Mullewa - in search of wildflowers

After watching the pelicans arriving to be fed their daily fish by local volunteers, opposite the caravan park, we headed back along the coast road in search of Hutt Lagoon, known as the Pink Lake. The lake has a pink hue due to the presence of Dunaliella algae, which when exposed to sunlight produces beta-carotene. It was then back in the car, heading East. After experiencing a fair bit of recent coastal camping, we were happy to be driving through beautiful countryside as we headed to Mullewa. Wildflower time in WA is late Winter through Spring, so we were hopeful that we would see some fields of flowers.

As we drove in along the Yuna-Tenindewa Rd, which captured part of the Northern Wildflower Loop, we were delighted to see miles and miles of bright, yellow canola fields in full bloom, alongside rich green paddocks of early wheat. Along the roadside there were pockets of gorgeous pink, white and yellow everlastings. We stopped several times along the road to capture some lovely photos.

After checking in to the Mullewa Council run caravan park, we stopped via the Tourist Information Centre, located in the Town Hall and gained the latest information on the wildflower hot spots. Unfortunately, we were informed that we were a few weeks early for the famous Wreath Flower, but we decided to drive out along the Pindar-Beringarra Rd (another 40kms East) to see them anyway. It was worth the drive as we managed to see many full green wreaths, with quite a few yellow flowers on one side of some and a couple in full bud around the whole wreath. We certainly got the idea of how amazing they would be in full bloom! One day hopefully we will be back to see them in full flower. We spent the afternoon completing the 3km Wildflower Walk, opposite the caravan park. This was a lovely circuit walk through bushland, past the town reservoir. We saw many yellow and white Pom Pom Everlastings along with several species of beautiful flowering Acacia’s, two shades of pink Geraldton Wax and the stunning purple Fringed Lily.

Day Two we headed off along the Mullewa-Wubin Rd, through Tardun and onto Canna, in search of tiny orchids. Sippy couldn’t quite believe that we were driving 40km’s to the middle of nowhere hoping find a couple of tiny flowers – but at least we had some success – finding two varieties of orchids (out of the 5 listed). We spotted several Pink Fairy Orchids and got quite excited when we found at least a half dozen White Spider Orchids. These flowers are quite tiny – a bit like searching for a needle in a haystack in Aussie bushland – but we were very pleased we found some.

We had a pleasant afternoon around Mullewa town, enjoying a coffee and home baked muffin and chatting to a lovely, retired Yarrawarra couple who happened to live next door to an old work colleague of mine (Paula O’Hara) from SCS. Chris rang Paula while we were chatting, so we shared a laugh at the fact we had run into her neighbour and Paula commented on how jealous she was of our fabulous trip (she has been following us on FB & Insta). Such a small world.

That evening we cheered on the Matilda’s as they played off for 3^rd place against Sweden in the FIFA Women’s World Cup. Unfortunately we lost 2-0 but the country was very proud of their efforts over the past few weeks.

We departed Mullewa Sunday morning, driving through the Coalseam Conservation Park on our way South (unfortunately not much to see there - rather disappointing). We drove through the small town of Mingenew, famous for its bakery, but being a Sunday in a small town – of course it was closed.

It was then another 55km to reach Dongara, back on the coast. At least the bakery in Dongara was open, so we grabbed a pie (mediocre) and had a walk through town. We had an overnight stop booked at Port Denison Tourist Park, 5 minutes further on, where we were lucky to gain a drive thru site, so we didn’t need to unhitch the BT. Port Denison had a lovely little harbour by the beach, so we unstrapped the bikes and went for a ride along the water for the afternoon. Back at the BT we cooked up some red, curry chicken and settled in to watch the final of the Women’s World Cup, with Spain defeating England 1-0.