The wildflowers are blooming in the Western Australian Kimberley north west region

We might feel like we are in the depths of winter here in the South West of Western Australia, but it is wildflower time. Followers to my blog might know that photographing wildflowers is a passion of mine, so this is my favourite time of year. Usually I have to wait till September to get out and about taking photos of wildflowers, but I was lucky that my wildflower experience started in late June this year when we travelled north to the Kimberley during the north-west's warm and sunny winter dry season.

I am particularly lucky in Western Australia in that we have up to 12,000 known species of wildflowers including eight bio-diversity hotspots. The flowering period spreads over several months starting from July in the north till November in the south. However you will always find something flowering in the Western Australia bush somewhere.  

Our wildflower experience started on the first day of our trip at The Granites just north of Mount Magnet on the Great Northern Highway. Despite the rain I was out photographing this prickly character, the Flannel Bush - Solanum lasiophyllum.
  

 
From Broome we travelled north up the dirt Broome to Cape Leveque Road to go camping with friends. It was up in this region, the Dampier Peninsular, that we came across the Splendid Batchelors Buttons - Gomphrena canescens. You can see them also at the beginning of my post. I love them singularly and on mass.

 

If you saw one of my previous posts - The Boab Tree - about the Kimberley's iconic tree, the Boab - Adansonia gregorii - you would have seen this photo of the Boab flower. If not, you can click on the link to check out my post.  I had never seen a Boab flower before, but a few trees were flowering in Broome.

One of my favourites since our first trip north 30 years ago - the Mulla Mulla - Ptilotus. Widespread in arid and semi-arid areas, there are about 100 species in the genus Ptilotus, all but one occurring only in Australia. Here photographed backlit at Purnululu. Cathedral Gorge, Purnululu

You will see the bright yellow flowers of the Kapok Bush - Cochlospermum fraseri - flowering from April to September throughout the Kimberley, particular in rocky sandstone areas. The large scented flowers are up to seven centimetres in diameter, and the swollen green fruits burst open to release silky seeds. It was the first time I had ever seen the inside of the fruit, see below, which we found on the hill overlooking beautiful Marglu Billabong south of Wyndham. 

The beautiful water lillies of Marglu Billabong. There is a bird-hide here. I've borrowed the two bird pics from my husband. The one on the left is a Brolga - Grus rubicunda - which is found across tropical northern Australia as well as southwards to north and east central regions, inhabiting large open wetlands, grassy plains, coastal mudflats and irrigated croplands. There courtship dance involves an elaborate dance. You can find out more here - Birdlife Australia.

Another birding site for Wyndham - Birding WA

And yes in the second picture can you see a crocodile in the background behind the White Egret. This is a salt-water crocodile. Yes, they do eat people, so definitely one you don't want to get near, and the reason why the bird-hide is enclosed in heavy-duty wire mesh. In case you can't see that croc....

Back to wildflowers...

Below is the Sticky Kurrajong - Brachychiton viscidulus - also known as the Kimberley Rose, or by the Aboroginal names darlab or djalad. We saw many of these along the Gibb River Road and also at Mt Elizabeth Station. Flowering from April to December the spectacular red flowers appear after the leaves have dropped. There are male and female flowers on the same plant, attracting large numbers of nectar-feeding birds. They usually grow in sandy area on hills and amongst sandstone and basalt rocks.  

 I confess I had never heard of the flower below before this trip - the Bat Wing Coral Tree - Erythrina vespertilio. The pea shaped scarlet flowers are produced along 30cm racemes and appear when the tree is mainly leafless during winter and spring.  There was a huge tree near the access gate we went through on the way to Mornington Wilderness camp about 90 kilometres south of the Gibb River Road. There was a flock of Red-Collared Lorikeet - Trichoglossus rubritorquis - chattering noisily as they enjoyed the blossom.

I love the unexpected nature of wildflower photography as you never quite know what you will find and it is thrilling to find varieties you haven’t seen or photographed before, especially the rarer species.

And below is Rosella - Hibiscus sabdariffa -  a species of Hibiscus. The petals of this plant, which are very high in Vitamin C, can be made into jam. They have a delicious sour-sweet taste. This was another plant that I had never seen before, though I had tasted the jam made by a local friend - delicious! I would love to see if I can grow this at home. We saw these plants near the Barnett River just off the Gibb River Road and at Mt Elizabeth Station. More info on the Rosella plant here - Green Harvest

I hope you have enjoyed these few wildflowers of the Kimberley. So much red! But then that is the colour of the Kimberley dirt. I have many more wildflower photos to share with you soon. In the meantime you might like to visit a couple of my posts (see the links below) where I give you a few tips about photographing wildflowers. But my most important tip is - get out there with your camera! 

Taking wildflower photos doesn’t need to be complicated. Slow down, think about your camera settings, choose the best specimen, and think about composition, orientation and how you want your photo to look. Are you going to get in close or take a wider view? Do both, and take photos from various angles. Set your aperture according to how much depth of field do you want. Remember small numbers ie F4.6 equals shallow depth of field with a soft blurred background.

Photographing Wildflowers 
How to take great wildflower photos 

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!
   

Mosaic Monday @ Soul & Mind & So On

Saturdays Critters - Viewing Nature With Eileen

Travel Tuesday

Pictorial Tuesday 

ThroughMy Lens 
Image-in-ing
My corner of the world through my camera 
Wednesday Around the World at Communal Global hosted by Randomosity. 
       and Little bird - Pienilintu
Thankful Thursday 
Welcome to Nature Thursday

Skywatch Friday

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Half Lap of Australia - Part 2 - Free camp Perth to Kununurra

Hi everyone, welcome back to my half lap of Australia. 

A couple of weeks ago I brought you the first installment - a brief overview of our recent trip through Western Australia, Northern Territory and South Australia - a half lap of our Australian continent.  

This week I am taking you up the coast from our home 2 hours south of Perth to Kununurra - a distance of approx 3,513 kilometres (2,183 miles) - the green line following the North West Coastal and the Great Northern Highway on the map opposite, and our camps marked with a red line.

It's a long way and you need to allow about 6 days to do this distance comfortably. And incredibly you can free camp all the way! 


Here is a sample of a great downloadable map from Main Roads Western Australia to help you plan your trip, outlining the designated 24 hour camp sites, and rest areas and what facilities they have ie toilets 

Not all road side rest areas are equal - so it pays to do your research and work out how far you want to travel each day and where you want to stop.  

Please note: If you pull into a designated "truck bay" you need to ensure you have left room for road trains, some of which have 3 trailers and are over 54 metres long. Long haulage truck drivers rely on these truck bays and don't take kindly to caravaners taking over their overnight stops. 

 

The Boab - Western Australian icon

The Boab - Adansonia gregorii - icon of the Kimberley, Western Australia 

See more at: The Boab Tree - blog from 2016

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!

   

All Seasons

MosaicMonday at Letting Go of the Bay Leaf

Our World Tuesday

Pictorial Tuesday 

ThroughMy Lens 

Image-in-ing
Wednesday Around the World at Communal Global hosted by Randomosity.

The Lovin' Life Team over at: Deep Fried Fruit

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The Boab tree - Adansonia gregorii

 Through July and August we have been away exploring the Kimberley region in the far north west Western Australia. This is the first of my posts to bring you images and stories from our trip. I hope you will join me.

The Boab tree, Adansonia gregorii, is an iconic tree of the Kimberley region of the north west Western Australia. It is found only in the Kimberley and western Victoria Region of the Northern Territory, so this tree really does signal to the traveller that they have reached the Kimberley. The huge boab you see below was standing sentinel over the Great Northern Highway south of Derby and east of Broome when we visited in 2009. And it still stands. One can only imagine its age. It is an impressive entry statement to the Kimberley.

The boab is a distinctive and impressive deciduous tree which has a massive, swollen trunk and may reach to a height of 15 metres. Its spreading branches are usually leafless at flowering time, November to February and the large fragrant flowers are white to creamy with numerous stamens. The flowers are pollinated by hawkmoths and birds and convert to pendulous fruits which are large, woody and covered with dense felt of short hairs. The fruit contain many black kidney shaped seeds embedded in a powdery white pith. The hard outer covering of the fruit cracks when they fall from the tree, dispersing the seeds.

Below you can see the flower, the leaves, the trunk, the fruit and the inside of the fruits.

The trunks can either be squat and bulbous or the younger trees can be tall and slender. Sometimes you see circles of younger trees surrounding their older parent.  The Boab is deciduous and sheds its leaves during the dry season. On our recent visit to the Kimberley, during the dry, we saw flowers on trees in Broome, trees totally covered in leaves, and trees that were totally bare except for their fruits. We were told it has been an unusual season.

The Boab is the only Adansonia species found in Australia, the others being natives of Madagascar (6 species) , Africa and the Arabian Peninsula (2 species).  In Africa they are known as baobab. In Australia the boab is distributed throughout much of the Kimberley and into parts of the Northern Territory. They favour the loamy soils of Fitzroy and Ord valleys and the limestone hills of the Oscar and Napier Ranges. Although not native to Broome they have been extensively planted throughout Broome, and are used as street trees in Broome and Derby.

Below you can see some boabs and termite mounds - another common sight in the Pilbara and Kimberley. 

Other names for the boab are Djungeri and baobab. The Bardi aboriginal name is Larrgid and the Nyikina people of Derby call it Larrkardiy.  The aboriginal people used fibre from the roots and trunk to make string. The white pith of the fruit is rich in vitamin C and tastes a little like sherbet and is very refreshing. The roots of young trees and the seeds were used for food and medicine. The seeds were ground into a white paste. The fruit is often etched and decorated for sale to tourists.

In the early 1900s enlarged hollow boabs were sometimes used as prison trees to hold Aboriginal prisoners overnight. Two of these can be seen near Wyndham and Derby.

The Australian boab has been evolving here for 190 million years, and thought to have evolved here from plant material washed across the ocean from Madagascar. It is difficult to calculate the age of particular trees as the trunks are hollow and don't have growth rings. Experts believe that some large trees could be thousands of years old.  

 Boabs can withstand bushfires and drought. The tree stores water in its fibrous trunk and swells during the wet.  

This boab was growing high on a cliff at pretty Galvans Gorge on the Gibb River Road.

 
They really are an amazing tree. I was fascinated by their various shapes and wanted to keep taking photos whenever I saw them. 
And of course, the sunset shot - this is sunset near Marlgu Billabong, south of Wyndham.  

You might also like

on-road-in-kimberley

smiling-at-crocodiles

 And more about the boab from Kathy over at her blog at 50 shades of Age - Boabs of the Kimberley
 

I hope you have enjoyed this look at the boab. 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!


Life Thru the Lens 
Lifestyle Fifty Monday Linkup 
Our World Tuesday
Through My Lens 
Image-in-ing
Wednesday Around the World at Communal Global 
Worth Casing Wednesday 
Travel Photo Thursday
The Weekly Postcard