Today’s real-life “pelican yoga” on the Swan River was irresistible…and so was both flower and fruit on a Bushy Yate.
Had I tilted the camera up, you would see that just behind the far side of the river are high-rise apartments.
And just behind them is Great Eastern Highway.
We, they – and the pelicans – were all only a very few kilometres from the CBD
For all the metropolis wrapped around it – and the devastation and degradation we have inflicted on it since 1829 – Perth’s Swan River is glorious, still.
Much (alas, not all) of its urban shores are freely accessible to whomever wishes to walk them.
Anyone who does walk along the Swan in 2016 can hardly fail to notice that rehabilitation and further ruination are both ongoing, strong.
That’s true in Western Australia, generally – here, human behaviour provides abundant evidence to support environmentally aware humans’ despair…and/or their cautious optimism.
“Wildflower Season” – spring in southwestern Australia, the annual miracle – is months away.
But in this “biodiversity hotspot” there is always something wondrous, strange, in bloom, near you…even on an inner-suburban Autumn day, between golf course and “degraded” river shore.
Eucalyptus Lehmanni – a mallee, known as Bushy Yate – is endemic to southwestern WA.
According to the CSIRO, the Bushy Yate is so named because “it is the only eucalypt with the flowers united into a head”.
Its fruit is extraordinary, too. A tree in flower will also sport a great many of these very tough seed carriers.
