Despite having been in the Illawarra for over 10 years now, I didn't even know that the Illawarra Grevillea Park in Bulli existed. More precisely I had heard the name, but knew nothing about it, or even where it is. As it turns out, it's just a short drive from the Princes Highway, past the old lawn bowls club which is now an F45 gym.

According to its web site, the park was created in the 1980s on 2.4 ha of land that was leased from Wollongong Council. The intention was to house all the Grevillea plants that had been collected by the Grevillea Study Group of the Australian Plant Society. The park manager Ray Brown was one of the driving forces behind the park, and did quite a remarkable job. In fact this year the park was designated as a botanic garden.

It's open only on occasion, and only from Spring to Autumn. This weekend was the last time it will be open for 2022.

Although grevilleas are the central focus, there is also an extensive rainforest walking track through the park as well. I have over 400 shots from today, so I expect that at some point I'll get around to creating a gallery for it, but hey, that's what I thought about all those thousands of photos from trips to Victoria, WA, Tasmania, Italy, Switzerland, England, France...

Grevilleas are commonly known as "spider flowers" because many of the 360ish species (almost all of which are Australian-based) have spider leg like projections from their flowers, as you can see here. They cover a wide range of colours from yellows to reds to pinks, and attract a lot of birdlife to gardens. Naturally they also attract bees, as I captured here... and this is not the only shot of the day to feature them.