Stirling Ranges:

We headed north to the Stirling Ranges as we had been told by many Western Australians not miss the wildflowers here.
We arrived in the National park in the afternoon. The national parks over here are manned by camp hosts who can stay free in exchange for collecting the camping fees, cleaning the toilets and generally caring for the place. Our hosts here had sanded down and varnished the tables and chairs which was a bonus. That evening we all had a happy hour and two couples had climbed Bluff Knoll which is the highest peak in W.A. Apparently you get a 360 degree view from the top. They were very keen on wildflowers and were thrilled to have found some they had been chasing. The Stirling Ranges have many flowers endemic to this area only.
We decided we would attempt Bluff Knoll the next morning. You drive up to a steep climb to the starting point and the mountain protruded into the blue sky. We set off on the walk through masses of wild flowers. There was a beautiful white flower called the Southern Cross which
has four flowers on it that form a cross. They were everywhere. As you climb higher the vegetation gets drier with grass trees.

The climb was quite steep and Brian wasn’t feeling too well so we turned back. At the starting point I was excited to see a green bottlebrush.

When we came back to the campsite we met up with some people we had met just outside of Alice Springs and they live on the Gold Coast and spent ages catching up. While we were sitting chatting we saw two scarlet robins in the trees.
That evening we were treated to a slide show of flowers in the park.
The next morning we went for a short walk along the fire trail where we saw some different flowers.

We decided to go through the wheat belt instead of going to Bremmer Bay. It was really sad to see the wheat crops were only about 15 cms high and the dams were empty so we really seeing the effects of the drought, We came to a lovely little country town where the people were very friendly.
We spent the night at a free camp where there were lots of flowering bushes and birds.

We then went on to Hopetoun Beach. It was overcast, windy and started raining and that night it poured and blew.
Although it was very overcast the next morning we decided to go onto Esperance and hoped it would fine up.