2021 Wildflower Tour

Nine cars set off from Ginger’s Roadhouse on the Great Northern Highway on a cold, overcast, last Sunday in August, to drive some country roads and spot some wildflowers.

Since most of us had never done wildflower tours before this was going to be interesting!

We did a dash up the highway to Bindoon where we bought supplies at the famous Pie Shop and then headed for Mogumber for lunch and our first search. We did spot quite a few blooms after lunch although most of us didn’t know what they were called.

We checked into the Moora Motel and then did a quick loop North to find a few more flowers, including a drive down a dirt road to a stop at a wildflower farm, where we did a 15km loop road on their property in 3 borrowed 4WD vehicles, returning just in time to in time to have dinner at the local Pub.

The next day we headed North East out from Dalwallinu on Wildflower Way and again went flower spotting, all was going well until the lunch stop. A passer by pointed out that TC4617 was losing petrol from the bottom of the tank – the dirt road the previous day had finally killed a perished rubber hose into the fuel filter. After a lot of cursing and an hour’s delay the line was fixed with a bit of modified hose from Brian Wilkinson’s spares. The rest of the crew carried on whilst Judy and I took TC4617 back to Moora with a brief stop at Dalwallinu where we picked up everything needed for a permanent fix.

The Moora Motel put on a roast dinner that night and, with plenty of wine from the bottle shop, a good night was had by all. Except perhaps the couple on the only other table in the restaurant who had to listen to our noise.

Day three was out to the North and West, “just follow the leader” (who shall remain nameless) said President Richo – being good at taking orders we did as we were told, until we were 40km off route! Never mind.....a 20 minute stop with a lot of head scratching, plus lolly snakes and liquorice, and we were able to replot the way ahead.

The rest of the day went well, although Richo’s YT did develop a vibration (more dirt road damage?) which he didn’t sort completely until he got home.

We visited the Pub again for the evening meal and decided to make our own decisions on the way to get home on the next day.

Richo and Barbara’s luck was still out, suffering a tyre blow out on the way home and most of saw at least some heavy rain on the run back after having had three dry days.

We did well over 920km in the three days and saw some great roads, some lovely flowers, plus we ate and drank far too much. The consensus was we need to do more of this, and thanks go to the Priors and Pavlinovichs for their efforts in organising a great event.

Alan & Judy Davenport

TC4617