Hi everyone. I hope you and yours are doing well. We have had more rain yesterday - yay!
As promised last week, today I bring you some more pics from our annual visit to the Golden Valley Tree Park in Balingup, Western Australia. I know for those of you in the northern hemisphere, the autumn leaf fall is a common yearly occurrence for you. Not so in Australia, where our trees hold onto their leaves. So to have a place like the Golden Valley Tree Park to visit is fabulous for us.
We have been making an annual visit the tree park for a number of years. The park is about an hours travel from our place, depending if we stop somewhere on the way. You go through the town of Ballingup before you get to the tree park, so that is a great place to grab a coffee and cake, and often on the way home we stop at Donnybrook to buy some fruit - they are in the middle of the orchard region. We usually take a picnic, and have morning tea when we get there, then do one of the loop trails, come back to the car and have our picnic lunch, then do the other loop trail before heading home.
We have been in drought since October, and it was sad to see how dry the paddocks at the tree park were. You can see a comparison below - I know we were a few days early this year - but we hadn't had any rain either. I've brought you images from the Golden Valley Tree Park before. The Golden Valley Tree Park is a sixty hectare landscaped park set in the picturesque hills of Balingup. The heritage listed site has a collection of international trees that was begun over one hundred years ago, and is now the largest arboretum in Western Australia. The land was bought by the Government in the late 1970s and park was established around 1980.
We were a little early this year - but there was enough colour to satisfy me - and it was a lovely day for a walk and a picnic.
This is a persimmon tree And an avenue of Chinese pistachios that were looking a little sad this yearmy new favourite - Zelkova serrata from JapanThe tree park is 1.5 kilometres south of Balingup, or you can walk to it from Balingup via an easy 2 kilometre walk along the part of the 1000 kilometre Bibbulmun Track, which passes through the park. Please shut the gates as sheep graze on the property.
To learn more about the Golden Valley tree park you can go to their web page
or some of my previous posts -
Autumn season of change - 2016
There are places to walk, places to sit, and places to picnic - the Balingup Golden Valley Tree Park is a treasure of the south west of Western AustraliaForgive me - these 2 photos are from a previous greener year....
The other unexpected thing we experienced this week was the Aurora Australis - ie the southern lights as opposed to the northern lights. We had never seen it before. Due to huge sun activity the aurora effect could be seen about half way up the Australian continent. We couldn't see it with the naked eye where we were, other than a faint glow, but I was able to capture some images with my camera. Though not sharp, I thought I would share them with you. the top image here was taken over the ocean, and the other one in our Ferguson Valley region about 20 minutes from home. There was a lot of excitement from everyone about this event and lots of people out taking photos. I've seen some amazing ones on the net.
Thank you so much for stopping by. I value your comments and look forward to hearing from you. I will try to visit your blogs in return. Have a wonderful week. I am linking up to the link-ups below. Please click on the links to see fabulous contributions from around the world - virtual touring at its best!
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Until then, enjoy your day...this day only comes around once.
