Russ Travelling Australia

We are camped 17 kms south of Badgingarra at Waddi, on a farm, set up with a caravan park, kitchenettes and chalets.

Day 1 was an easy one, relaxing under the eucalypts, enjoying the scenery and going for a long, but hilly bike ride.

Day 2 started by travelling back to Badgingarra, with a 4 km Nature Trail walk, starting from opposite the Roadhouse.

Due to the different region, we again saw loads of different plants – we wish we new all the names, but unfortunately we’ll have to look them up when we get back. Only one orchid – the common Cowslip.

While walking through the sand section, there were mostly yellow flowers (Hibertia Hypericoidres) was one we knew, and Banksias sphaerocarpa and candolleana, Dryandras and hundreds of smaller shrubs.

Once we approached the stony ground (laterite), we saw Casuarina or the Sheoak family, where two varieties of grass tress grow. They are Xanthorrhoea reflexa and Kingia australis, completely different species that do not interbreed. They differ slightly by the smoothness of the trunk and the flower.

We had a detailed booklet to take with us, giving us information as we proceeded. At Stop 10, we were advised to head north, but this meant that at the end of the loop, we had to climb down a steep descent – we both would rather have gone straight on, meaning we’d walk up the climb, and do the loop returning to the south.

Drove 3.8kms further east to Vern Westbrook Walk. Beforehand, we had lunch amongst some beautiful spider, cowslips, pink fairy, lady finger and bee orchids.

The walk, a 1.65 round trip, was quite different to the previous walk, with quite a lot of the orchids previously mentioned on the trail before the Hill River bridge, then heathland and woodland plants, including Kennedia prostrata, Eucalyptus loxophleba (York Gum) [growing with a circular base of trunks, with a large dirt area in the middle. An early settler here (Grigson) used to bury bottles of water in the middle of the tree, for emergencies.

Some of the other species seen were: Lechenaultia biloba, Acacia pulcella, Xanthorrhoea preissii, Zamia Palm, Grevilleas, One sided bottlebrush, Calothamnus quadrifidus, Black butt to name a few. (You can tell I am reading the trail notes!!)

Returned home, legs and back tired, but satisfied with our great morning. This is probably the last walk we’ll do until we get back into SA or Vic.

We’ll see Katie and John & Co on Friday and Saturday, at the Coolgardie Hilton and we can’t wait! Then the big trip back.

Tonight (Thursday) we are at Merridan and we were greeted by a long-billed corella, whose main aim in life is looking for a warm lap – he’s found one in this camp!!

We drove to Cervantees today to see The Pinnacles.

The Pinnacles Desert is a landscape of limestone pillars, that was formed many thousands of years ago, although geologists are still divided as to how the limestone formed into columns – creating the pinnacles. Quoting from the brochure – “Some believe that the limestone between the pinnacles was leached away more rapidly in areas where plant roots increased the acidity of the soil; others believe that the pinnacles formed around the roots and trunks of buried trees. In both theories however, the pinnacles were formed beneath ground from the varied influence of acidic water as it percolated through the soil profile, first leaching then accreting calcium carbonate into interesting and diverse forms.

As the vegetation stabilising the silicate sand was removed, probably by fire, the sand was blown away, exposing the pinnacles to the elements of the atmosphere. The pinnacles were sculptured further by wind, rain and the sun, into what we see today”.

We found the sights quite amazing, as did the Mango Men. They had a great time climbing, dancing around, and scaling the limestone columns.

We stopped for lunch at Hangover Bay – enjoyed this beautiful bay while sitting at a table overlooking the sea, plus a BBQ, where we heated up a preprepared Continental Panini, full of pesto, capsicum, ham, cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, olives and mushroom.

We move on tomorrow to Badgingarra National Park – so we’ll be out of range for a couple of days and on Friday 6/9 we are booked into The Coolgardie Hilton (John and Katie’s Backyard), for two nights, then the big trip back across the Nullabour!!

Jurien is a very small town approx. 200kms north of Perth, with their footy grand final on this weekend – red and white streamers and balloons in the shops and a couple of blackboards wishing their lads the best.

We are right on the beach, with white sand, but our interests are still taking us elsewhere, inland – not very far – but just far enough to see the most spectacular heathlands, growing in sand and gravel, with an enormous diversity of plants.

We went to Grigson’s Lookout, where we read that there are 900 different species of plants here – greater than the number of species in the British Isles!

We pack a picnic lunch and walk and walk – I’m not losing weight, but maybe I’d be gaining more without all this exercise!! [whats more – I’m loving it – the exercise that is!]

Yesterday we went to Lesueur National Park and this is a park that lives up to the brochure’s blurb – or exceeds it. You can stand and look at an area of say, 10 square metres and you are greeted by colour and diversity – rarely seeing the same plant twice. There are 1200 species of acacias, and covering the ground are many prostrate varieties, as well as Cowslip Orchids and the most stunning Kangaroo Paws.

We then travelled to Coomallo Nature Reserve and found some more orchids and the same abundance of beauty in the huge range of plants.

Today we went to Stockyard Gully – 4WD, along a sand track, deep in parts and hard limestone, looking forward to reaching the Stockyard Tunnel – a cave with a dry creek running though it for 250 metres.

Torches in hand we walked up the creek bed until we had to enter the cave. Inside,

our powerful torches hardly gave any light and it was quite unnerving and an extremely weird sensation. I think we got about half way when we decided to go back. A spotlight would have been very useful, as was Russ’ hand for me, all the way along, (though I think he was holding mine as well!!!!.)

We have extended our stay here as we have mobile reception and tomorrow we plan to go to Nambung National Park to see the Pinnacles.

After a great week here it is time to leave for Jurien Bay, where we will do several day trips to National Parks, reported to have a diversity of flora unequalled in the world!

Yesterday we went to Depot Hill again, as well as White Gums Nature Reserve, looking for the Blue China orchid. No luck unfortunately, but we did see orchids that we have previously seen, but some were more intensely coloured. A thunderstorm followed us all the way, but we managed to have a picnic lunch at White Gums, just before it pelted down. Things aren’t done by halves over here – flowers are spectacular and storms and skies are fierce and black!!

Rhys and Heath – you are both very good judges – the smiley faced yellow magno man DID win all the medals, but the others got prizes for having a go!

The tiny group of flowers are trigger plants – it was hard to know where to put your feet – they were absolutely everywhere and only 6mm high!

Sorry guys, but more about wildflowers and orchids. The night before last, Russ went on a guided walk with other campers, with Allan giving everyone remarkable information about native plants, pollination, germination etc. etc. Russ came home, after three hours, stimulated and excited by all this amazing information. Botanists, scientists, entomologists, native bee specialists, people from USA come here to study their particular topic and Allan absorbs all their knowledge and passes it on to those who are interested. He is quite a man and this is quite a place. If we had more time, we’d extend our stay.

Yesterday, we had quite a special day. We headed off to Lake Indoon for a picnic lunch, which was very well set up for day recreation and camping at $8 per night, then on to Depot Hill. Over the day, we found two new orchids known to us, one was a rabbit orchid, the flower of which is 10mm long (left), right here at camp and the other was the Queen of Sheba orchid.

Little did we know that this latter orchid is the orchid everyone is waiting to find!! Apparently, the office here at Western Flora gets four calls a day asking if there has been a sighting of it. We naively took our camera over to Allan, who told us what we had spotted! We have been incredibly lucky here, with the timing and the weather.

This morning we went on a 6km walk to the Arrowsmith River, with donkey, bee and cowslip orchids all the way, as well as the most beautiful native bush, birds, all while walking on white sand tracks. We are now able to look at a bush and tell if it has been pollinated or not, which is male and which is female, what insect, bird, wind or ant pollinates it (or whatever else) – everything that makes the walk so much more interesting.

The yellow orchid at the top is another we have to have identified tonight, when we talk to Allan again.

A post from Russ

The Magno Men were really interested in, and enjoyed watching the bits of the Olympics we were able to watch, so they decided to stage their own games today. We didn’t have much time as we had to go out on a drive, but they fitted in some activities – Gumnut Football, Eneabba Marathon, Gumnut Tunnelball, Towel Gymnastics and Bent Wire Highjump. Lots of campers came to watch, cheering on their favourite Magno Man. Here are some of our favourite action shots.

The blog software for some reason truncated thumbnail photos and has placed them where it likes, must have been developed by Microsoft!  Photos now loaded in a different way and may take longer to view, sorry about that.

What an incredible journey this morning – we were so lucky to hear where the orchids were on the radio, whilst in Geraldton.

Allan & Lorraine Tinker own this amazing 160 acre park, abutting another nature reserve. The owners of 10 vehicles met up this morning and set off for an exciting and rewarding experience. Allan has massive knowledge of where plants are, as well as how they are propagated. We heard about the importance of 130+ species of native bees, all of which play a roll in the pollination of orchids and plants, (as well as moths and birds), 10 being specifically attracted to their own orchid, or plant.

He took us to areas of bush were a deliberate burn had taken place, which gives all the small flowering plants a chance again to regenerate. After time, the larger bushes shade them again and they don’t blossom, but the seeds of the orchids and smaller wildflowers are left in the ground, until the next fire. Some orchids take 18 months to germinate.

We are incredibly fortunate to be here at this time – two weeks either side may have made the difference to our viewing.

We have seen Smoke Bush, Arrowsmith Spider Orchid, Crimson Spider Orchids, Blue Fairy Orchid, Daddy Long Legs, Lemon Scented Sun Orchid, and more!

We’ll let the photos tell the story . . . . . (I’ve given up trying to position the photos – whatever I do doesn’t work).

We’ve travelled in a full [zig zaggy] circle, staying at Coalseam Nature Reserve again, where we had our first river crossing, more than seven weeks ago. The Irwin River was way down and the deep river crossing was now a case of missing the deep puddles. There is a Camp Host there now, as is the case with most National Parks. Camp Hosts usually stay at a National Park for 4-6 weeks, collect fees and give information about things to see etc., in return for free accommodation.

We have arrived at Western Flora Caravan Park, 22 kms North of Eneabba, on a 160 acres of native WA bush AND ORCHIDS! Booked in for 2 nights and extended for a week. We can travel to the coast from here and see some special National Parks on Russ’ “must see” list, as well as do a guided tour with the owner Alan Tinker (who’s reputation as a wildflower and orchid expert precedes him), as well as a Tag-A-Long tour, tomorrow morning, at 8:30am, where we will see orchids we’d normally walk passed.

I have made eight turkish pides, on my new [second-hand, but unused] Cobb oven. We are short on bread due to our surprised extended stay, but the experiment worked out well and I have enough flour to make another eight.

Our site has donkey orchids and cowslip orchids on it – how good is that??

Another first is going for a 2km walk this morning around the park, accompanied by a kangaroo!! There are three kangaroos that lie in the sun around the office and the younger one decided to give us his own guided tour!!

Apart from orchids, there are the most stunning prostrate kangaroo paws, verticortia grandis (scarlet feather flower), many varieties of banksia, and donkey and cowslip orchids everywhere, not to mention all the hundreds of plants I can’t name – can’t wait for the tour tomorrow.

After listening to a discussion on the radio, about orchids, we headed to Canna, where we went to the “general store”, (now a Landmark centre), – closed – but excellent maps and information left out by the door [out of the howling gale], for a donation, on where to find orchids. As directed, parked a the back of the Lutheran Church, set off down the track and were greeted by donkey orchids, pink fairy orchids, snail orchids (small greenhoods), and a blue fairy orchid – four new orchids!

Another short drive to Canna Dam, where again we saw spider orchids, searched for shell orchids, without success, but lunched at Old Camp, where the ram shackled remains of a WW1 soldier’s corrugated home was in tatters. After the loss of his wife and child in WW1, the Englishman moved to WA and was a pumper at Canna. It sounded as if he was much loved by the locals, who affectionately called him “Mack”.

The Magno men loved his place – had quite an attraction to it, as you might imagine and we had quite a time getting them back into the car, as all they wanted to do was dance along the doorway and try to break away from us!  Can you find the magno men in the doorway???

We’d thought we’d seen it all to date, but now that are in “wildflower country”, we know what that means.

Advice from Geraldton was to visit the Mullewa Visitor Centre, where we received fantastic advice on where to find the rare Wreath Flowers and where to discover ORCHIDS, I have loved them for 40 or more years and we are both excited about the prospect of finding some. We had planned to travel through, but after hearing about two lovely walks and a drive

The Wreath Flowers are situated 10kms from the Pindar Pub, growing in gravel and sand along the side of the road. If we nurtured them at home, they probably wouldn’t grow!

The orchids were unbelievable – much larger than I’ve every seen a Spider Orchid, with the Nodding Greenhoods quite small and past their use by date – except for one we found.

We even saw more flowers than before, so here are a few of them. Sorry, but these areas don’t have a lot of historical info, just botanic gardens everywhere you go. Hope it’s not too boring for you.

The fragrance of the flowers hits you as soon as you get out of the car, but those Magno Men get the sneezes and have decided to stay in the car every stop we’ve had!!