en route to Perth

Wildflowers and Gravity
16 November
Having decided to escape the winds of Lancelin and impose ourselves on the Perth Caleys one day early, we were determined to at least fill the day so we would arrive in the late afternoon. First stop was Moore River National Park which is the only wildflower locality reported to have the best display in November. Verticordia nitens, the flower which provides the mass display was only just starting to open, but there was also a fantastic diversity of wildflowers blooming.

From Moore River

All along the roadsides, the Moolja or Christmas Tree was also bursting out with vivid orange blooms. One particular tree was just brilliant orange on a fire blackened trunk – no sign of leaves.

After a short stop to sample some local honey, we headed to the Gingin Gravity Discovery Centre which is an education facility beside the Gingin Gravity Wave Detection facility. When the world was worried about the earth being destroyed by a black holes, they built super sensitive gravity wave detectors around the world to pick up the signals from the threatening celestial problems. In fact they discovered that the threat was not nearly as bad as feared and the detectors have been retired. The Gravity Discovery Centre is a Questacom type place with lots of interactive displays, the most impressive of which is a 45m high tower leaning at 15 degrees.

From Gravity Discovery Centre

You can drop different size water balloons from the top and check whether objects fall at the same speed regardless of weight, (except for the confounding effect of friction). There was also a gallery with an impressive collection of artwork related to the cosmos.

So we managed to enter Perth at a decent hour facing the peak-hour outbound traffic and only got off - route once before finding my brother David's house at City Beach.