How Do You Know Spring Has Arrived in Pemberton?

There is something slightly ridiculous about living twenty kilometres from some of the most extraordinary forest in Western Australia and discovering that Spring has arrived because you have stuffed up a tour time.

At least, I thought I might have.

A family travelling from Margaret River had really wanted to join our Beach & Forest Eco Adventure. They had booked months earlier, cancelled when their itinerary changed, then came back to us and asked whether we could make a later departure work. We could, and so adjusted the start time for the tour for them (we don't do this very often as it can throw other guests into confusion).

On the morning, things didn't quite go according to plan and I eventually found myself preparing another vehicle, collecting the family in Pemberton and driving them out to Lake Yeagarup to catch up with Graeme and the rest of the tour.

I was mostly thinking about times. Had I written something down incorrectly? Were the other guests getting impatient? How quickly could I get this family out to the lake without making the situation worse?

And then, somewhere along the way, I started looking out the window.

The forest had changed.

At home, only twenty kilometres away, I hadn't really noticed it yet. Out towards Yeagarup there were suddenly flashes of colour along the road: the delicate whites, the first pinks, yellow wattles and great splashes of purple tree hovea. Once I started looking, they seemed to be everywhere.

The roadside is often where we notice the change first. The break in the forest canopy brings light into places that have spent much of winter in shade, and there is something about driving through that first scattering of colour that tells you the season is moving before the calendar does.

Perhaps that is why our four European seasons have always seemed a fairly blunt instrument for describing what happens here.

In the Noongar seasonal calendar, August and September are generally associated with Djilba, but the important part is not simply which name belongs to which pair of months. Noongar seasons are understood through changes in Country: weather, plants, animals and other natural signs. DBCA describes Djilba as a time when flowers begin blooming, and its research into south-west seasons notes that biological events such as flowering can act as seasonal indicators. The bush is doing the announcing.

That makes sense when you spend enough time watching the forests around Pemberton, because our wildflowers don't arrive obediently on 1 September.

They come in waves.

One week your eye is caught by white flowers, then pink starts appearing, yellow seems to take over another stretch of road and suddenly the purple tree hovea is impossible to miss. Different places can be doing quite different things at the same time, which was demonstrated rather neatly by the difference between what I was seeing near Yeagarup and what was happening at our farm.

The pollinators are part of that changing picture too. Flowers aren't putting on their spring display for us, however much we enjoy it. Flowering times, insects, birds and the availability of nectar and pollen are tied together in relationships that are far more complicated than our idea of a single "wildflower season". Even the noise in the forest changes. DBCA's descriptions of the south-west's six seasons include breeding birds among the biological signs of Djilba, while anyone who has stood beneath flowering karri and heard purple crowned lorikeets feeding overhead will know just how conspicuous a food source can become once the birds find it.

As I drove, I started naming flowers for the family and had another small surprise: I knew considerably more than I thought I did.

Graeme does most of our guiding, so it is easy for me to forget how much knowledge accumulates simply through years of living and working in the same place. He will occasionally come home with an unusual plant and we'll try to identify it. There are favourite books that come off the shelf, photographs, iNaturalist, and if we're still wondering, we can ask Wendy. Sometimes we get an answer; sometimes we learn that what looked straightforward wasn't.

After more than twenty-five years, we're still looking things up.

The parents in the vehicle were interested in the wildflowers and encouraged their little girl to touch and investigate the flowers growing beside the path.

Eventually we reached Lake Yeagarup. I spoke quietly with Graeme about the family before he greeted them, introduced them to the other guests and they continued the adventure together. I waited until they'd gone before heading off myself.

Since I was unexpectedly out that way, I called into Pemberton Honey Co and Southern Forests Chocolate Co to do some research for another tour we're developing. I also grabbed Graeme some chocolate-covered lolly snakes, which have absolutely nothing to do with wildflower ecology but are his favourite.

By the time I drove home I was back to worrying about the tour. That evening I contacted the other guests and checked to make sure they had a great time and returned safely to Margaret River.

The funny thing is that amongst all that worrying about people, vehicles and times, the part of the day that stayed with me was the colour along the road.

We talk about "wildflower season" because it is convenient, particularly in tourism, but I think it undersells what is happening. There isn't one display to come and see before it finishes. From late winter onwards the forest keeps rearranging itself. What is flowering this week may be gone when the next species appears. The birds respond, the insects change, orchids emerge in places that looked empty, and even within twenty kilometres one patch of country can be ahead of another.

DBCA describes the forests of the south-west as being in flower through Djilba and Kambarang, broadly August to November. That gives you the months, but not really the experience of it.

For that, you have to go outside.

Preferably before spring arrives in your own backyard.