the cages. Wow. Which means that people have always I guess got something to photograph. Yes. And that's quite fresh out, that one. And they they can start flowering even at the end of August, but I've seen them here as late as the first week of October, so we're lucky to still find them. How rare is this orchid? Critically endangered. Critically endangered. So that's as endangered as it can get. Well, yeah, it means that you've got less than five populations, and I don't know, less than 300 in the wild. I forget what the figures are, or is it 1500? I think it's probably less than that, 500 or something, and you know the idea to recover is to try to get it, is to try to get it to five populations and 1500. This sort of area is one of the most diverse in the state, this northeast suburbs. It's got really rare things like the Enochila, like the Caladinia Mina, like the Caladinia Rosella, and I guess because it's on the outskirts of Melbourne, but it's still rare vegetation and it, you know, hasn't been cleared for farming, not in these areas. Partly because it's steep, I think, you know, because it's not suitable for farming because it's too steep. It's like the remnant areas of the gorge. You know, you obviously didn't want your cattle going over the edge into the gorge, you know. So that first year, that 95 when I went out to Ballock Willem and I walked up the track and I just saw this all these spider orchids dancing on it, just a bank on a roadside, which is how they grow there too. And they just all grow really well on that roadside. And one of the things is I think that pollinators like to fly in straight lines. And roadsides also do get slashed and cleared, and so the pollinators will go down this line of orchids that's on the edge of the bank, and the seed will drop down onto the bank, and then you get this sort of bank, roadside bank of beautiful spider orchids. Um, I wish they're all like that. And I once again it's another story of roadsides being so important, isn't it? Like well, yeah, and railway in in the rural, you know, in the rural Victoria, the the railway yards and whatever, like there's just heaps of well, you know, like down in the Mornington Peninsula where the Diurus punctata grows alongside the railway line, and you know, and at Langwarren they moved them from that railway line into the Langwarren Reserve. They're often really valuable remnants, so roadsides and wide roads. Like in WA the roadsides are fantastic, but they do heavily slash them and burn them, you know. It's kind of terrible, but um, you know, again it's that remnant because that's where the remnants are, because because the land inside the fence has been cleared, you know, it's had cattle on it, and they go and they dump, you know, super phosphate or something to grow up all the clover or whatever it is that they get the animals to eat. It's like up the Diurisacroma up at Catherine Station up at Abbeyard. You know, it's hundreds of them grow along the roadside, and you know, where the native grass is, but where he's dumped the fertilizers on it, you know, for pasture for stock, you don't find any. That's just where it grows because they're the only areas that's left. But it's also relatively open grassy woodland or open grassy areas because they are slashed or burnt, and it keeps the other vegetation down that would choke it. So I mean that whole issue of getting the fire management right, not destroying the trees, not overdoing it, and this area does get regular burns. Yes. I mean, you also find that extensor or plumosa type greenwood here. You find the um there, and there are a couple of there's a rare um leek orchid, I think it was the Prazophyll and Pyriformi that this was one of the last known sites where it's been seen, but it's very rich in orchids. But you can see this open, dry area, and Caladinia love it. They don't like to get their feet wet, they actually can inhabit really dry stony areas that other plants can't cope with, you know, because they've got these big tubes under the ground, and um yeah, so it's partly that it's a lot of this is very open and very dry, and it doesn't support much else. But you know, have a look in there. The other thing that's hidden here, of course, is the um the Terra Stylus Smaragdina, the emerald lip greenhood, which is also found in this area because it's and also Diamond Creek, St. Helena, because basically again box iron bark, because the other places you find it are up around Bendigo and Castleman or the box iron bark forest there. So they just like that combination of soil. And is there something in there? There's the green comb orchids. Oh yes. You know, the clavidgery used to grow up in there, but I haven't seen much of that lately. And then later on you get the big greenhood, which is the big green um spider orchid, which is the um you know the tentaculata. Yes. So yeah, so I guess just a combination of the right sort of moisture. I guess these box-iron bark forests are drier, and it's also again hillsides, which means that it drains well. Caledonia don't yet like to get their feet wet, they'll rot off. But some of those plants, a single little spider orc, it can live for 30-50 years, they keep coming up in the same spot. I mean, look at this. Yeah, oh yeah. Oh, there's some, yeah. Yeah, but with really low seed set, like in the wild, only every few percent may you know set seed, and yeah, so yeah. Um oh, and here's another wine lip. Look, here's another one. This has got a real wine lip, that's why it's called a wine lip, because it's that's kind of more typical than the pale one. Yes, yes, so there you go. Preserve. So I you know, I don't I wouldn't say I even come out here every year, yeah. Um, because I the view that you don't need to go back to every place every year. Yep. Although there's a value in a local person knowing what's happening, yes, and being able to contact a park range or a council person if they see someone. So, and the local person's more likely to see other things at different times of the year. So I'm mixed about that, and I know they always say keep to the track, but sometimes if you're trying to check on things, you you know you actually need to go off the track. There's obviously a lot more glossodia coming out here, but I have in the past seen the inner colours in here, so I mean you just gotta watch out, you haven't got any big furry leaves or pods. Um, but I mean it may be that it's just not a great year anyway. Why are orchids so important to you? Why do you love orchids? Um that's hard to say. It's it's also part of my life in growing up. It's that thing of being able to just see something that's beautiful and delicate around you that's part of the natural environment, you know. And then there's the beauty of them, though. I mean they are beautiful flowers, they're also intricate. As a scientist, I find the science fascinating, the genetics, the pollination, the fungi, you know, as somebody who is a medical scientist also had to study microbiology. That interrelationship. So for me, as I said, they're indicators of your ecosystem. So if you can see orchids, you sort of think there's a chance that things will survive. And if they're interesting and intriguing enough, people will care about that bushland. They might, you know, people don't care about daisies or well, some people don't, or about drossera or anything, and you know, it's true that there'll be people who are so desperate to photograph an orchid they'll step on everything else. But it's about saying there's something rare and significant, and orchids are a massive family, they're amongst the first flowering plants. I mean, there is some research that suggested that Australia might be where orchids evolved. There's some of these little priseopsis. Um and you know, in the same way where the continent where the songbirds began, we might be the continent where the orchids began, although some more recent research says maybe that's not true. Yeah, okay. Um, you know, it wasn't Gondwana, but um yeah, I don't know, it's about it's about childhood, about the things that you valued with your growing up, that feeling one with the land and your country. I mean, I'm not indigenous, but I sort of feel like the Dandinongs is my country. I've walked it. And out here, you know, in 30 years I've walked this country, and it's I don't know. And the orchid provides, I guess, the trigger to go out and look at it. Yeah. If it weren't for the orchids, maybe I wouldn't do it as much. And there is that thing of, you know, there are so many different species, and I haven't seen them all, and I'd like to, but I know there are some I never will because they're too rare or too difficult a habitat. It's a way of getting back to nature. It was for me getting away from that the city and the politics and getting out into something I could do on my own or with like-minded other people and clear my head. That was the extremely knowledgeable Wendy Probate, and I encourage you all to go out there and have a look and see if you can find some orchids. It'll open a whole new world of experiences. Please check out finding Melbourne's nature.com for more stories like this and check us out on your favourite streaming platforms. Thanks for listening. See you next time.