The long way round

Finally, one of my days off was going to have good weather, so I went to Kings Park in the city. It is a huge park with views of the river and city and includes the Botanic Gardens as well as bushland.

There is meant to be a wildflower festival on throughout September, so I went with great expectations of seeing lots of different flowers and displays (like Melbourne's Flower and Garden Show I guess). This was not to be.

The only thing with came close to a bloomfield were these pink everlastings around the carpark!


I had a bit of a look around the WA botanic gardens which feature plants from different parts of WA. There were lots of Kangaroo Paw (left) and Geraldton Wax (right). And then more kangaroo paw and geraldton wax.

So I headed to a path which said 'nature walk' and once I got passed a tour group, enjoyed walking through bushland and spotting wild flowers. Most of them I have already seen at work, so I wasn't too impressed (Though I did realise I'm quite spoilt having bush and wildflowers at work!). We have lots of grey cottonheads (yellow flower below - don't know why they are called 'grey cottonheads'!), kangaroo paw and wild gladiolus (pink below)

However, I did see a spider orchid along with donkey orchids (pictured in a previous post) and also Fringe Lilies, which had been my ambition to see. I was lucky to see them because they are smaller than I imagined (2cm across) and grow on vines which coil themselves around other plants. I was really lucky to have this photo come out, because I really needed super-macro!

<--Spider orchid

Fringe Lily-->

<--Blue devils



The nature trail was meant to be a circuit. I really should have guessed that Kings Park would be as badly sign posted as the rest of Perth. Turns out it is a circuit - if you know which paths to take. They are not marked. They just cris-cross each other. So I ended up walking for a rather long time and got rather sunburned (just like the other time I went to Kings Park). I eventually made it to the perimeter road at the south end of the park and considered hitch-hiking back to my car because it was quite a way. I was very unimpressed and really don't think the whole expedition was worth it to see a tiny lily and one orchid!

Light at the end...?

Had a crazy day at work yesterday. Winds gusting to 44kts (82 km/h), rain, changing visibility....

I couldn't open the balcony door because of the winds!

That was fine, until the automatic thermometers went down! I was sending out reports every 5-15 mins instead of the usual 30 mins, and had to run through the wind and rain to read mercury thermometers. Then I had to try to fix the auto ones.

I couldn't get a tech out to fix the thermometers (why do things only break on a Sunday?) so walked to the enclosure every half hour to read the temperature. I was feeling bad for the guy who had to do this on night shift.

They were supposed to be fixed today, but weren't. And now the auto rain gauge doesn't work either. So it's lucky there is no rain today!

So now I am on nightshift, wandering out into the dark, cold night twice an hour. I'm hoping it doesn't get as cold as last night: 0.4 degrees!

But at the end of the day I was rewarded for my efforts by witnessing these amazing rainbows!

Catch up

I am trying to catch up on some of the Broome posts I haven't finished. There are many more I would have like to have done, especially regarding history.

I have been sorting and editing photos, especially some of the 800 I took on my scenic flight. So there's more Broome to come!

I also found this photo, which I am surprised I hadn't already posted (I haven't have I??). The ultimate bizarre critter pic!

This is disgusting looking thing is a shell-less snail according to a book about the Roebuck Bay mud flats. It was about 8cm long.

The Great Divide

This is an aerial image of part of Broome. The empty sand dune you can see is Kennedy Hill.

At the base of the hill is the Kennedy Hill settlement. Apparently this was a traditional Aboriginal camp. When Broome was first established as a town, the Indigenous people were not allowed to live within its boundaries. Kennedy Hill was one of their 'out of town' camps.

The white settlers lived to the west of here (the greener areas in the second pic) and had to have permits to allow them to employ Aboriginals as servants.

As you can see Town has come to this out of town camp, which sits just outside Chinatown. It is a dusty, red area, almost still a shanty town.

Below are some pictures of the street that runs between Kennedy Hill and town. Bit of a contrast? On the opposite side of the road are new million dollar apartments and town houses.

On the opposite side of the sand dune are expensive hotels.

To the west (right in this pic) is the new multi-million dollar police station and the old, over-crowded prison.

I found that this really summarised the historical divide between cultures and classes in Broome, which still exists in a big way today.

How sweet the smell...

I love blossom!

I love the smell,

the way it contrasts against the dark branches of the leafless tree.

I love that it signals the ending of winter - when I see the blossoms emerge, I know there is hope of better things to come

I also love blossom in Asian art. I bought this last time I was back in Melbourne

More flowers...ok, weeds

I took a number of photos of these vibrant purple flowers, only to realise on the way home that it is Patterson's curse - a vicious weed!