Western Flora Caravan Park:

This park is on 160 acres and is run by Alan Tinker who has been here for 22 years. When they came here the land was all cleared and now it is a wonderful paradise for wildflowers and birds. Every afternoon Alan takes you on a guided tour around the park. He is passionate about wildflowers and the environment and gave us very interesting insight into plants, how they are pollinated by different methods and how they are structured to make sure the pollination takes part. I can assure you it is much more intrinsic than you think. The insects see colours differently to us – yellow is extra bright, red is black, green is very insignificant and pink is blue. Therefore the insects are attracted to the yellow centre in flowers and when it is pollinated it turns red so the insect won’t go to that one.
Birds see red as bright so bird pollinated flowers are often red or orange. Amazing!! The tour takes about nearly three hours but the group didn’t go very far. Everything he tells us about he says “I could talk for an hour about that subject”. There is so much to learn and it certainly makes you aware of the marvels of nature. We even looked at some of the plants under a microscope. One was a Geraldton Wax flower and I was fascinated to see the little yellow centre of the flower was full of microscopic grubs and bugs – makes you think twice when you smell a flower. I was so fascinated with this tour that that I went on it twice.

In the morning Brian and I went for on the river walk and were treated to a feast of wattle and masses of pink heath like plants(scholtzia uberflora) as well as lots of other specimens of wild flowers. This area is very sandy at first and then near the river there is lots of limestone so the vegetation changes. It gets very hot in the summer – up to 50 degrees so they are very resilient.

The next day there was a tag-along-tour where we were taken into the crown land across the road. What an amazing experience this was. I went in the lead car with Alan so had an excellent view. We learned about the different eco systems and how different plants occur in different soils, were shown where to find the native orchids (they are very hard to find by themselves as they are only tiny) and each time we stopped we would see different flowers. We had some enthusiastic photographers on this tour and we all had an opportunity to take as many photos as we as we wanted. Many of us were seen flat on our stomachs trying to get the perfect shot. It is so frustrating to get the flower all lined up for a perfect shot only to have the wind blow just as you are about to click. However I did manage to get some good shots.


There was an amazing stand of beautiful wattle which loves the limestone and certainly put on a splendid display for us especially when it is dispersed with grass trees.


Alan then took us to an area that had been burnt out in Feb and the regeneration that is occurring here is just so just so wondrous. It was full of blue china orchids, cat’s paws, and lots of other plants reshooting or re seeding. A lot of the plants have very large tuberous roots that just reshoot again after a fire and then others need a fire to open their hard seed pods.

On the way back to the CP Alan spotted a little thorny devil on the highway. We were glad that the huge semi approaching managed not to squash is and Alan ran out onto the road and rescued it so he could release it into the park.

This tour has been one of the highlights of the trip for me.





PS Don't forget to double click on the photos to view full screen.