Wildflower Season in Western Australia

Wildflower Season in Western Australia

Everybody has been telling us that this is the best wildflower season in WA since 1994, the principal reason being the widespread rains throughout winter. The wheat growing areas also seem to be having a huge year. Vast hectares of canola are also brightening up the countryside with huge swathes of bright yellow set off against the wheat and other crops.

We travelled from Geraldton to Mullewa in our first foray into wildflower country. The Mullewa Wildflower Festival was on in the town hall.  The hall had been lavishly decorated with cut wildflowers including (incredibly) a couple of dug up wreath flowers. Even though the display was supposed to last for a week, the flowers were already beginning to look a little limp on the second day. The variety on display was excellent, with many native orchids I was seeing in the flesh for the first time. Were really impressed by the wreath flowers and decided to track down some specimens in the wild at the earliest opportunity.

That opportunity was to arise a couple of days later when we moved to Morowa, just a little further down the road. The really helpful and enthusiastic lady volunteer in the tourist information centre was armed with maps of reported sightings of wreath flowers and the location of the best wildflower displays including a variety of native orchids, so off we went.

The wreath flower (Lechenaultia macrantha) is not exactly rare, but is probably best described as uncommon. Its range is confined to a relatively small area from Shark Bay to Mullewa, Paynes Find and Murchison. The flowers like to grow in woodland areas particularly in disturbed soil, so they are often found after grading and clearing, on roadsides, along railway lines and especially in gravel pits.

We travelled about 40 Km out of town to a reported sighting and we were not disappointed.  At this roadside location there were between 30 and 40 wreath flowers, nearly all in full bloom, some up to 40 cm across, an outstanding display.

The locals around Morawa are very proud of the fact that the wreath flowers grow in their area. I was driving slowly along the shoulder of the road looking for the flowers when I was passed by a local driving at speed. He disappeared around a bend and then turned around and came back and gave me the correct location that turned out to be just a bit further up the road – very friendly, helpful folk!

Having photographed the wreath flowers from just about every angle and stood and looked at them for quite a long time we reluctantly moved on to find Canna, a location with an outstanding display of many types of native orchids. I have seen pictures in my various orchid books of many of these specimens and here they were in abundance. I could write a blog on orchids alone. I will include just a small number in the pictures in this blog.

NEXT BLOG, MORE WILDFLOWERS

SHARK BAY / DENHAM TO GERALDTON

It was with mixed feelings that we left the warmth of Denham and the delights of Shark Bay, headed further south across the 28^th parallel and officially left the north west of Western Australia.

It’s about a 400 Km run from there through to Geraldton so we decided to stop at a free camp at the Murchison River for the night. It was another pleasant afternoon chatting with some other travellers and swapping tales of good caravan parks (and the not so good!) and service station operators with reasonably priced fuel who were not intent on ripping travellers off.

There are quite a few stations / truckstops on the travellers’ “no go” or “use only as a last resort” list including once again the infamous Nanutarra Roadhouse on that very long stretch between Karratha and Carnarvon that we managed to avoid completely this time because we spent a couple of days at Onslow and filled up there at a reasonable price.

THE Nanutarra Roadhouse consistently charges far in excess of a reasonable price for fuel. We expect to pay a bit more because of the remote location and the fact that they have to run generators for power etc. etc. but Nanutarra always manages to charge very much over the expected.

We ran into quite a bit of wind on the run into Geraldton and the going was fairly tough heading directly into it. Then, to make matters much worse, I felt a fairly significant loss of power.

I diagnosed it as either the air mass regulator or a partially blocked fuel filter brought about by a load of dirty diesel (I have had some experience with air mass problems previously.) It was a struggle to maintain any sort of reasonable speed and I was pleased to make Geraldton with no further trouble, although the engine warning light came on a couple of times.

Thankfully, there is a Nissan dealer in Geraldton and they diagnosed the problem as a faulty air mass sensor. That was fine, although (of course) they didn’t have the requisite part, and it was Friday, so we were forced to stay a little longer than planned. It saved me a little time in one respect because I was able to get the 140,000 Km service done there instead of Perth as planned.  Fortunately the dealer gave me a courtesy car for the five days so we were still able to explore the area.

Geraldton is quite a nice city and the surrounding areas were beginning to display some spectacular wildflowers.  I think my next blog will be all wildflowers.

Geraldton has a strong connection with HMAS Sydney, the ship having visited there a number of times before its loss to the German raider Kormoran further up the coast nearer to Carnarvon.

The HMAS Sydney memorial at Geraldton is outstanding. Built of the finest materials, with excellence of design and containing sculpture and construction of an extremely high standard, the memorial is situated on a hill overlooking the city and looking out to sea.

The dome covering the sanctuary is made up of 645 seagulls, one for each member of the crew that lost his life in the sinking of the Sydney by the German raider Kormoran on the 19^th of November 1941. The dome covers a podium constructed of a ship’s propeller that serves as a wreath laying altar.

An unforgettable feature is the statue ”the waiting woman” near a depiction of the prow of the Sydney. They are both very powerful images. The waiting woman is leaning into the wind, gazing anxiously towards the sea and the horizon. According to the sculptor’s explanation, the woman represents the all-encompassing “waiting woman” grieving for their menfolk. Once you see this memorial, you won’t forget it.

NEXT BLOG; INTO WILDFLOWER COUNTRY. 

CARNARVON and SHARK BAY / DENHAM

The trip from Giralia to Carnarvon was uneventful, but there were quite a few stops along the way to have a look at the increasing numbers of wildflowers along the roadsides. All the WA locals we speak to tell us that this should be a really good year for wildflowers right across the state because of recent rains, so we have that to look forward to.

One jarring note occurred when we re-crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, this time heading south.  We were not all that happy about the prospect of heading towards the cooler weather, but the time has come to head towards Perth. Carnarvon was the first stop.

The Carnarvon area produces a fairly large percentage of WA’s veggies and large farms dot the landscape close to town. The supermarkets have a lot of fresh local stuff including local bananas. I can’t understand why local bananas from just up the street still cost over $13 a kilo, a price similar to that charged for Qld bananas after the floods etc., sounds like a rip off to me and it’s hardly surprising that no-one seems to be buying them!

Carnarvon is a major centre for the fishing industry and it was nice to have a couple of nice seafood lunches, makes a change from focaccias and ham, cheese and tomato sandwiches.

There’s a few things to see near Carnarvon. Naturally there’s a Saturday market albeit a little small, but a market nonetheless. A drive out to the blowholes is a must even though they’re about 60Km out of town. The blowholes are, as expected, naturally formed passages in the rocks where the action of the waves forces spouts of water to shoot up into the air…. fascinating.

As the sign at the blowholes says “King Waves Kill and it’s easy to see how rock fishermen could easily be dislodged by large waves. There were a couple of large waves while I was looking around the area and I did manage to get a couple of pics of the splash behind the Patrol… impressive.

Just along from The Blowholes is a local memorial to HMAS Sydney, lost with all hands on 19^th November 1941 near there.

On that day HMAS Sydney, a light cruiser had a fatal engagement with a German raider, the auxiliary cruiser HSK Kormoran. There are various theories as to why the captain of the Sydney allowed his ship to come so close before properly identifying the Kormoran as a warship rather than a merchantman, it was to be a fatal mistake (if that’s what happened).

In any event, the Sydney was lost with all 645 crew perishing. Some German survivors were picked up at Red Bluff, not far from the site of the memorial. Some debris from the Sydney also washed ashore in this vicinity, but the location of the ship itself was not discovered until very recently.

We spent a little more time than planned in Carnarvon waiting for some mail to arrive, but once we received that it was off to Denham for a couple of days of beach time.

 

Denham was again fairly busy and we had to spend a couple of nights in an overflow area without power or water before we could move into the caravan park itself. We really have no problems doing that, we carry plenty of water, enough for a few short showers if staying in the bush and the battery power is sufficient to run all of our lighting and our inverter takes care of the TV / video player. During the day our solar panels also allow use of a fan powered via the inverter if the weather gets a bit hot and, of course we still have the generator to fall back on if we need the aircon Iit’s a tough life!!

The Denham / Shark Bay council has done very well with general signage and with the little things that tourists like. Unfortunately you can’t legislate for good or even adequate coffee and the general standard of coffee here was quite poor – more like hot weak coffee flavoured milk L. Once again I rued the day that I decided to leave my treasured  De Longhi coffee machine at home.

The foreshore areas are nicely grassed with plenty of seating and playgrounds for the kids and lots of picnic areas and places to just sit and admire the view. For fishermen (or fishers if you want to be politically correct) there is a state of the art fish cleaning table in stainless steel with positions for about eight people, running water and bins very near at hand. As a consequence, the table is always clean and tidy for the next person.

We were at a bay nearby to Denhan and I think we discovered why it is called Shark Bay, have a look at the picture!!

About 20 Km out of town is Eagle Bluff, a large, well constructed, elevated walkway allowing viewing of some of the nearby seagrass meadows and patrolling sharks. The area is also the home of quite a few dugong. The walkway provides a view of the bay and in the far distance, a mountain of salt at the Dampier salt facility as well as the promontory leading to Steep Point, the westernmost point in Australia.

Many beaches on Shark Bay are of shells instead of sand. There are uncountable billions of small white shells. At the aptly named Shell Bay nearby the shells have been naturally compressed and are able to be cut into blocks. In the past, buildings have been made from such blocks, including one of the local churches.

Little Lagoon, a 4wd friendly picnic spot not far north of Denham is another place where the beaches are of billions of shells rather than of sand. This area is a haven for sea birds

Monkey Mia is about 25 Km north of Denham, famous for its visiting dolphins. We had been there once before and were very underwhelmed by the experience. I believe that the whole dolphin thing is very over managed by National Parks or CALM or whoever the authority is. We didn’t go there this time.

Denham on Shark Bay is a very pleasant and relaxing part of the world even though it’s about 130 Km in from the main highway and, of course, the same distance back to the highway.

Next stop, down across the 28^th parallel to wildflower country.