During my very short stay in Perth, my sister managed to organise an afternoon of wilderness exploration.

We headed east, to the point where the urban sprawl of Perth meets the a north-to-south block of state forests and national parks.

Welcome to Lesmurdie Falls, the perfect combination of rambling bushlands, trickling creeks, beautiful rocky outcrops and, as the name suggests, a fairly impressive roaring waterfall.

 

Ok, you’ve probably guessed by now that this post is going to be completely saturated with various photos of Aussie plants. I love and miss Australian flora like nothing else. Our region, the South West of the state has an amazingly unique collection of plants that exist nowhere else on the planet. In fact, it’s a biodiversity hotspot, meaning that it has an extreme overrepresentation of endemic (and highly threatened) species.

This trip, I was lucky enough to arrive in the country after a long winter, meaning that, although I sadly missed September’s burst of orchids, I nonetheless got to gander at a fairly impressive number of happily blooming flowers.

In any case, for those of you who are not so into plants, there are also a couple of shots of us in this post…

While we were ‘lady-explorer-ing’, as I believe my sister calls it, I decided that it might be quite lovely to get some shots of both of us together.

However, because I am not quite at the stage of technological advancement where I can actually make my camera remote work consistently, these ‘together shots’ involved me setting up the camera on timer function, and then scrambling across the wilderness to pose with Ess.

Success was defined by pretty pics with some degree of focus

‘Failure’ was defined by wet feet:

Ah, how much easier it is just to focus on the plants!

Now, I don’t want to boast, but I would like to add that, aside from the great plants, the SouthWest also has some fairly great Rocks.

Yeah, Rocks with a capital R.

Bold outcrops just filled with swirling colours:

And some of those outcrops, they even host waterfalls.

   

It really is the perfect backdrop for being a #ladyexplorer…

Or for just generally leaping around on, like two overgrown rock wallabies.

^Success.

^Less success

^Eh, I’ll take it!

   

Although some of us were happy to simply frolick around the base of the waterfall, others of us (i.e., those who have the full set of lungs), were insistent on climbing to the top of the falls.

Yeah.

Way. Up. There:

Ok, I’m being dramatic. It wasn’t tooooo far, and there were many pretty things to see on the way.

   

After more huffing and puffing than I care to admit (I really have to get back to the gym), we made it to the top, and looked out to see the bush, the sprawl of the suburbs, and- way out there in the distant haze- our city skyline.

   

It became clear that one of us has european-ised skin, that is not used to the Australian any sun. Sunscreen was (forcefully) applied.      

After some time spent surveying our kingdom, we headed back down the hill. Stopping on the way to smell (and photograph) the flowers….

… and even managing to meet one of the locals:

Then, when we reached the basecamp, we rewarded ourselves by dipping our toes in the creek…

… and splashing around a bit.

In my opinion- one that I’ve held since very early childhood (much to my parent’s chagrin)-  a creekside bushwalk isn’t a real experience until at least some items of clothing end up completely soaked!