Lake Clifton Walk Trail

As I said before, the trail doesn't look thrilling when you look at it on a map but with the dearth of hiking trails available in Perth, I'm not going to complain about it. The limitation here is that there is such a thin strip of land that Yalgorup National Park inhabits between the shore of the lake and what has been allowed to be private property. With this in mind my goal was to not simply take endless shot of the straight trail as it extended into the distance but do what I've taken great joy in doing over the past couple of years, slowing down and finding the little details that fascinate me. This is far from a monotonous area to explore so while the trail may be fairly straight forward and boring, the variety of things you'll see if you really look closely is immense. While not in the ideal time of year for wildflowers and maybe a month or two away from getting the right conditions for the mosses and fungi that love the cooler and wetter times, I was happy to see different kinds dotted all over the various tree species. One of those tree species I was happy to find was the Tuart, an endangered tree that calls the coastline stretching from Mandurah down to Busselton home. There were some real thick boi examples here that thanks to the national park status of this area will hopefully be left alone for a long time. A series of information boards can be found along the trail, highlighting you to the various flora and fauna that is found in the park. Caris got very excited when she saw that Bungarras live in the area so we started looking for all the different animals tracks and scratchings along the trail. One thing we didn't need to search for because it found us was a flock of either Carnaby or Baudins Cockatoos. We heard their screeching from a distance and they flew all the way over to us and landed on a nearby tree just to have a look at the funny intruders. I got a couple of shots in before they decided that we weren't very interesting and left. 

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We found some Zamia seeds that had gone through an emu and had been deposited on the trail so were now on the lookout for another kind of animal. After a couple of kilometres of walking we reached the turnaround point, marked by some large limestone and wood barricades to stop people driving onto the lake (the trails here are all management tracks). Excited about navigating the only two turns on the track, we were soon a little bit higher than the first half of the track and a bit more exposed. This meant we got some fleeting views of the lake and some different species of plants to look at including more Grass Trees and some Hakea. The grass trees reminded Caris of her old school song and decided she would belt out a rendition of it for me given we were sort of in her old neighbourhood. The TrailsWA map showed the loop doubling back to rejoin the first section but I didn't see an obvious track leading you that way so we continued along the management track. The final part of the walk is through a mix of Peppermint thickets and old Tuart trees with plenty of soft sand to contend with. We saw a few kangaroos here along with some 28s (parrots) but they were all too quick for my camera. Being right up against the fence line of the private property isn't the best experience but the quality of the Tuart trees along here made up for it. Unfortunately we didn't get to see a Bungarra but perhaps on another visit we might be luckier. With the hike over we found only one other car in the car park so our physical distancing was ace. It didn't stay that way though as on the way home we found an old Golden Retriever wandering along Old Coast Road so stopped to pick it up and after a few phone calls it was reunited with its owner.