Friday: According to the track notes, there is a rare stand of wandoo trees a couple of km north, along the Bibbulmun track, so we headed out to find them. We drove to where the road crosses the track to save ourselves a slog through town. The forest here is full of wildflowers. We even found a small patch of kangaroo-paws. We recall them as being common in the bushland round Perth back in our Uni days, but they seem rare now outside gardens. We pottered along photographing orchids and other gems, found the wandoo (not a huge stand of trees that we could see, but pretty), then headed back to the car. 
After perusing the map we decided to head east to the Grimshaw-Greenbushes road and thence to Greenbushes.
Greenbushes is a community about 10 km south of Balingup. It has long been a mining town. In the late 1880s tin was discovered and alluvial tin mining commenced. A contaminant of the tin ore was tantalite. In the 1940s commercial uses for tantalum were established and the tantalite from Greenbushes was sent to international markets (among other uses tantalum is used in electronic components, notably capacitors and some resistors, and in steel alloys for a variety of uses). Later Spodumene – a lithium containing mineral, was identified. Nowadays Tantalum and Lithium are the major products of the ongoing open cut and underground mining operations.
Around Greenbushes the mining company has invested heavily in rehabilitation of the old alluvial tin mining works, and there are extensive tracks through the bush and around various dams. Despite the signs proclaiming the value of the dams for waterbirds, we saw not a dicky bird. But we did find lots of wildflowers to photograph so we were happy.
On Saturday Viola, an old school friend of Jill’s, and her son Phillip came by – by chance they are in south-west WA at the same time as we are. It was great to catch up and we have spent the afternoon and Sunday exploring the local bushland again and finding lots more to photograph.
The local Balingup community put on a festival at the local arboretum, with band etc on Saturday afternoon. Alas, with the showery weather there were few people there. Apparently last year it was sunny, and there was a crowd filling the park with picnic rugs covering the slope and festivities late into the night. We feel sorry for the organisers. We left the paltry crowd and explored the arboretum instead (until it started to rain again).
Since the bush around here is full of wildflowers we happily spent Sunday meandering along in the forest with our cameras. Orchids are abundant, though we are having trouble putting specific names to some of them. There are so many sorts of spider orchids etc. However that does not stop us having fun taking their photos. Besides the orchids there are lots more. I am giving my macro lens a thorough workout.
You can see the results of my photographic efforts at https://photos.app.goo.gl/qaABbLqnD61EVJow9