In the Wildflower West

I flew from Sydney to Perth on Qantas, the level of service reminded me of Air Canada 15 years ago, and all this with competitive fares. Perth on the Swan River is an unremarkable city, clean, bright and predictable except for the magnificent Kings Park and botanical gardens where I spent a day, picnicking and strolling with new friends. I also explored the adjacent port city of Fremantle, much more interesting though the sight of a large ship with multi-storey animal cages was rather chilling once I found out that it was for shipping live sheep to the Middle East. Fremantle, as everyone told me, used to be a dump until the Americas Cup chose it as a destination port several years ago, then the restoration began, beautiful old buildings, markets, waterfront restaurants, street performers everywhere, cycling and walking trails and now like Charlottetown a cruise ship destination.

But the highlights of my time in Western Australia were the explorations of forests and coastline in the middle of wildflower season, WA is famous for its spring wildflowers. They fill the fields and roadsides and also floor of the more open bush areas. I traveled south to the Porongorups, did a short but rugged walk to the summit of the Porongorup Range, the ankled ached for a day afterwards. Then I visited Banksia Farm with its collection of ALL the world’s Banksias and many other Proteaceae. What a gem of a place this is, run by a couple who 20 years ago bought the spot and started to collect Banksias. Now it it is the world’s only complete collection. They are passionate people with a great sense of style and humour, not to mention botanical and horticultural knowledge and they do very good lunches. They pointed me to an orchid walk and another native plant walk where there were even a few labels on the plants. Most remarkable were the insectivorous sundews, we have one species in bogs in eastern Canada and I love to see it whenever I can but here there are several species with different growth forms, one was a small trailing vine, how cute is that?

After Banksia it was off to the rugged coastline of the Southern Ocean, nothing between here and Antarctica. There were great rock formations and surf laden beaches. Then I went a tad inland to the Tingle Tree forests. Eucalyptus jacksonii is one of the worlds largest trees and there are still a few remaining in this part of Australia. I went on a fantastic canopy walk through these great trees then another along the forest floor.
Oh yes and there was a bit of wine and olive tasting before returning to Fremantle then boarding the train for Adelaide.

A Walk in the Blue Mountains

My time in the Blue Mountains has been another great chapter in my exploration of Australia. I have been staying in Linden with Stuart and Judy. Linden is about 100km west of Sydney and just about on the boundary of the lower and upper mountains. My stay included the Sydney dust storm from which there were some memorable images and the Wollemi Pine which will be an unfolding story. But the highlight was a walk along one of the mountain cliff faces through waterfalls and magnificent rock formations, spring flowers and the ever present gum trees. The trail known as the National Pass was originally developed for walkers in the early 1900s, it was recently restored and rebuilt to make it more accessible though it is still quite challenging especially for those compromised by a recently broken ankle (me) or wonky knees (Stuart). We started out with a rock step descent through waterfalls and hanging swamps then a long traverse across the cliff face on a well engineered path. Views of the mountains and the forest changing constantly. Close up we feasted our eyes on the rock formations and spring flowers. Towards the end of the walk we picnicked beside a huge waterfall, Wentworth Falls then climbed steeply, up steps to the plateau for a leisurely walk back to the starting point.
One day I awoke to what seemed like a very pink dawn, it was the day of the Sydney dust storm which was reported worldwide. I didn’t realise it until I was hailed to “come and look at this” By the time I got up the sun was up in eastern sky, looking like a full moon in a bronze haze. There was a fine dust coating everything, even parts of the inside of the house. The wind blew hard all day bringing down tree branches and preventing me from another cliff edge walk in the mountains.

Then there was the affair of the Wollemi Pine. I had naively hoped to hike into the canyon where this relic of the Jurassic was found in 1994. It is related to Monkey Puzzles and Norfolk Island Pine but had escaped human notice for hundreds of thousands of years. Since then its location has been shared with very few people and it has been studied incessantly. It turns out to be easy to propagate and I was able to buy my very own Wollemi Pine which will live in Linden and be nurtured by Stuart and Judy. I will receive regular photo and news updates such as, first mature leaves, first bubbly bark and dare I hope first cone !!!