Wet Wongan

The weather forecast for the entire weekend was rain, rain and more rain. All night long we could hear it raining on the roof of our cabin at Wongan Hills Caravan Park. It was also blowing a gale. Saturday morning dawned and it looked thoroughly miserable outside. We didn’t want to get out of our nice warm beds. (I had slept with two duvets on!)

On the agenda regardless was the Mt Matilda walk trail. We drive north For 15 minutes to the trail head and assembled there for a 10 am start. It was cold and windy, but amazingly not raining:

Everyone was in wet weather gear with boots and sticks. The group set off at a fast pace in order to get warm; it was definitely too fast for me as it was uphill and very rocky underfoot. There was a choice of the entire walk to the top of Mount Matilda or the shorter walk to the Gimlet Gully Floral Loop. Val and I chose the latter with three others.

We stopped to look at an abandoned mallee fowl nest:

Later I saw a stuffed mallee fowl in the Visitors Centre.

A lookout, with the ubiquitous canola crop in the distance. The Visitors Centre had a display about canola, showing its dry state before harvest, which is in November:

(Ignore the woodcarving on the right).
We saw lots of canola planted this year, since there was not much rain at wheat planting time. Canola is more tolerant of dry soil.


After this I started taking lots of photos, as there were wildflowers on all sides. This is a place known for its biodiversity (rather like Mt Leseur which is on the same latitude, but with different geology apparently).

Gimlet Tree. 

I had never heard of this tree before, but Google tells me: “a species of eucalyptus that is endemic to low-rainfall areas of the Wheatbelt”. Scientific name: Eucalyptus salubris.

Sundew.





This pink shrub is beautiful and in full flower just now.   It is very similar to another one, but with different leaves:

Gimlet flower.

Grevillea petrophiloides. “Pink pokers.”common name. When young the fruits exude a sticky caustic fluid which was used by aborigines to score the flesh prior to rubbing in ash which resulted in permanent scars.

On a dead tree, a fragile piece of lichen has managed to cling on to life.

Puff ball fungus.