Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
Even a flat, harsh, arid landscape – the kind some humans regard as “ugly” or “boring”, when they experience it only at ground level – is likely to prove “amazing” and “beautiful” to the very same humans, if ever they fly over it.
This “revelation” is very nearly an inevitability if the relevant aircraft flies when the sun is “low”.
One winter morning in 2023 my beloved and I flew over just such a landscape – the one in which sits Australia’s most extensive lake.
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Desirable qualities in a beach:
1. A glorious, entirely natural setting, not ruined by “development”.
2: Uncrowded, clean sand.
3: Unpolluted water in which to swim.
4: An abundance of sunshine and shade.
5: A location within two hours’ 2WD driving distance of comfortable accommodation and decent dining.
In this instance, all five qualities are present, notwithstanding the fact that the nearest ocean beach is more than 1,5000 kilometres away.
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Wilsons Promontory is as far south – 39°00′48″ – as mainland Australia goes:
Its “convenient” location – a whisker more than 200 ks southeast of Melbourne – ensures that a great many people do go to “the Prom”.
Still, if one avoids weekends and school holidays, and one gets more than a kilometre away from the National Park’s hub/quasi-town at Tidal River, one’s “Prom” experience is unlikely to be afflicted by overcrowding.
Its magnificence is readily apparent, substantially intact, and there are many excellent and varied walking trails.
Both of this post’s photos were taken from the summit of Mount Oberon, 558 metres ASL
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Sitting 450 metres ASL, atop Mount Barren at 9:43 am on 21 September 2021, all land within my westward field of a view – and very much more, well beyond it – was part of Fitzgerald River National Park.
To the west, the nearest coastal town was Bremer Bay, just outside the National Park’s western boundary.
Were I able to fly, Bremer Bay would be 80 kilometres distant from my vantage point.
By road, the distance is nearly twice that – the near-coast road only extends a few kilometres west of East Mount Barren
Leave a CommentQ: what do the mostly-grey, stark rocks atop East Mt Barren have in common with the mostly-white sands that are a feature of so many beaches on Western Australia’s south coast?
A: both are composed almost entirely of the second most abundant mineral in the earth’s crust, namely….
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For residents of West Leederville (in Perth’s inner suburbia) the second day of February 2025 provided yet another nice reminder that Australia’s birds are – collectively – the world’s loudest..and the most intelligent.
Hereabouts, late last Sunday afternoon was something of a “benign riot” for one species: Calyptorhynchus banksii naso – the Forest red-tailed black cockatoo.
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We briefly interrupt the “Grand sands” series to celebrate a currently-abundant, loud, exuberant and welcome presence in our bit of inner-suburban Perth.
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20 kilometres southwest of Pemberton, in southwestern WA’s “Karri country”, the Yeagarup Dunes cover circa 30 square kilometres.
They are the Southern Hemisphere’s largest mobile, land-locked dune system.
The Yeagarup Dunes are currently advancing inland at circa 4 metres per year.
This post’s photos were taken from the top of their “hungry” edge, on 27 October 2016.
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Collectively and individually, members of the genus Banksia are among the world’s more spectacular and surprising flowering plants.
If one accepts the reclassification that brought the 94 Dryandra species into the Banksia fold, the genus has circa 170 members; if one does not, there are 79 named Banksia species.
Either way, all but one species are endemic to Australia.
The overwhelming majority naturally occur only in Western Australia, and most of those have very small ranges, in near-coastal parts of WA’s southwest.
Even by Banksia standards, the six prostratae species are “wondrous strange”.
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This chapter’s hero is another of the enormous number of WA-endemic flowering plants that thrive in Cape Arid National Park.
Most “wildflowers” position their actual flowers well clear of the ground.
In Australia’s southwestern corner, however, some of the region’s plants are “prostrate” – their flowers may sit on the sand, literally.
If you look carefully at the featured image you will notice that the nearer, otherwise-strikingly-red flowers are sand-flecked.
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