The Great Southern

Another lovely weekend in Albany, this time for my Mum's 81st birthday.

On the Big Day, Lily and I took Mum and Dad to the Porongurups, where we were stunned by the silence among the tall karris ...

... and enjoyed the cool greens, and the occasional shower.

Fantastic.

After a picnic lunch we stopped here for afternoon tea.

Can you see the enormous red-flowering camellia beyond the palm fronds? It's over 60 years old, about 3 metres high and absolutely covered with blooms.

Someone obviously planted it in the perfect spot.

Right out the back, next to the orange tree, there was this fabulously simple structure, which I photographed — with Dad sitting in it "to give you an idea of scale" — thinking I might like to build one in my backyard, when we eventually get a house.

I'm imagining a long table instead of two small ones, and lots of Christmas lunches and summery dinners there. (My idea of summer is obviously tempered by the recent months of winter ... of course, a third of our real summer will be too stinking hot to want to sit outside at all, even in a rustic dining pavilion!)

Dad, who is supremely handy and has built at least four houses from the foundations up, reckons it wouldn't take a lot to build, and so long as it was demountable, it wouldn't need planning permission. Good one.

:: The flar at the top of the page is, I think, a kunzea. A native flower, blooming everywhere right now, much to the delight of the bees. And the golden wattle is looking amazing.