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.