The weather not being any better, we decided to head for the timber country.
Cape Leeuwin is only a few kilometres off the direct route and in the Leeuwin Naturaliste National Park. It seemed a pity to miss this salient geographical point, it being the extreme south west point of the continent and the dividing point between the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean. By time we reach Cape Leeuwin, the sun was shining and we spent a pleasant hour taking in the view of the sea, the lighthouse and the wild flowers.
We have not seen the wild flowers of WA in a good year but what we have seen reinforces my thought that, by and large, Australian natives are different from northern hemisphere flowering plants in that they are small and generally hidden amongst the foliage. In order to appreciate the beauty of Australian natives one must get out of the car and get up close to the plants. When one does this one is rewarded with an extraordinary array of different shapes, sizes, forms and colours of flowers. .
We pressed on to the east and eventually found ourselves driving through forests of jarrah trees. I had been expecting the south west to be full of imposing timber but the Margaret River area, being coastal, has much smaller trees. The jarrah forest is what we had come all this way to see.