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‘For a short few weeks you realise the desert is truly alive’: Guardian Australia readers’ favourite wildflower spots | Australia holidays

‘For a short few weeks you realise the desert is truly alive’: Guardian Australia readers’ favourite wildflower spots | Australia holidays

While a few Guardian Australia readers told us their own back yards are the best spots in the country to watch wildflowers bloom, many recommended places a little farther afield.

Queensland

Girraween national park

The round-leaved phebalium (Leionema rotundifolium) in flower at Girraween national park. Photograph: Stanthorpe Rare Wildflower Consortium

Two readers recommended south-east Queensland’s Girraween national park in the granite belt region for its “spectacular wildflower displays” in spring. Both praised the area’s “great diversity” of plant life – with close to 1,000 species found in the area.

“At up to 1,000 metres to the north of the New England Tableland and on top of the Great Divide between the coast and the western slopes, the area is on the edge of many habitat, climactic and geographic regions,” one reader writes.

Liz Bourne, secretary of the Stanthorpe Rare Wildflower Consortium, adds that there are magnificent views from the granite peaks and good swimming in the park’s creeks.

Winton
At the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum in central Queensland, reader Colleen writes heavy rains bring “a gorgeous, vast sea of yellow and purple” blooms: “The expansive view from the top of the plateau made the flowers look like a … carpet of colours.” The floral displays make it easy to imagine the inland sea that once covered the area, she writes, while “the museum itself is fantastic”.

New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory

Broken Hill and Silverton region

‘Truly alive’: desert blooms in the Broken Hill and Silverton region. Photograph: Sue Pepper

“In spring the desert blooms in all shades of pinks, reds, yellows and purple,” writes reader Sue Pepper of the Broken Hill and Silverton region. “For a short few weeks you realise that the desert is truly alive.”

“The flowers are set off magnificently by the red soils of the ancient land.”

Pepper also recommends visitors drop in on the Living Desert Reserve and sculpture garden while in the area.

Parliament House Gardens, ACT

Native wildflowers in the Parliament House Gardens create an ‘ever-changing kaleidoscope of colour’, says head beekeeper Cormac Farrell. Photograph: Cormac Farrell

Cormac Farrell writes that there are almost 30ha of gardens, featuring plants from all over the country, in the gardens surrounding Parliament House, “creating this beautiful, ever-changing kaleidoscope of colour along the walking trails”.

He admits he has a personal…

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