Veronika Wild

Lower Level Lesmurdie Falls Lesmurdie Falls are quite high and lie on the edge of the Darling Scarp.This huge scar on the landscape runs for over a thousand kilometres and can be seen from space. The fault upon which it lies marks the point where Australia broke off from India some 135 million years ago. It also contains some of the world's oldest rocks - magma intrusions thrust up from the centre of the earth around 260 billion years ago. Though now around 30 km inland from the sea and the city of Perth, its edges were sea cliffs  a mere 200,000 years ago when sea levels were higher. Part of the Upper Level I had visited these falls once before at the height of summer and after a long period of drought  and they had been rather disappointing. Now, after what has been one of the wettest winters on record, they were not only flowing magnificently, but the surrounding bushland was green and alive with the harrumphing of frogs, the squawking of birds and the chirr

The true blue Lechenaultia We are getting some lovely weather at last and carpets of flowers are starting to appear. I especially like those unbelievably blue ones, be they in gardens or in nature. I turned our snails loose this morning, thinking that they had suffered enough in the name of science, not to mention that I seemed to be the only person who was still feeding them. That’s another good thing about snail pets. There’s no problem releasing them back into the wild. The small ones were now twice as big as when we first got them and possibly getting a bit big for their strawberry box homes. Blue Lady The council here has been doing its annual kerbside collection of hard rubbish lately – that’s the stuff that won’t fit into the bin. What a treat it was. A bonanza of lounge suites, old chairs, outgrown bikes, hot water cylinders, broken prams, useful building materials, old tiles. We would have killed as children to have been let loose in a treasure trove like