Yogurt The Pilliga country is amazing. Canberra annually boasts “Floriade” where tons of soil, plants and people are shipped to the nation’s capital for a few days of ooohing and arrring over what basically amounts to a nurseryman’s attempt at art. Canberra further pretends to be artistic, refined and tasteful by hording whatever worthwhile art it can get it's hands on. Don't get me wrong, Canberra needs all the help it can get, it is a soulless place after all. In fact the only reason a lot of the art there looks any good at all is because the rest of the place is so totally lacking in any artistic propriety. The Pilliga boasts literally hundreds of acres of wild flowers of seemingly infinite variety and colour, all naturally occurring and requiring no care and maintenance by an army of watering can wallahs. The Pillaga Wildflower Guide lists in excess of two hundred and fifty different plants (not just a bunch of tired Floriade tulips). The Pilliga is also stacked with art and doesn’t need a multimillion dollar building to house it. Somehow art seems to look better when not boxed up in a badly designed and poorly executed architectural pipe dream. The Pilliga also boasts thousands of years of Aboriginal heritage. Rather than a few decades of political ranting, wrangling and disputation. Am I being a bit hard on Canberra? Probably. Do I think that Canberra should never have been built? Certainly. Give me one reason why you would sacrifice good real estate to duplicate the resources that already exist in at least two other cities, just to build our country’s capital. If it were up to me I would give it back to the sheep (the four legged ones not the two legged ones). I heartily encourage anyone still surviving in the Greater Canberra Area to run away as fast and as far as they possibly can before the great grey cloud of mediocrity, that is Canberra, engulfs them in artistic and cultural indifference. We did the tour today starting at the Sandstone Caves where the Aborigines lived for thousands of years. We followed up with the “Sculptures in Scrub” walk (not a particularly elegant sounding title, however accurate) which meanders through the acres of wildflowers previously mentioned. While meandering we encountered a wedding, down in the gorge by the creek bed. I couldn’t help thinking that although it was no doubt a “gorgeous” wedding, the happy couple seemed a long way up the creek without a paddle. By the end of the day we had experienced an incredible range of artistic, cultural and natural diversity. In fact, dare I say it, more flowers than a Royal Wedding and more culture than a tub of yogurt.

Rainbow Serpent Egg A tiler’s nightmare

Sprouts for “The Iron Chef” and the Seven-Wheeled Intergalactic Space Emu

There are way too many flowers to attach so here's a summary

A Loch Ness/Rainbow Serpent type apparition

A contemplative moment in the sand pit

The Spirit People are watching ... so look busy!