Paynes Find…

God?   Gold?   The meaning of life?  –  Nah!.     But we’ll get to that.

From Geraldton we headed east – Mullewa, Pindar,  Yalgoo, Mt Magnet. All places I’m sure you’re overly familiar with. But they are on the wildflower trail and so are we. One such flower we were keen to find was the wreath flower and apparently Pindar is one of the few places in which it grows. We called in to the Mullewa Visitor Centre to get directions….

but what you see is not it. This is a little out of the way but on the way church designed and built in the 20’s by one Monsignor Hawes but more on that to follow. Taking directions to Pindar we found, some 30k out of town and after offloading Suzi, the fabulous flowers we sought….

Wreath flowers! They are a single stalk with radiating foliage and the flowers blossom on the ends of the radiating leaf formation. They grow only on recently disturbed land. Weird! They exist only in this general region.

Whilst back in Mullewa we viewed another Monsignor Hawes creation…

and just to keep some things in perspective back in Geraldton we espied another, much grander Hawes creation without being aware of the ultimate significance of this priests architectural legacy….

This is Saint Francis Xavier Cathedral in Geraldton. Dontya just love the stripes, a recurrent theme in many of his creations.

Anyway back to floral arrangements. This took us to an overnight stop on the side of the road which we eventually shared with a couple of houses….

but they moved on about 6.00am. When we finally moved on ourselves we found these same two houses in the next township of Yalgoo, one already installed on site, the second in the process, just a few hours later. We have actually seen quite a lot of prefabricated houses on the move through WA over the last few months but have not seen the ease with which they are sited. But Yalgoo held some much older attractions, not the least of which is another Monsignor Hawes creation….

a tiny little chapel attached to what was a monastery for perhaps half a dozen nuns at any one time. I guess the nuns had no attraction to the stripey theme as this one is quite plain inside. I seem to recall that this one was built in the 30’s and has been restored as a tourist attraction by locals. Had to get the key for this and the courthouse from the local store to gain entry. The courthouse proved to be another point of interest, mainly for the fact that it was a transported building, brought in from the then defunct gold mining town of Day Dawn back in 1926. OK, it was probably a bit more of a flat pack then than the ones we saw earlier today but still when you consider the terrain and the then forms of transport it still looks like a big job….

and yet another point of interest was the picture of the tally board recording WA voters desire or otherwise to be part of the federation of states in 1900…

A goodly number voted against but overall the numbers are miniscule.

Other things keep getting in the way but we are still on the wildflower trail…

We’ve even bought a couple of books to identify the multitude of varieties but they’re very dry reading (read – haven’t read them yet). But the variety grows…

Some have told us that it is a good season, others the opposite. Don’t know but we did cover a lot of territory to get these pics – there are a lot of flowerless areas in between. Maybe it was too soon, maybe too late. But what we have seen has been nothing short of beautiful, fascinating and very colourful. In our perhaps limited experience this springtime display seems unique to WA. It has been worth seeing even from a self confessed ‘trogladites’  point of view. I’ll read the books one day and like our wildflower tour guide in Marble Bar I’ll spruik the botanical names of all the above (yeah, right!).

The next port of call was Mt Magnet, yet another gold mining town of history. Still gold mining but today it was out at the racetrack. Seems the whole town is at the races as nothing is open and there is no-one around. Wait, the pub just opened – it is 12.00 o’clock – hot beef roll and beer, beer, beer. Some locals appear and fill up quickly, we partake of the only hot beef rolls served today, and then they all get on a bus to where? – the racetrack of course, all fired up for a big day out. Oh, we’re not hanging around here – dread to think of local conditions around 6.00pm…

Anyway there’s not much to see in Mt Magnet so its off to Cue. No, its not far Cue, its really only 80k’s!

Found the only caravan park in Cue and for 25 a night it represented the best value we’ve experienced on this trip so far. Nice little place attached perhaps appropriately to the old gaol…

but here something has gone drastically wrong with the photo file so rather than keep you dear reader hanging I’ll put this rather long and colourful post to air now and come back with another burst in due course.

And to really let you in on Paynes Find!