Super solar sonar radar

Bat box, Hyde Park, Perth.

Tiptoe through the tulips

Last Sunday, this idyllic setting at Araluen was disrupted when I stepped off the path to let a tourist train go past.

"Eh!" yelled the well-yeared gentleman on the right.
"Eh!!"
"Eh!!! You with the camera!!!!"
"Eh!!!!! You were stepping on the tulips!!!!!!"

Hell hath no fury like a baby boomer ignored.

Hard Luck Cafe

Yes indeedy, the flame trees around Freo sure could blind a weary driver.

By the way, the filigree building in the background was The Mint Leaf in the most recent series of My Restaurant Rules.

Occidental tourist

Here's the windy old city of Perth -

the most Westerly city on earth.

Perhaps unless the billboards fall

Here's a photo of my favourite tree - the Bunya Pine. Or five of them to be precise.

They're natives of their eponymous Bunya Mountains in Southeast Queensland, and also occur much farther north on the fringes of rainforest around Cairns. But in this pic' they're growing nicely in Pinjarra, Western Australia.

I planted my first Bunya in 1979, and had the school janitor not rolled over it with his ride-on mower, the tree would be about twelve foot high now - which goes to show how old the beauties pictured here must be.

The Bunya Pine, Araucaria Bidwilli, as I have long regaled poor Hazel, is not actually a pine at all, but a conifer. It's closely related to, and looks very much like, the Monkey Puzzle tree of Southern Chile, a mighty ocean away.

Every few years for god knows how many millennia, when the trees sprouted a good feed of nuts, the Aboriginal (Murri) peoples from all over Southeast Queensland - even those from Fraser and Stradbroke Islands - used to converge on the Bunya Mountains for a Bunya fest.

I once frazzled some Bunya nuts up myself, but can't say I was overly fond of them. They're obviously an acquired taste.