We also saw some striking Banksias in flower during our visit to the Blue Mountains last month.
The one up top is Hairpin Banksia. We didn’t recognise the Banksias shown in the other photos. Feel free to post a comment if you know what species they are.
We also saw some impressive late autumn wildflowers during our visit to Katoomba last month. These ones were all growing along the Prince Henry Cliff Walk.
The spiky flower up top is Mountain Devil, and the pinkish one above is Red Five-corners. We never did find out what the pretty little flower below is called.
Jolimont Lake, in Mabel Talbot Park, is only a few hundred metres in width. So you can walk right around it in five minutes.
Despite its small size, quite a lot of birds come to the lake at different times of the year – including several duck species, herons, egrets, spoonbills, coots, grebes and swans. Informative signs describe some of the birds that you may see. On a recent visit, we saw this family of Australian Wood Ducks out for a swim.
Manning Lake, south of Fremantle, is even smaller than the lakes in our two previous blog entries – the walk around the lake is just over a kilometre in length.
When we were there recently, there were several species of ducks, ibises (below) and a variety of cockatoos and galahs at the lake and its surrounding park. At the park there is also a homestead museum, a vintage machinery museum and a roughish walking trail up to a nearby hilltop.
If the 7.7km walk around Herdsman Lake (featured in yesterday’s blog entry) sounds a bit too far, a great alternative is Lake Monger. This lake is just 5km from Perth centre and has a 3.5km path which goes right around the shore.
There are plenty of waterbirds, including many species of ducks, waterhens, ibises, egrets, herons, spoonbills, swans, coots and so on. Earlier this week we stopped to admire this striking Australasian Shoveler.
Being located on the Swan Coastal Plain, Perth isn’t very well supplied with mountain hiking trails. However it has many great lakes to walk around. One of the largest is Herdsman Lake, which is 7km from the city centre, but looks closer than that in the photo above.
The walk around the lake is 7.7km in length, but is flat and quite easy. Along the way you can see many interesting waterbirds, including ducks, swans, coots, egrets, herons, ibises, spoonbills and many more. On a recent visit we noticed a Nankeen Night Heron (above) peering at us from the treetops and a shy Buff Banded Rail (below) looking for a snack in the shallows.
We recently walked the Baldwin’s Bluff trail at Serpentine National Park, south of Perth. It’s only 6km there and back, but moderately hard going, with steepish up and down grades covered in small loose rocks.
There are impressive views from the top (above), with Serpentine Falls in the distance. We had a picnic lunch nearby, where there was this balancing walker’s cairn. The tiny rock on top is ours!
