An energetic birthday celebration will take place this weekend.
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The Friends of Black Mountain will go for a strenuous walk to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the mountain's designation on July 23, 1970 as a Nature Reserve.
"We will be talking about trees, shrubs and fire, and see some winter flowering plants," they said in the pitch to fellow walkers.
There is much to celebrate.
The reserve is the heart of Canberra. There it stands topped by the mysterious tower, visible from every part of the ACT.
If the logo of New York has the Manhattan skyline and the logo of Paris has the Eiffel Tower, Canberra's logo has Black Mountain, crowned by the Telstra Tower.
It's a contrast. Below the tech tower of modernity lies a paradise of nature.
"There's a rich diversity," Linda Beveridge, convenor of the Friends of Black Mountain, said.
"There's something like 600 different species of plants. Some of them are very rare and there are some which are endemic just to Black Mountain."
There are more than 60 types of orchid and ten species of eucalypt. The steep slopes are covered in forest, dominated by Red Stringybark, Scribbly Gum, and Brittle Gum.
You might see (or at least hear) honeyeaters, dollarbirds, fantails, orioles and a host of other birds which migrate via the reserve, though usually in the autumn.
Or if you're lucky (or unlucky depending on your point of view or point of foot-fall), you might come across a brown snake which the guides say is "widespread" in summer.
The place changes constantly through the day and through the year. If you go up there early in the morning, you have an aerial view of Canberra as the city gets going.
Sometimes the mist covers the floor of the valley while the mountain above is clear and ethereal, heavenly even, as though it's floating above all that noisy human activity.
"Every day of the year, something different happens," another Friend of Black Mountain, Ian Fraser, said.
"It's a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of life, things breeding, flowering and moving in and moving out.
"And every day you come up here is a new day."
Over the decades, Black Mountain had become bare before it was designated as a nature reserve.
A history of nature reserves says: "In the early days, Black Mountain was managed for firewood production and the absence of timber on the ground in other reserves suggests the taking of timber for this purpose was widespread.
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"The result has been loss of shelter for native birds and animals and a decrease in decomposing material that supports invertebrates that in turn become food for birds."
Black Mountain is everybody's backdrop to the city. "I've been walking on Black Mountain for the last three decades," ecologist Rosemary Purdie, said.
"There's something for everyone at any time of the year and almost any season."