I should point out, firstly, I didn’t actually travel from Guilderton to York.

As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts Australia’s borders are closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, so we’re taking the time to rediscover Western Australia. We took a long weekend and made short trips to Guilderton, North and York, East.

Guilderton

Guilderton is one hour (100km) North of Perth and is situated at the mouth of the Moore River.

It’s a sleepy tourist town with a caravan park and quite a few holiday homes. It doesn’t really cater for couples with its larger scale accommodation offerings, hence our day trip only. I guess we could camped if we really wanted to stay. It would be nice to come back with another family ans spend more time exploring the river and surrounding spots such as Lancelin.

Jane and I shared fish and chips from the General Store. At $11 it was delicious and ample enough for two. We sat on a bench overlooking the river. A couple of ducks waddled up and demanded their share.

The real attraction of the place is the river and beach. A boardwalk around the escarpment offers spectacular views over the river mouth. Of course the lookout wasn’t high enough for me so I got the drone out.

Further inland another boardwalk traverses the river.

York

On Monday we left early for our day trip to York. York is situated in the “wheatbelt” of Western Australia about 150km east of Perth. Its quite close to Toodyay, where we visited in July. The main reason we wanted to go is that the canola fields are blooming.

There has been some grumblings of the local farmers say that tourists are coming a trampling all their crops. There are some that allow visitors in for a fee. Jane and I preferred to find out own locations. So we found our own location and we ventured inside (umm… yeah trespassed) the fields and immersed ourselves in the yellow fields. We were careful not to harm any plants. Of course the drone came out to fly above the sea of gold.

Video here

Canola is also known as Rape Seed. Edible oil is made from the seed of the plant and is popular around the world for its Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids content and it also helps to cut cholesterol levels.

The best place to see the canola fields in the road between York and Northam, called the Northam-York Road of course. We took some gravel side roads to find a field that was remote and unfenced.