As we travelled along the dirt road there was no sign of our destination until we were right on the doorstep, and we arrived as the Wildflower Walk party was assembling. Once we'd checked in, paid, and transferred the luggage to the mud brick chalet it was off for our introduction to WA wildflowers. The walk lasted an hour and took us on a circuit, stopping at irregular intervals to give noted amateur botanist Alan Tinker an opportunity to talk about some significant feature, and was more of a nature ramble than a guided tour with specific stops at designated locations. I got the feeling, had we been staying more than one night and ventured out for a second walk, while many of the stops might have been the same there would have been a few different stops thrown in for variety. There's certainly enough diversity there (the park covers 160 acres, and has something like two thousand different species on site) to allow for any number of variations on the hour-long walk.
At each stop there were descriptions, pointers and explanations of what we were seeing, though the vast amount of knowledge on offer was largely lost on this botanical novice. If I'd had a bit of background in the botanical sciences, I'm sure my knowledge would have been considerably enhanced, but I still learned a lot, and it was obvious from comments around us there were people there with much more knowledge who were finding the walk equally interesting.
As a novice, much of the detail went over my head, but I picked up enough to make the next couple of days an absolute delight, and made me think it was just as well we'd missed Badgingarra and Lesueur on the way up, since that probably would've been us zooming by at around a hundred and bemoaning the lack of floral delights.
The walk concluded at the Theatre, where a dissecting microscope hooked up to a data projector gave us a look at some of the finer points of botanical specimens Alan had collected along the way around the walk. Very interesting, entertainingly presented while conveying a wealth of knowledge and an experience not to be missed if you're in the area. So, all in all, the Wildflower Walk was one of the highlights of the trip, and if anything it was the opening five minutes or so that delivered the greatest benefit as far as we were concerned.
The 2010 Wildflower season is, according to all sources, a poor one, and the lack of winter rain before mid-to late June meant that the carpets of Everlastings they tend to show in tourist brochures just aren't there. That's not to say there are no wildflowers. You have to go out and look for them. I had visions of spending the four days in the wildflower belt sitting back and listening to the iPod and would probably have been tapping my foot waiting for this bit to finish so that we could get on and get through the day's jaunt around the back blocks. The fact that Karen needed to plug into the car's cigarette lighter put the kibosh on that idea, but the Wildflower Walk demonstrated what was out there (and made you appreciate just how interesting these things could be to the photographers among us), and the realisation that there was no option but to get out and walk meant that you couldn't really complain when you had to do it. Really, there's no option. Still, you won't find Hughesy out doing much of that kind of thing because, as I've frequently noted, I don't need any more obsessions, particularly not ones that would carry a large price tag when it comes to travel, photographic equipment and reference material.
With the walk over, we were booked in for the evening meal. Given the haste with which we'd arrived at the assembly point I hadn't dressed appropriately for the deepening chill, and had to make my way back to the chalet with Alan and the non-diners (the dining room is next door to the theatre) to grab the fleece and walk back to the dinner venue. I hadn't paid much attention to the relative numbers of diners and non-diners and was nonplussed to find the dinner party numbered exactly four - Madam and I and another couple including the bloke who'd probably been the most botanical-savvy member of the group on the walk, and if he wasn't, he was the one who asked the most questions and made the most comments. That's not a bad thing, by the way. I picked up quite a bit from the dialogue. I discovered the other diners run a gallery west of the Clare Valley in a town called Blyth, and that set us off on a five-way conversation that ran continuously for the next three hours over pea and ham soup, and a roast chicken dinner that went down fabulously. It's been a long time since I've sat down anywhere for a three hour dinner conversation without a glass or three but the conversation was so good and the company so entertaining that the thought of ducking back to the chalet to collect the bottle of Pinot Noir that was still in the luggage didn't even cross my mind.