Tulips in Kulikup

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As a child, I hated being dragged around parks and even into people’s homes during “home opens”. The worst was in the township of Bowral, in the Australian state of New South Wales where my parents went to see the spring flowers in many gardens, and they especially loved the tulip display (yuk!).

It was a low point in the year, but an annual pilgrimage for my parents. But with wisdom that (hopefully) comes with age, Muna and I now love to visit gardens. Over the past year we have been photographing wildflowers around our hometown of Esperance in southeast Western Australia as well as the golden yellow canola fields.

 When we lived in Perth, we would try to visit the tulip display at Araluen in the hills east of Perth, where they have a magnificent display that covers large areas. This time, however, we heard about a new display with over 100,000 tulips at Kulikup, near Boyup Brook (yes you need to Google that to find it).

 Along the way we found some interesting characters.

 We stayed with a dear friend, Edna Wallace, who lives in Bridgetown, and took her to the display - she had wanted to go for several years but had no way of getting there.

I loved the entrance area to the display, which is a private concern created by a florist who needed to diversify from her husband's sheep and wool farming business. This weather rock is never wrong in predicting the weather:

Araluen has a massed display of several species of tulips - Kulikup has many different varieties; these are being propagated for sale as bulbs or fresh flowers for Perth and southwest of Western Australia. For a $10 entry fee, you also receive a lovely Devonshire tea.

This old farm wagon has been put to good use and the following photos show some of the magnificent flowers that took our breath away. 

There are also daffodils in many shapes and colours.

The rest of this blog post shows aspects of this amazing display - what a wonderful day we had.