We had a good stroll around the local Ellendale Pool area- finding a splendid Blue Wren family and also lots and lots of cowslip orchids.
After a leisurely start to the day with the Colwells, we stashed our still-damp towels and clothes again and left Craig and Evelyn with their van in our quiet littel overnight spot. We were hoping to see the famous wreath flowers today and headed towards Pindar – where we knew we should be able to see them .
As we travelled along we came across a sign with flowers on it which seemed to be indicating a wildflower spot, so we followed the sign and ended up at Eradu Nature Reserve, where we followed a track in among the flowers to the top of a hill overlooking the river with a beautiful view. The treats along this track were many and this is just a taste of what was discovered.
Having found this first sign we were happy enough to divert each time we found one. It turned out that they were part of the “Wildflower Way” which can take enthusiasts over a number of different areas to find historical or wildflower views. There is often a metal sign and an interpretive sign to tell you what to take notice of. We had inadvertently made our way to number 19 on the red route. The sign below was at number 18.
We had a little diversion when we tried to find the Indarra Springs Nature reserve to look at birds and the name of the road to follow was not on any of our maps. We ended up very close to it, but driving between paddocks on a private farm property (the track had trees at the side as though it was a public road). The farmer spotted us, came out to see what was going on and ended up escorting us to the reserve very kindly.
We ended up eating our lunch at number 17 (an old railway station) under the verandah of the old shop which is now used as a community gathering place, before finally heading for Mullewa. At Mullewa we called in to the visitor centre and picked up a detailed description of how to find the wreath flowers at Pindar.
We followed our mudmap to Pindar , and sure enough there we found the famous flowers as well as some other treats. The wreaths grow in profusion on just a small area of roadside here. They are very unusual
spread along the road 
developed wreath 
just starting out 
Beautiful flower
snail orchid 
sundew
After the wreath flowers we backtracked to Mullewa and followed a good portion of the Northern Tourist Route to the waterfalls (number 12) and all the way around to number 2, just missing out on number 5,6,7 and 8. We ended up driving through some stunning wildflower scenes on the way and could have taken hunderds of photos.
The paddocks are huge here. We calculated that we were seeing some that were one, two and three km square in size.
We ended up our day at the old school house, where we read about the old days and saw the old path that the kids used to walk across the claypan to get to school.
We decided to park ourselves just near there (much quieter than at the nearby historic well site) on our own among the trees and wildflowers for the night. We even had our own little fire among the wildflowers.
Zita and Al were staying with power at Mullewa in the little caravan park there, and Craig and Ev were already heading down the coast towards their rogaine committment the coming weekend, so they were camped in a spot on the coast further south.
Luvapuzzle 