We arrived in Perth at dusk, collected our rental car and headed to Clare and Garry’s for a good chin-wag and a good night’s sleep. We spent the morning in a stroll to the local lake through the bushland (lots of wildflowers – spoiler alert – this will be a recurring theme). Perth is deservedly renown for the spring wildflowers. The timing varies a bit from year to year, and from North to South, but we seem to have hit a good spot with abundant flowers.
After lunch we headed to Kings Park, a highlight for the Perth visitor. Kings Park was established way back, and has a wonderfully diverse flora, and hosts the Botanic Gardens with a splendid collection. It’s changed over the years. This visit we found an area designed to interest children, with lots of twisty paths to several intricate elevated tunnel complexes made of triangular metal plates and tubes.
After a few hours there we decided it was time to head south to Clare and Garry’s country house in Balingup, our base for the next couple of weeks.
I’ve put a gallery of photos online at https://photos.app.goo.gl/g3aTE5Y8Myp7Mh4m6
We took advantage of the forecast sunny weather to head south to Pemberton to explore the Jarrah/Marri/Karri forests. Though we were supposed to have sunny weather it remained mostly overcast, but it was dry so we didn’t complain. Just out of Manjimup is the “diamond tree”. This is a huge Karri with a tree-house at the top. There are a series of these made by the foresters as fire-lookout points. Access to the top is via a ladder of spikes that spirals slowly around the trunk. We clambered up 55 metres to the top, but, sadly, the trees have grown up around so the views were probably less extensive than when it was when the lookout was established. Heading south through Pemberton we visited Gloucester National Park. It too has a tree-lookout, though we didn’t climb it. Instead we wandered round the local circuit walks enjoying the prolific floral displays.
The Warren river National Park was very pleasant, with lovely forests and nice river views. Heading home we stopped at The Cascades. Hardly the most spectacular waterfall we have seen, but quietly pretty.
With a weather forecast promising dry and sunny, we decided to venture further afield. The Cape to Cape is one of the more famous walks in WA, covering about 120 km and boasting some spectacular coastal scenery.
Cape Naturaliste has a lighthouse that serves as a navigational guide along that very hazardous shoreline, and we took a lovely walk through wildflowers – lots and lots of wildflowers – to a whale lookout were we spend a while watching even more humpbacks in their annual migration.
We then headed south dropping in to Canal Rocks, and to Ellendale historic homestead (closed for maintenance so we only saw the outside). A km up the track is a small grotto where a spring pours out of a limestone cave. The nearby waterfall, we were advised by the warden, no longer flows. Apparently in this limestone country streams appear and disappear unpredictably.
We camped the night at the Conto Road campsite at Cape Fitzgerald. Here the coastline is dominated by outcrops of hard gneiss rock pounded by large swells from the Southern Ocean. Very spectacular.
Today we headed back to Cape Naturaliste. It was a good chance to show Viola and Phillip some whales and some different vegetation before they headed back to Perth.