Celebrating our bakers dozen trip, lucky #13, we took off to the Dryandra Woodlands, approximately 2hrs south east of Perth. Our friends Owen and Annie had recommended the camping here and we weren’t disappointed. Large open camping bays, each with its own table and fire pit, clean long drop dunnies and hardly another person to be seen. Having booked the Monday off, prior to the ANZAC day public holiday on Tuesday, we had a nice four day weekend to relax and spend time with friends, Jack and Adrienne. We were a little concerned that being a long weekend for many, plus falling at the tail end of school holidays that the place would be packed, however, when Jules and I arrived on Saturday, we had the 8 bay ‘caravan loop’ to ourselves, with just a few campers in the other ‘tenting loop’. We were joined later that day by another van and by Jack and Adrienne on Sunday, however, that was all the action our loop saw, which was probably a good thing as things got a little noisy Sunday and Monday night, more on that later….
The Dryandra Woodlands are the largest remnants of original bushland in the wheatbelt, supporting 24 mammal, 98 bird and 41 reptile species, including Western Australia’s state mammal emblem, the numbat, which you can see if you’re lucky (we weren’t lucky). Plenty of walking and drive trails run through the bush, as well as Barna Mia which is a native animal sanctuary, hidden away (literally) in the middle of the bushland. For a small fee, you can visit the centre most nights to view many of WA’s threatened and endangered native animals in their predator protected 4ha pens. Jules and I decided to do Barna Mia on the Saturday night, however, as we arrived the clouds were steadily building in the distance and by the time we’d run through the short, but informative slide deck, thunder and an occasionally flash of lightening were evident. The rangers then take you out to a couple of feeding stations and once everyone is seated, they get the kids to place some feed down and within minutes the cute and furries start arriving. It’s very difficult to take a picture as no flashes are allowed but I managed to get a couple of shots worth keeping (below). Whist we didn’t get to see a Bilby we did get to see a cute Rufus Hare Wallaby which looks like a “Honey I shrunk the Quokka”, i.e. very small and uber cute. Unfortunately our tour was cut short as it started spitting big but well spaced raindrops, which then increased into a reasonably heavy downpour which didn’t let up for the next hour or so. We enjoyed what we saw however and would do the tour again.
Sunday, and for the rest of the trip, it dawned mostly sunny and we made the most of our time relaxing, doing a little exploring and chilling out next to the fire with a, well some, ok many bottles of wine. Lots of good food and drink with good friends made for a great weekend. We’re already trying to work out when we can visit the area again and we highly recommend it to others.
Just arrived and setting up.
Barna Mia feeding station and the cute and furries.
Settling in for the night
The Goldy lit by the glow from the fire
Jules and Adrienne sharing a pose and a bottle of wine
Jules and Jack…. Not sure what they were doing, maybe breathing in too much of the smoke??
Adrienne getting comfy in front of the fire
The track into Barna Mia through the woodlands
Nice view on a walking trail not far from the Dryandra Village campground
The Old Mill Dam and reflections
Beautiful salmon coloured gums
Colourful lichen on rocks
Some sort of flowering Eucalypt and I couldn’t resist shooting the yellow blossom contrasted against the vibrant red flower pods/buds
There were pockets of this mini, almost fluro orange grass everywhere. This stuff is probably only an inch tall
Borer/worm trails on an old tree truck
Concentric rings of lichen growing on a granite outcrop