The weather is really starting to give us the willy's but we just can't let it dictate our plans and todays plan was to visit Kings Park in the heart of Perth. It is not raining today, so that is good but today is very overcast. Actually looking on the positive side it is a photographers dream to have a cloudy day. Harsh sun never makes a great photograph! I took a couple of photographs of our caravan park when we left this morning. It will be such a hardship staying here for two weeks 😂....not.....
By the time we had finished our chores it was after 9am but that was a better time for us to be negotiating the traffic to get into the centre of Perth. It took us around twenty minutes to reach Kings Park and Kings Park is very popular. We had a very hard time finding a park in the Wudjuk car park that is close to the entrance and information centre. There are at least five car parks surrounding Kings Park. When we finally found a park (we saw a young couple walking and asked if we could follow them to their car) we headed straight to the information centre to pick up a map/s of Kings Park. From here we went to the cafe for a Devonshire tea and to mull over the maps.
To put Kings Park into perspective for my readers, it is 400.6 hectares or almost 10,000 acres and is one of the biggest parks in the world. It is bigger than New Yorks Central Park and London's Hyde Park and yet it is situated right in the heart of Perth. This is town planning at its finest and I take my hat off to the original town planners. I read in the brochure that the Western Australian Botanic Garden has half of Australia's 25,000 plant species and most of those are found nowhere else on earth.
By the time we had finished our morning tea there was a light drizzle of rain but not enough to stop us walking through this wonderful parkland. Honestly there is so much to see and the native flower displays at this time of the year are gorgeous. And of course lets not forget the wildflowers that are dotted throughout the park. The park is beautifully laid out with sections for Grevillea, Waxes and Kangaroo Paws (who new there were so many colours!), just to name a (very) few. We stayed in the Botanic Garden area but the vast majority of the park is home to native garden.
We walked across the glass bridge that gave us a prime view of the Swan River and right below us is the old Swan Brewery where Philip worked when he was living in Perth in 1976/77. The building has been beautifully restored and is now an apartment building with probably the most spectacular views on the Swan River. I would not even try and hazard a guess at how much those apartments would be worth.
One of the loveliest areas is the Pioneer Women's Memorial and fountain. The pond is surrounded by soft green lawn and many families and couples were already spreading out blankets to enjoy this serene place. There is so much to see in Kings Park and we only touched on a very small area today in the three hours that we were there but it was also the loveliest area. There are guided walking tours throughout the day and we may even return and join a tour group. Philip said that he would find it a little boring, so we will wait and see.
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| Check out the colour of this Kangaroo's Paw! |
Funny story. When we were back in the car after our walk we put into our GPS the address of our caravan park. We used the "previous" address feature. Once we left Kings Park the GPS seemed to be taking us up laneways, down narrow streets, through back lanes and we were beginning to think that maybe the GPS had lost track of us. Eventually we were back on a main road and Philip commented that there were mountains in front of us in the distance. We both looked at each other because that cannot be right. Our caravan park is a stones throw from the beach! It was then we realised that we had put in the "previous" address of our "previous" caravan park, at Swan Valley! Our trip home should have taken us 20 minutes. Instead it took us almost an hour 😂😩.........
We had a bowl of warming homemade pumpkin soup for lunch that we finally sat down to eat at around 2.30! The recipe suggested topping the soup with toasted chopped peanuts and coriander. Who would have thought it would be such a tasty addition to pumpkin soup.
Here is a GoPro of Kings Park courtesy of my husband but edited of course, by his wife....
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