Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower – Wildflowers in Western Australia Funny how even brilliant people see the world through the prism of their own prejudices! The English poet Robert Browning, while living in Italy, was happy to write his eulogy to Spring in England “Oh, to be in England / Now that Apri’s there” and to sing about the “blossomed pear-tree” and the “clover blossoms and dewdrops”. But he couldn’t help himself. After getting all moist-eyed about “All will be gay when noontide wakes anew the buttercups” he has a dig at Italy’s flora with the tart “Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!” and look at how flat that line is. I wonder what he would have made of Western Australia’s spring wildflowers. They really are a miracle of nature. In a land where the soil is thin, blood red and unforgiving; in a land where the annual rainfall can be as low as 10 inches (250 cm) a year; and in a land where the trees are stunted and all that remains is scrubby bush, there are wildflower displays of such glory that they spread to the horizon, bewilder with their exotic diversity and make the entire world look as though George Seurat’s pointillism has become the default aesthetic for every desert landscape. I have seen the spring flower displays in Siberia; the daffodils in London’s Hyde Park; the bluebell glades in English arboretums; and the rhodendron orgies in the Dandenong gardens but I have never seen anything to match Western Australia in all its glory. The displays go on for hundreds of kilometres. Endless oceans of wildflowers to a point where, like eating too many profiteroles, you feel elated and exhausted by the sheer excess of richness and beauty. Here’s a small sample from Shark Bay and Mount Augustus. Dont ask me what they are - they are just wildflowers.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 04:24:12 +0000
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