Perth, Western Australia: Wireless Hill Park, Museum, and Wild Flower Walk - Day 3

Alien plant life or
Aussie wild flowers? 

Wireless Hill Park, Museum, and Wild Flower Walks was one of my sister's earliest suggestions for something the family could all do together on our trip back to Perth, Western Australia.

I hadn't done a lot of driving prior to this trip so driving to the park was a little nerve wracking. I was expecting to make a tricky lane change/exit on Kwinana Freeway, that required crossing several lanes quickly, but we missed our exit for that route (directed by, my partner, Enigma's phone GPS). 

The new re-routing the phone gave us turned out to be simpler and avoided the freeway altogether - which I'm still unsure as to how that was even possible based on my own 23 year old memory of Perth roads? Thankfully it made going home much less nerve wracking as we simply retraced the way we came.

Wireless Hill Park is located in the City of Melville. It's a heritage area and the site of one of Australia's first Wireless Stations, linking the country with radio technology. It was used for telecommunications during World War One and World War Two.

The Station communicated with ships off the Australian coast using a mast that was 112 metres tall. The mast is no longer in place but the tower supports that held it up are still intact, with one being converted into a lookout point with city views.

One of the mast's four anchor point buildings which has been converted into a
look out that features views of the Perth City skyline.

The park features many
historic information boards.

The park itself features many signage boards with historical images recounting the history of the station. There is also a fairly unique war memorial you can walk around that comes together as a single image when viewed from a marked location.

We were disappointed that the museum wasn't open this day due to an exhibition of the Melville Art Award being set up, ready to open the following day. Had the museum's web site mentioned the museum would be closed we probably would've waited a day since we all have varying interests in art.

While the park features various heritage trails the majority of our group weren't really up to the lengthier walks. Fortunately the Wild Flower Walk also happened to be the shorter and easier of all the trails, and was the one we came for.

That said, we seem to have missed the peak window for the wild flower walk and had to settle for only seeing pictures of many of the flowers we might have seen if we had visited somewhere between August and October. I was particularly disappointed not see a flower called 'Bacon and Eggs'.

We were definitely too late for 'Bacon and Eggs'.

Miss Maud dine in restaurant at Garden City.
Photo: Miss Maud website.

After the park we went to a nearby Westfield Shopping Center (formerly known as Garden City Shopping Center) for lunch at Miss Maud. I had their 'Best Seller' Club Sandwich and Enigma had Chicken avocado and cheese focaccia (Turkish bread).

On a side note, when we went into the shopping center car park the plan was to park near the David Jones Store as my sister thought Miss Maud was near there (which it was). However the entrance I randomly used took us straight to the undercover parking, a huge space. 

I did a whole lap of the area trying to find the door into the center. I found it. Randomly got a parking spot right next to it (wasn't even disability parking). Miss Maud was almost literally at the top of the escalator going in!

That was pretty much our day. By the time we had browsed the Shopping Center Mall for a bit, then dropped everyone home, we headed back to our apartment for a fancy dinner of Jatz biscuits, cheese and Cabanosi (cold sausage) for tea.

Wireless Hill Park keeping up the tradition of spectacular toilet block murals.
Read about and see more Aussie toilet block murals.