King’s Park – Pelican Yoga

Kings Park, late August 2023

Published September 17, 2023 by Pelidoug

Kings Park, late August 2023

Perth’s Kings Park is really three parks in one… plus “lookouts”.

The “lookouts” offer sweeping views from the rim of the scarp on Kings Park’s eastern and southern sides.

Looking east, they flatter the adjacent CBD, and look across the Swan Coastal Plain to the Darling Scarp.

Looking south, they show the full splendour of the Swan-Canning estuary, around which Perth’s wealthier suburbs sit.

If you walk (or catch a free bus) from the CBD – or West Perth – into Kings Park, the loveliness of its manicured, “picnic-friendly”, well-treed, grassed parkland is immediately obvious, as you can see in the featured image, above.

Every pleasant, sunny weekend, thousands of people take advantage of Kings Park’s generous supply of that kind of parkland.

However, what makes Kings Park so very special are its two other kinds of “park”: a superb botanical garden (which showcases WA’s extraordinary flora, conducts internationally significant research, and provides useful information to the general public) and its astonishingly expansive, essentially “natural” bush/woodland section.

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The Quality of Sprawl: flower power/ word power

Published September 15, 2023 by Pelidoug

The Quality of Sprawl: flower power/ word power

The moment I saw this exuberantly “bird-ready” example of Western Australia’s floral emblem, I suddenly remembered one of my favourite Australian poems.

Les Murray (1938 – 2019) never became a Nobel Laureate.

Depending on my mood, I find that fact “puzzling” (at his best, Murray was so very obviously – for much of his adult life – one of the greater 20th century poets) or “utterly predictable”. (his verse was so overtly Australian, and his views were not always “palatable”)

The Quality of Sprawl’s opening verse:

Sprawl is the quality

of the man who cut down his Rolls-Royce

into a farm utility truck, and sprawl

is what the company lacked when it made repeated efforts

to buy the vehicle back and repair its image.

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Urban bushland poses unanswerable question

Published September 13, 2023 by Pelidoug

Urban bushland poses unanswerable question

If it had presented itself to us a few days earlier, the “unanswerable question” would have qualified for the “quirky moments” series.

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150th Birthday today: Kings Park

Published October 1, 2022 by Pelidoug

150th Birthday today: Kings Park

On the first day of October in 1872 the British Parliament declared a Reserve on Perth’s Mount Eliza,

The new Perth Park overlooked the then decidedly modest capital of the Colony of Western Australia.

In 1901 Perth Park was renamed Kings Park, following the coronation of King Edward VII.

Until more than a decade into the 1900s, Perth was smaller than not a few of eastern Australia’s country towns.

Paradoxically, one reason why Perth managed to have a bigger, wilder – and, arguably, more wonderful, and equally central – city park than New York’s Central Park is that when it was p/reserved, Kings Park’s site would have been viewed as utterly superfluous to Perth’s future urban expansion.

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McGowangrad, winter ‘22: series finale (perpetual flower show)

Published August 31, 2022 by Pelidoug

McGowangrad, winter ‘22: series finale (perpetual flower show)

WA’s emblematic flower may be synonymous with Springtime, but it is no slave to the calendar.

Well before Winter 2022’s alleged end, it – and not a few other “iconic”, “Spring-flowering” WA endemics – were already very evidently flowering in the quasi-natural bushland section of Perth’s Kings Park.

It is an easy walk – or an even shorter free bus trip’s distance – from the CBD.

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McGowangrad, winter ‘22: #5 in series (Kings Park)

Published August 12, 2022 by Pelidoug

McGowangrad, winter ‘22: #5 in series (Kings Park)

If an Australian raven (Corvus coronoides – the bird most Australians have in mind when they say “a crow”) had been perched beside me when I took the photo for #4 in this series, it would have been able to fly to this post’s location in less than 90 seconds.

The sites are less than two kilometres apart, and a frequent, free bus service will get you from one to the other in five minutes or so; a slow-walking human would take less than 30 minutes.

As you can see, they are “worlds apart”.

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Unique flora, vertebrate pollinators…and “good” tax policy

Published August 3, 2021 by Pelidoug

Unique flora, vertebrate pollinators…and “good” tax policy

Southwest Western Australia’s flowering, feathered and furry members of the first two categories need each other, vitally.

Could their survival prospects have anything to do with the third category?

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Mallees in May

Published June 29, 2021 by Pelidoug

Mallees in May

Most mallee species are eucalypts, and more than half of Eucalyptus species are mallees.

Their generally modest height and oft-“untidy”/“shaggy” appearance blind some people to mallees’ beauty, their great diversity, and their oft-astonishing buds and flowers.

As with so many Australian species, the closer you look, the more spectacular, surprising and glorious they are.

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Kings Park Banksia Garden, May 2021

Published June 4, 2021 by Pelidoug

Kings Park Banksia Garden, May 2021

This post, the two recent Boab posts, and two future posts are all fruits of the afternoon of the same day – 20.05.21.

Southwestern Australia’s Spring flowering is indeed one of the world’s most astonishing and beautiful natural phenomena, and Kings Park in Spring is guaranteed to leave any Northern Hemisphere resident’s jaws agape.

It is, however, a BIG mistake to pay attention in Spring, only.

In southwest WA generally, and Kings Park specifically, you can easily see some extraordinary endemic species, in full bloom, at any time; Kings Park’s Banksia Garden never disappoints.

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Tropical, transplanted, fooled, thriving…(sequel to immediately previous post)

Published May 25, 2021 by Pelidoug

Tropical, transplanted, fooled, thriving…(sequel to immediately previous post)

The featured image is surprising enough – young boabs thriving, on the rim of Kings Park’s Mt Eliza, overlooking South Perth – a place with an utterly “wrong” climate.

Just a few metres away – and altogether more amazing – is Kings Park’s more recently-arrived but very much older boab.

If Guinness had a “longest road trip ever undertaken by a large, living tree” category (to qualify, the tree must be alive, still, a decade after its relocation) the tree pictured below would surely hold that record.

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Tag: King’s Park