Strawberry Fields

It’s pick-your-own season and also the start of the school holidays. E was keen to experience picking as she had never tried it before. After a 40 minute drive north, Google Maps led us to the spot and we found that every man and his 4WD had had the same idea. The fields were able to accommodate the crowds; rows and rows of polythene stretched to the horizon. Parts were fenced off for the professional pickers, all Vietnamese I think, so that the holiday visitors wouldn’t trample everywhere.

E hard at work

One of the objectives of our trip was to avoid strawberries with hard white shoulders, which are a feature of those in the supermarkets. 

We picked a nice box full (about 3 kilos), having paid $10 in advance at the entry. I have to say, I found it very hard on my weak hip joint and will leave this activity to the younger generation in future.

Rocky came along for the ride in his comfy bed in the boot. C took him for a walk around the lake just down the road, where they met two other greyhounds doing the same thing. I don’t think they would be welcome in the strawberry fields!

Now the problem is: what to do with all those strawberries? I still have jam made in 2017 at the back of my pantry. I decided to produce strawberry purée, with a squirt of lemon juice and a little maple syrup and all went into the freezer in small containers. They can be added to yoghurt or smoothies or even Eton Mess. C was considering strawberry oatmeal biscuits, but that wouldn’t use much of the crop. E said she would just eat them all, but if she does that she'll never want to see another strawberry!

Wreckers at Como

The old house next door has been sold and empty for quite some time. Squatters took up residence at one point. This week everything is being demolished in one fell swoop. The house is a pile of rubble and trees are being pulled up by the roots. The mulberry tree, which provided free fruit at Christmas, will be the last one to go. We loved those mulberries, though they were messy to pick.

This machine was still working at 6.00 pm as the sun went down.

In the last photo, the grabber was perilously near to C’s fence.

The other wrecker was the greyhound, which for some reason attacked the Mother-In-Law’s tongue. Luckily these plants are pretty indestructible!

The wisteria, beyond his reach, is still doing well:

Spring flowers and feast

Wonderful warm weather this week has brought out a lot of flowers:

It’s the season for proteas. A nearby park is full of these. Bunches of dried proteas are also in the shops. Protea farmers find it hard to get cargo space to export their produce at the best of times, so it must be a lot worse now.

This bottle brush is getting a bit large for its spot in the garden in Como, but it provides welcome shade in summer. Soon it will start dropping leaving “blood on the ground.”

This creeper is also going mad and competes with the hanging baskets. The greyhound’s canvas kennel (for daytime use) is tucked in below.

Wisteria is just starting to open.

Friday night feast was baked barramundi: we always try for a crispy skin, but rarely perfect this!

Mouth of the River

The centre of town is a bit of a mess at the moment. The main street is closed off as it’s being “beautified”, but it’s taking a great number of heavy vehicles and workers in hi viz to accomplish this - and they start rather early!

I drove out of town on Wallcliffe Road towards the rivermouth. This brings us to Surfers Point, “which has some of the most consistent, spectacular, high-quality surf on earth”. So says this sign:

There is also a newly installed shark alert siren:

The woman in the photo above is setting her small Paddington Bear on the rail so as to take his photo, but he keeps falling off.

I spent half an hour watching three expert surfers showing off their skills, battling the enormous waves: scary and thrilling for onlookers:

I had planned to walk across and up the opposite cliff towards Cape Mentelle. In summer there is a sandbar which allows this, but there has been so much rain recently that the river is flowing very fast and who knows how deep it is?

Margaret River comes in from the right and was a swirling mass of brown water as it met the incoming tide. There was one set of footprints on the other side. So somebody had managed it. Walkers on the Cape to Cape really have no option but to take off their boots and wade across.

The owner of my accommodation in MR advised me to walk south towards Prevelly instead. There is a nice easy coastal footpath which ends at a popular cafe, the White Elephant. It was full of people having lunch, but I had no money with me. On the way back, after toiling up the one steep ascent to the car park, two women who were resting on a seat said I was an inspiration because I kept going!

Margaret River escape

It’s nice to get away and do something completely different. I’m spending a few days in Margaret River: my namesake. The plan was to walk parts of the Cape to Cape Track, but my level of fitness is not what it was, so shorter walks became the order of the day.

I drove north up Caves Road and turned off near Injidup. This is a view of the beach through “tortured trees”.  They are tortured by the prevailing wind, but I was lucky to be there on a calm and sunny day:

Down on the beach was a piece of debris brought in by the tide. Many many mussels were clinging to it, opening and shutting their shells in desperation, unable to survive out of the water. Nature is cruel.

On the way back, I called in at a favourite provision shop, as it’s become a tradition to pick up some venison chorizo whenever I’m in these parts:

The deer roam free in the pastures behind a high fence alongside the road. They live a happy life, I should say.  Near the car park I saw a pair of fairy wrens, the female a dull brown and the male an electric blue. My hands were full, so I was unable to get a photo. 

Lunch next day.

In the evening, I had a booking at the Arc of Iris, one of Margaret River’s longest established restaurants. They are being ultra careful about limiting the number of diners. On the menu was Goat Rogan Josh, made by a master chef. Indian food is one of the things I don’t attempt at home.

On all the tables were little fairy lights in a bottle. I want to get some!

Fern Road bushwalk

Saturday was a perfect day to drive once more to Kalamunda National Park. The town was packed for Market Day, but I was determined to get a coffee before starting the walk. I had to drive twice round the car park before finding a spot. Fern Road is off Mundaring Weir Road (which Siri can’t pronounce) and it’s very winding. I parked at the end of Fern as two cyclists arrived back at their cars. I asked them where the Bibbulmun crossed. They asked me whether I wanted to go north or south and I said I was just looking for wildflowers. They hadn’t seen many, they said, but I know that cyclists whizz past without seeing anything.

It was nice to just wander along, no pressure, and I was fortunate to spot two different green orchids, as yet to be identified. I also met two Chinese girls doing the Bibbulmun with loaded backpacks. Good luck to them! It was getting hot, but rain was forecast for Sunday.

Orchids are really hard to get in focus as they wave about in the breeze. I only succeeded with the first one above. My orchid book has 1500 photos so there is a lot to go through for identification.

Beautiful tree and blue sky

Blue lady orchids everywhere

Blue Leschenaultia, quite rare on this stretch

Swan River Myrtle

"Bacon and Egg" - so many in this genera,
all attractive, all different. Botanical name:
Fabaceae

Yellow Buttercup (Hibbertia)

Groups of Wedding Bush

Wedding Bush: close-up

Isopogon

A lonely Kangaroo Paw

Piesse Brook bushwalk

Our weather has been very changeable of late, but Sunday was an absolutely glorious Spring day. I drove up to Kalamunda, where one of our previous walks was cancelled because of heavy rain and stormy conditions. The Visitors Centre advised that the easiest walk was along Piesse Brook, because it was more or less flat and had interpretation boards all along so impossible to get lost. They must have thought I was a clueless and decrepit walker!

It was worth going at a slow pace to see what was in flower on either side of the path. On my own, I could stop and take photos without holding up the faster walkers in our bushwalking group. It was a popular trail on such a nice day - almost as busy as the Camino.

Tiny blue Dampieras

The entire hillside looking up towards Kalamunda National Park was covered in yellow wattle. Close-up below:

Verticordia pennigera

Hardenbergia (Native Wisteria)

Blue Lady Orchid

More Verticordias

The Piesse Brook trail crosses the Bibbulmun Track. The yellow arrow pinned to the tree above shows the way. Kalamunda is the Northern Terminus for the Bibbulmun. I have cherry-picked bits of this, but couldn’t possibly contemplate doing it all: too much ascent and descent and no services except communal three-sided huts.

I walked as far as Rocky Pool, where I sat on a rock to have my lunch (there is a video of this on my Instagram). On the way back I saw a familiar face approaching: it was Haydee, one our bushwalkers who is very keen on this area and had done an entire circuit of the most difficult walk. She told me where to go to see even better wildflowers. It is possible to drive up there, she said. I’ll do that on the next nice day.

Red Gum with sap bleeding out