Geraldton > Morawa
While the road distance we'd pencilled in for Sunday wasn't that far, the day's ramblings would, according to theory, have taken us through the heart of the W.A. wildflower country, and there were likely to be a number of diversions, extrapolations and other opportunities to look at and photograph the feral flora. That's feral in a nice sense, folks.
Our experiences over the preceding couple of days might have discouraged anyone who was less than a dedicated follower of flora, and we didn't quite fit into that category ourselves (well, I definitely didn't, and Madam is sitting on the cusp between dabbling dilettante and dedicated follower) but we had the time and the inclination to take our time looking.
Whether we had the energy to pursue the interest to the full remained to be seen.
The other consideration was that we needed to reach out evening destination by around five so we could pick up the key to the chalet at the Council-operated caravan park from the local roadhouse. I wasn't exactly sure where that deadline had come from, or whether it actually existed, but the prospect of being locked out of the accommodation in close to freezing conditions in a small town in the West Australian hinterland didn't appeal at all.
Still, the first stop on the itinerary was obvious. It was the first day of the Wildflower Festival at Mullewa in the heart of the wildflower country, and conveniently about half way between Geraldton and Morawa. Not that we were necessarily going straight to Mullewa without passing Go or taking 200 pictures of wildflowers, you understand. From the time we were on the road it was a case of cruise below the speed limit, keep your eyes peeled and stop where necessary.
It was just after ten when we found ourselves in Mullewa, located the site of the Festival, paid our $5 each and gathered the latest intelligence re. locations worth visiting. The Festival was located in a local hall, and wasn't, if you looked at it with the steely eye of a big-city Expo-goer, all that impressive.
You paid at the door, and the centre of the hall was filled with two large, and certainly impressive displays of wildflower specimens built up into what you could regard as roadside banks in a cutting or such like, an opportunity to see the variety that was out there in the wild in one place. As a result, it’s a perfect spot for those who wanted a look, and didn't want to spend much time doing so.
The hardened viewer would, of course, have been out searching the back blocks, and we were somewhere between the two extremes, and having gathered requisite intelligence decided that the best prospect was the Wildflower Trail in town that runs in a 2.8 km loop around the local water supply.
After we'd spent a good hour and a half making our way around the trail we didn't really need to go anywhere else and I was forced to conclude I was probably glad that this year's wildflower season wasn't going to reach the heights previous years, and particularly the reputedly outstanding 2009 had reached. About forty-five minutes in, my eyes were getting tired, the same way that your palate starts to tire after six wineries on the one day, or your taste buds do after a four course meal of highly flavoured dishes.
Seriously, after an hour and a quarter I was looking for a way to give my eyes a rest, and what I'd seen was hardly a match for the vistas they tend to put on the covers of the tourist brochures.
Back in town we snaffled lunch from the roadhouse, underlining the wisdom of obtaining the evening's dinner supplies in Geraldton the previous afternoon, and set off for a diversion into Coalseam National Park where the wildflowers weren't, from all accounts, all that flash, but there was an interesting geological formation that was worth a look at.
Once we'd arrived, it seemed the wildflowers were beginning to emerge.
Had we been a week later there might have been more out, but there were still enough to provide Madam with an excuse for a ramble while Hughesy sat in the car in scribbling mode. When she was finished we were off to Morawa, arriving in time to collect the key to a comfortable chalet, with surrounding bush that offered, so we were told, interesting photo opportunities, though Madam wasn't over-impressed with the results.
An evening meal of home-cooked pasta with tuna and olives and a not-quite perfect wine match in the bottle of Pfeiffers Pinot Noir we'd been lugging in the luggage since we left home, however, made a change from the preceding week's diet of restaurant and takeaway tucker.