2013 #9 Geraldton

We have moved a little further.  Now we are in the “Northern” part of the state rather than the Great Southern, so a few things are different.

We are only 200 ks north of Perth, so we are not in the tropics by any means.  The weather remains cool and wet.  Fortunately we get a sunny day once in a while, especially when we need it to take photos, so it is working out okay for us.  We are not seeing anything like the warm days such as most of you are experiencing.

We were blessed by having a lovely day to photograph the Wreath flowers.   These are so special and these are the first ones we have seen.  We had to drive a long way to see them, but they were out in all their glory.  They covered a space of about 150 metres long by about 3 metres wide.  They grow in the gravel that has been moved around by a grader.  The road is a new one, newly tarred, at least, so plenty of fresh gravel.  We  hope you enjoy our pictures.  We were thrilled to see them and it seems there are not many around this year.

The Pink Everlastings Daisies, so famous in the West, did not get rain in June, so there are very few of them around.   However, on a drive from Northampton to Geraldton we spotted two or three lots of them.   How blessed we were, as they are not mentioned on the Tourist advisory sheets, put out weekly.  We were able to advise the Tourist office in Geraldton where the Pink Everlastings were.  Now everybody else may go and enjoy them too.

At Mullewa we drove to Coal Seam National Park and it was delightful.  On one side of the river is a long reddish gorge wall, towering above the plain.    There is a wide, shallow (at the moment) river, which can get quite deep, but on the other side is a beautiful meadow of flowers.  I was in flower heaven.     The meadow was covered mostly with common yellow weeds with black centres and the Yellow and gold Everlastings were interspersed with the weeds, but they all blended into one very pretty meadow.  It was a large meadow, flowers as far as we could see.   Walking by the river was beautiful.  Bright green flowered meadows also lay on the other side of the river in front of the gorge wall.  Driving the truck, I wanted to cross the Causeway and take a look on the other side, but Graeme was not keen to do this.  Recent rains have upset the roads and some were closed. Some people were finding fossils in the rocks.

We went to the Mullewa flower show.  It was quite good and nicely put together for a small, but very active community.  Mullewa consists of muddied red brick ancient buildings – a really dry and normally dusty town.  There are some private homes as well and many Aboriginal folk there. I remember preaching in Mullewa to the Aboriginal folk when I was 20. 

At Mullewa we bumped into the Grey Nomads who are streaming in from the North, perhaps trying to escape the coming heat. They have not seen the lush crops that we have seen for the past few weeks.  They can’t even believe they could exist.  They have not seen anything like we have seen coming up from the South.  We drove up from the South through hundreds of kilometres of lush crops - green and gold Canola and Wheat. The beauty was breathtaking. We feel the wet, cool and windy conditions we experienced were well worth the beauty the weather brought with it.

We drove through some of Western Australia’s oldest country towns, built with stones, held together with cement.  There were many Heritage buildings at York and Northam. There were other similar towns.   Due to the rain we couldn’t stop very long, but we did get a few photos.   Love to go back and check those places over, especially around the Avon Valley.

We drove from Mullewa into Geraldton.  Joy - being in civilization again! We renewed our supplies, the days became warmer but interspersed with rain.   We now have a lot of photos to share.  We had a wonderful time at church with the folk in Geraldton.

Multi-headed Queen of Sheba Thelymitra variegata

How we do close-up photos of Wreath Flowers

Perenjori Wreath Flowers close-up

Imitating art