Seconds out; flashback to spring in Amsterdam; even more tulips; Araluen fast facts; a bit of history; review: Chalet Healy Café; Airbnb review: the Folly, and what I loved most; why Plantsnap is useless; general cussedness in Kalamunda; unidentified blossoms in cider country; beach bunny Roy, back in Burns Beach

Araluen Botanic Park is in Roleystone, in the Darling Ranges – only half an hour from Perth CBD, but around an hour’s drive from our home in Iluka.

First came a preliminary spousal skirmish concerning whether or not we should go to Araluen Botanic Park at all.

Round One: “I might not always want to do (or see) what you want to do (or see) – in this case, traipsing around a park and seeing tulips. And it wasn’t as if we’d never seen tulips before.* (So, should I go alone?  No? Well then.)

Round Two. “It’s not far,” said my designated driver. He didn’t mind driving there and back in a day. But I knew how that would work out: not well. Roy would rise majestically at 9am, as is both his wont and preference. We’d depart at 10.30am, get to Araluen in time for coffee at noon, schlenter around the gardens for an hour (glancing surreptitiously at our watch), and head home by mid-afternoon to beat the traffic.

---

* Tulips in Amsterdam – flashback to spring 2015

Roy did have a point, sort of. We had  seen tulips before – a lot of them. In spring 2015, we spent a few days in Amsterdam, glorying in seasonal herring, windmills and tulips en masse. Here’s a pdf of my ensuing travel article in Expat Living Singapore:

Click to access Holland-Amsterdam-2016.pdf

---

Even more tulips

Here are even more tulips, photographed at Keukenhof garden in the Netherlands where they plant 7 million flower bulbs each year. But first, a gratuitous pic of Roy eating nieuwe haring – the first herring of the season, enjoyed raw.

---

Back to the present: Araluen Tulip Festival

The timing was sensitive : though Araluen is said to be worth visiting at any time of the year, the Tulip Festival is from August to October, peaking during September.

So I found an Airbnb in Roleystone – a “chalet in a quiet bush setting” ($155) – and booked us in for the night of the first Monday in September. Luckily, after a particularly wet and cold winter, the forecast promised a couple of beautifully warm spring days.

Araluen Fast Facts

• Araluen is an Aboriginal word from NSW – the Australian state, New South Wales – that means place of running water, place of meeting waters, or place of waterlilies
• It features 14 hectares of gardens within 59 hectares of native forest
• Its unique microclimate with loamy soils, high rainfall and cold winters supports a wide variety of plant life, unusual for WA
• Famous for roses, tulips, azaleas, hydrangeas and camellias, it also displays autumn colours in season, and giant magnolias in winter
  

  

• Araluen Botanic Park Foundation consists of 10 volunteer members, supported by a GM and two groups of volunteers to do gardening and maintenance
• You can expect to see up to 140,000 tulips at a time during the festival

History of Araluen

Built in the 1930s, the park features heritage log cabins, gazebos and timber bridges, together with etched plaques that tell its history.

It all began as a holiday camp developed in 1929 for the Young Australia League (YAL), established in 1905 by J.J. “Boss” Simons. But the park’s origins go back to 1900, with close connections to Aussie Rules Football – a subject of great mystery to me.

The Grove of the Unforgotten remembers 88 YAL members killed in WWI. It’s “a series of terraces descending a steep slope, flanked by 88 pencil pines” – one for each life lost.

---

Chalet Healy Café, Araluen Botanic Park

We had waited in the queue from Croyden Road for half an hour before turning into the park entrance, showing our e-tickets ($15pp) and being directed to the Rose Garden parking.

Coffee  – that all-important first one of the day! – was high on the agenda. With the park rapidly filling, and just one barista on duty at the only kiosk, our two long macs took 15 minutes to order and another 15 minutes to eventuate. (Lukewarm.) Roy had done the tiresome queuing while I chatted up Anna and Noreen, two artists who’d come in a group to paint the reflections of tulips on the lake.

Review: Lunch at Chalet Healy Café

As for lunch, booking is a must, even for a Monday. Perhaps especially on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, because food stalls are available from Thursdays to Sundays.

From the “Australian modern” menu, Roy had the Thai salad ($24) which came with a super-tender and tasty octopus tentacle; I had the goat’s cheese salad ($24), plus a naughty portion of chips with garlic aioli ($10). Not bad, but not great. Though the premises are licensed, alcoholic drinks weren’t available today, for reasons unknown to the staff.

---

Airbnb Review: The Folly, 92 Heath Road, Roleystone

A couple in their 70s, Shirley and Grant are great hosts – in fact they’re officially super-hosts, in Airbnb parlance. They retired here ten years ago, and brought in all the plants to create the attractively sprawling garden.

The Folly is described as a rammed-earth chalet, and the main house is built of the same material. The chalet has a big verandah looking out onto lovely bushland, a spacious sleeping area, a dining table, a well-equipped little kitchen and a comfortable shower-room.

What’s more, these are amazingly generous hosts. Apart from the more usual juice, hot beverages, breakfast cereals, yoghurt and bread for toasting, there’s plunger coffee, a bowl of fruit, and the fridge is stocked with a eggs, a packet of bacon and another of sausages.

You’re immersed in nature and surrounded by wildlife, for example:

• Possums that like to nest in the roof of the Folly – Grant warned that one of them might return and disturb our sleep;

• Cockies, the black cockatoos that can be the bane of a gardener’s life;

• Bandicoots – tiny marsupials that look like big rats; but they sort of hop rather than scurry, and don’t raise the hair on your neck

• Frogs – there are two lily-covered dams on the property

• Foxy, the friendly resident ginger cat.

Before we arrived, Shirley had kindly recommended a couple of local places for dinner, including the Roleystone Country Club and a burger joint. But most country eateries close on Mondays and Tuesdays; they’re open on weekends, instead, to serve Perth day-trippers.

So we’d decided to self-cater, and just enjoy being in the bush.

What I loved most about The Folly…

What I loved most: rainwater from the tank out back; birds that visit in the late afternoon, probably hoping for pretzel-crumbs; how the frogs stop their sunset ribbit-ing as you approach the dam (how do they know?); the fact that Shirley turned out to be a kindred spirit – it was hard to stop yakking, say goodbye and tear myself away; and Grant’s parting gift of delicious kumquats cut freshly from his tree.

---

Why I deleted Plantsnap from my phone

These little ladies are donkey orchids, said Grant, showing me around his garden – though why you’d give that name to anything so tiny and fragile is a mystery. According to the Australian Orchid Foundation, it’s called Diuris, and is a nectar-less orchid thought to deceive native bees into visiting their flowers through mimicking food-rewarding native pea plants, especially those locally known as “egg and bacon plants”.

And here it is! This, according to Grant, is the egg-and-bacon orchid:

To find out more, I tried my Plantsnap app, which mis-identified the egg-and-bacon as the Chorizema cordatum flower or Australian flame pea. Then it mis-identified a grass tree, of all things, before throwing a couple of excruciatingly annoying Google Ads at me that proved impossible to navigate around. (Mind you, if bees with all their intelligence can’t get it right, I shouldn’t expect more from an app.)

---

Gum tree seed pods are thick on the ground. Children here call them conkers, says daughter-in-law Carrie, and they play with them – much like they do with horse chestnuts in the UK.

---

Two Towns – Roleystone and Kalamunda

Roleystone looks like a nice little town (population around 7,000), complete with school and shopping centre. The unexpectedly spacious Orchard Espresso delivered a couple of coffees that put a smile on Roy’s face. .

Next morning, in Kalamunda (pop. around 60,000) we saw this conker sculpture on a roundabout. I love it! Kalamunda is a much bigger town than I’d expected, and has a nice feeling.

For whatever reason – possibly just general cussedness, as my mother might have said (though usually about my younger sister Dale; never about Roy) – my husband wasn’t keen on visiting Kalamunda. Its historic village was particularly unworthy of our presence. We’d stopped outside it before he (dubiously) claimed, it was of no interest, and he would not darken its doors.

All this despite his having asked me where I’d like to go; and the fact that I’d already settled on Kalamunda after checking that it had a good selection of cafés for his special benefit. He took me there in the end, but under duress, you understand.

Kalamunda had the usual suspects – Dome and Coffee Club; but they’re chains (or franchises?) and I liked the sound of Elevated Grounds and Old Mates. I spotted Old Mates first and it had a free parking outside, so Old Mates it was.

Duly caffeinated, Roy found the strength to stop the car long enough for me to photograph historic Stirk Cottage. (Good thing it’s open only from 2-4pm on Sundays.)

---

Being cider country, the Perth Hills orchards were in full spring bloom.

---

Postscript: Beach bunny Roy

Before Roy barbecued our steaks  the night before, he had cooked the sausages and bacon provided by Shirley. Before we left in the morning, he boiled the eggs.

Then, as we neared home, he casually said: “We’ve got all the makings of a picnic lunch. Shall we have it on the beach?” It took me a while to register what he was suggesting. (What? Who are you, and what have you done with my husband?)

---