Tourism WA tells us in their brochures that WA has 12,000 species of Wildflowers. WA has the World's largest collection of wildflowers and 60% of them are found nowhere else on earth. Greater Geraldton is the heart of Wildflower Country. Based on all of this, it would be remiss of us to not put aside a day to investigate this further.
Wildflower Tourism is centred around some small inland towns, Mullewa, Mingenew and the Coalseam Conservation Park, is a must do visit. It is a lot of km to do (approx 270), for the cause so we embark on our journey to at least visit Mullewa and Coalseam Conservation Park.
Mullewa is a very small town, with a population of around 450 people. Tourism, in particular wildflower tourism is the lifeblood of this town.
Photos of wildflowers adorn buildings, street banners and the town sign
The Tourist Information Centre is based in the town hall, and they are well equipped to advise on local walking trails to see wildflowers in flower and even publish a weekly information sheet on which flowers are currently flowering which includes photos to help identify them.
We found a local cafe/gallery with all merchandise revolving around wildflowers, had our morning coffee and hit the road.
We decide to do the 3 km Mullewa Bushland Trail, just on the outskirts of town. The trail starts with a lookout over the town.
View from the Lookout over the town
After a fairly barren patch of path to start with, we are soon amongst the meadows of wildflowers.
Fringe Lily
There were wildflowers everwhere but not the variety we saw in Kalbarri National Park.
Donkey Orchids
Star Flower
Having completed this track, we moved on to drive to Coalseam Conservation Park. It is a National Park with camping grounds, walking trails and a lookout where we went first. The Irving River cuts through this area creating a gorge which has wildflowers flourishing in the area. At the lookout, you get a good view of the river.
Back down at the river level is a campground, with a day use area, where we found a picnic table and had a late lunch. Fortunately we had bought some sandwiches with us as there is nowhere out here to buy lunch.
There is also a bush walk to view the wildflowers.
You have to cross a shallow part of the river to access the walking trail
Once the site of an unsuccessful coal mine, the conservation area is aptly called coal seam.
You can see the mine site from our picnic table
All that remains is a partly filled in mineshaft, and pile of coal waste, and an explanation that the coal seam was too thin to economically mine.
Old Mine Shaft
The wildflowers are also across the river
Everlasting daisies are in full bloom here
There is a different selection of flowers here to the ones we saw in Mullewa, but we have seen many of them elsewhere.
I went across the river and did a small part of the walk, but time is moving on and it is a bit rugged underfoot so not great for Carole, so we move on.
It is early in the wildflower season and there are a lot that are not yet in flower, but we get a glimpse of what it must look like at peak season.
In contrast to the areas where the original landscape has been preserved, our drive to and from this area is through kilometres of broad acre farms with canola everywhere.
Our route back to Geraldton involved a few "shortcuts" along dirt roads between some of these huge farms.
On one farm we saw around 6 emus in amongst the canola crop.
We were back at the caravan park at around 5 pm after a pretty long day.
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