Wildflower Tour Part 1

Yes, it has been a week since the last blog post and any news of my demise has been greatly exaggerated!  I’ve been on a wildflower tour of the mid west for the last week.  Perhaps, more importantly; it’s been a test run for the camper trailer.  I was joined on the trip by our good friend Ken, who fortunately knows more about Western Australia than I do.

After packing the trailer we headed north along Indian Ocean Drive stopping at the Moore River 24hr Highways Department rest stop for lunch and to check the trailer.

Not being in a hurry, we kept the speed to 90km/h conserving fuel eventually reaching ‘The Pinnacles’ at Cervantes.

The pinnacles are made of limestone and were formed some 20,000 years ago when the sea receded allowing the wind to remove the surrounding sand.

I’ve seen similar formations at the Stone Forest near Kunming, China which are also made of limestone.

Of course I was looking for wildflowers.

We turned east away from the coast and headed inland looking for a quiet location to freedom camp for the night.  eventually we found a discrete spot on a gas pipeline track.  The adjacent trees hid us from the nearby road.

It was whilst we were erecting our stretcher tents Ken discovered he had left behind his tent waterproof nylon outer fly.  Not to worry, it wasn’t going to rain during the night.  Dinner was the remaining sandwiches from lunch

The next morning Ken woke to a wet sleeping bag   Another light spring shower?  Being lazy cooks we ate the very last of the previous day’s sandwiches for breakfast.

We pressed on further west to Moora, an attractive rural town in the northern wheatbelt.  Neither of us had felt like digging a hole the previous evening which meant we needed to avail ourselves of Moora’s public conveniences.

Every small town has it’s war memorial

I love old Australian pubs with their verandas and wide balconies

I became quite animated when I noticed some lovely colourful flowers in the town.  However I doubt they were wildflowers.