Northern Suburbs Branch 21 December 2022

As usual, there was no speaker at the December Meeting of the Northern Suburbs Branch. Instead, the Annual General Meeting was held in between a Christmas-themed Quiz and our End-of-Year Photo Competition.

Office Bearers for 2023 are:

• Chairman: Don Poynton
• Secretary: Willy Dadour
• Treasurer: Joy Chela (Bob Ruscoe retired after 27 years as Treasurer and/or other committee positions)
• Committee:
  • Jenny Cunningham,
  • Christine Curry OAM,
  • Sylvia Tetlow,
  • Graham Ezzy

During his, This Month Naturally segment, Don Poynton told us that this week was the 230^th anniversary of the discovery of the Kangaroo Paw by Jacques Labillardière, in 1792, near Esperance. Labillardière named the species he collected, Anigozanthos rufus (sic). He gave it the botanical name of Anigozanthos (Greek = unequal + flower) because the corolla forms a tube, the edges divided into six unequal parts recurvated inwards.

Don then told us the Bureau of Meteorology had predicted the hottest place in Australia on Christmas Day would be Zanthus, on the Trans-continental rail line about 200km east of Kalgoorlie. The name was applied by the Commonwealth Railways when the line opened in 1917. According to Landgate, it is derived from the latter part of the genus name for the Kangaroo Paw, Anigozanthus (sic). A very unlikely spot to find Kangaroo Paw! Photo: ¹

The quiz was also conducted by Don, who admitted after five years, finding new natural history questions related to a Christmas theme was getting very hard. The winning pair, with seven out of ten correct answers, was Jenny Cunningham and Terry Houston.

Graham Ezzy ran the photo competition. This year, there were prizes for four categories. The categories and winners were:

The meeting closed with a Christmas-themed supper.

Don Poynton

^1. [Old cabin from Zanthus, Western Australia now at Bassendean rail museum.
Nachoman-au, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons]↩