2006/08 Australia trip - Dryandra Woodland |
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Monday August 7th .
We drove south to Mandurah on a dark and wet morning, not that the weather mattered much as this part of the coast is mainly industrial and best passed through quickly. The scenery picked up as we went through Pinjarra and east across the hills that line the coast. The hills are covered with tall coastal forest and the occasional blaze of bright yellow flowers on the wattle trees 
(acacias to the Brits I think). In some places we were driving through a corridor of yellow flowers. The area looked to get a lot more rain than in the north. The rain followed us across the farmland behind the hills with its fields of wheat and canola. We saw the occasional patch of salty scrub, suggesting that all was not well with agriculture in this area.
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Dryandra ducks (0.37) |
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Our destination was the Dryandra Woodland, northwest of Narrogin. We kept seeing signs for Dryandra Village, so that’s where we headed. We were stuck for a while with a tree across the road. I couldn’t lift it but was able to bounce it around far enough for us to get through. I should probably have used the winch as Sandie suggested, but bouncing was quicker than digging the winch control out from under the luggage. The “village” turned out to be a Lions Club project: a holiday camp for disadvantaged children. It looked to be deserted on a winter Monday, so we moved on until we found the Congelin Campground.
This area used to be part of the Dwarda Line railway that delivered local goods, and it still has the trackbeds and the dams that were used for supplying water for the steam engines. I took a late walk through the woods to see what else was about, as this is another of those areas that has endangered marsupials: woylies, numbats, and bilbies. I didn’t see much other than some beautifully coloured trees, mainly because we still had the rain and the wind, and it’s hard to see or hear animals or birds when the trees are being thrashed by the wind. On the way out I managed to drive over a wooden post, luckily with no damage to the camper, but I was a good citizen and reset the post in the ground.
That night we heard the occasional car off in the distance, but we’re sure we were the only people staying in the park.
Tuesday August 8th
It was cold with sunshine and showers in the morning. Sandie found that she had picked up a tick, very similar to those we have in Minnesota. We didn’t know what diseases they carry in Australia so she terminated their relationship. We drove out through Dryandra Woodland, stopping to look at the flowers and parrots (ringnecks). That was the pattern for most of the day, as we headed east through more of the wheat belt, with the occasional field of canola. Most of the land had been cleared for farming, but there was usually a zone of tall, stately gum trees between the road and the fields.