Day 111 12/07/2011 Sandy Cape Recreation Park (exploring Lesueur National Park)

Day 111 12/07/2011 Sandy Cape Recreation Park (exploring Lesueur National Park)

This morning we woke to the promise of a beautiful winter’s day, the sky was blue but there was quite a strong easterly breeze blowing so after some consideration we decided to head to Lesueur National Park.



This flower was so tiny



Lesueur NP is home to exceptionally diverse flora and there are many plants found in the park that are not found anywhere else in the world.  This bio diverse hotspot represents about 10% of Western Australia’s known flora; therefore we were hoping that we would see some early spring wildflowers.  What we didn’t know was that the section of the park that the tourist road wound through was burnt out in January 2011, the fire was started by a lightning strike.  We learnt this information after chatting with another person in the park.  This explained why wherever we looked all we could see was burnt out wilderness. 



Recovery after the fire, resilient plants!!



We stuck to the game plan though and completed the walk at Mt Lesueur.  This walk took us to a small part of the park that wasn’t burnt and we got a chance to see some beautiful spring flowers and some plants and shrubs beginning to flower.  I cannot begin to explain how exquisitally tiny some of the flowers were and how intricate they were in their design.  It was a task just to see them!!.

The kids didn’t find the walk particularly interesting and well Pete and I have no idea about flora but we had fun looking for the little flowers.  After wandering around the bush we enjoyed a picnic lunch.

By the time we got back to the caravan the wind had completely dropped off and Zac decided to try his luck spear fishing, Callum cornered Pete in the van to work on his model aeroplane, Claudia went off to play with her new friends and I decided to walk up to the lookout.  The lookout took in fabulous views across the bay and I was treated to a lovely view across beautifully clear turquoise water. 

This plant is carnivorous!!

After returning from the lookout I got Pete a gate pass from the caravan and Callum went off to play with Claudia and the other kids in the sand dunes.  Zac returned from the beach, freezing, and without any fish!!

We all spent a very relaxing afternoon doing very little; I even got a chance to work on my long stitch!!

Before dinner we caught up with the neighbours and during the conversation we were talking about essential items that people take camping, Pete decided that this was a great time to tell them about how we saw people in Darwin and they had an ice machine in the back of their car, given our limited space we thought this was a great extravagance!! As he expressed his view our neighbours began to look rather sheepish, they then explained that they too had an ice machine in their camp, what made it even funnier was that this family was in a camper trailer!!  They had to run their generator to make ice.  Pete slowly took his feet out of his mouth!!

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