Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
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.
Leave a CommentYes, the beach really is that white, and the ocean shallows’ shades of blue are also “true”.
(the various blues’ intensity is in large part thanks to the sand’s whiteness, acting in concert with the sun, high in a clear sky)
The featured image looks down (and east, over Yokinup Bay, to Mt Arid) from Belinup Hill in Cape Arid National Park; visible, “naked” sand occupies a small portion of the photo, but millions of tons of “hidden” sand are invisibly-present through most of its field of view.
Southern WA has some of the world’s poorest soils, but what grows in and “hides” those very sands is (arguably) “our” planet’s greatest natural wildflower “show”.
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The featured image illustrates what just a little elevation can do to one’s view…if one is in a magnificently wild location, the sun is high in a perfect Spring sky, and sand, sky, rock, vegetation and water are basking in clear, clean air.
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After taking in the panoramic view across Thistle Cove – as featured in this series’ previous chapter – we walked down to the beach.
This post’s photos offer a closer view of the “stained” water and sand that were visible in the bottom right side of #16’s photo.
You are looking at a freshwater spring’s waters flowing onto the beach at Thistle Cove.
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By the shortest, sensible road route, Esperance is a whisker under 700 kilometres southeast of Perth, and just under 400 ks south of Kalgoorlie.
A further, easy 50 kilometres drive, east of Esperance, will take you to “the best beach in the world”, according a 2023 list of “The World’s 50 Best Beaches”.
You are not looking at it!
This post’s photo shows the very next beach, westward; my beloved and I are not alone in liking it rather more than we do the adjacent, “best” one.
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(Sequel to immediately-preceding post. If you are new to Pelican Yoga, please see/read that post before you explore this one)
This post’s cockatoos were not playing “Banksia rugby”, but they were members of the same flock, and also part of our “late arvo Carnabys Encounter” on 15 September 2021, just outside Cape Arid National Park’s northwestern edge.
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Imagine a spectacularly athletic, aerial form of rugby, played by members of an endangered cockatoo species…
This post will also lead you to a superb, long-awaited book by an Australian whose bird photography is in an entirely different league to yours truly’s.
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…the smoke cloud had a “silver lining”.
Briefly, it enabled eyes and cameras to look straight at “our” solar system’s only star.
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As Bob Hudson said nearly half a century ago in his most famous song, “don’t you ever let a chance go by”.
The pictured can’s back label bills the brew as “a light yet indulgent beer to help you through the COVID-19 times”.
Lucky Bay Brewing has excellent beers, their venue is a very congenial lunch spot for anyone lucky enough to be in or near Esperance, and those who don’t love beer will likely be pleasantly surprised by the compact but excellent and reasonably priced wine list.
It is, however, this area’s magnificent, wild coast and its astounding, astonishingly diverse wildflowers that make the adjoining shires of Esperance and Ravensthorpe one of the world’s more compelling “safari” destinations.
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