Falls Farm (Lesmurdie)

I recently got to take some pictures of SCN at a location in Lesmurdie known as Falls Farm. When I originally started to key this post up it was to feature one of the pictures of SCN from that shoot and for a bit of background commentary I was going to include some notes about Falls Farm along with a few pictures of the location.

Trouble is that I filled the posting up with so many pictures and notes about Falls Farm that it became a lot more about Falls Farm than it did about my shoot of SCN. So what I decided to do in the end was make this posting about Falls Farm and then the next posting will show off a couple of my pictures of SCN I took at the Falls Farm location.

Sixteen years ago when I dragged my family up to Kalamunda from the suburbs I did a lot of driving around the area to check things out and I came across Falls Farm then. But, as far as I know, in 16 years, I have not been back to Falls Farm—except in the last couple of months checking it out as a location to do a shoot with SCN.

Apparently there was a centenary celebration for Falls Farm on the 27th March this year (2011), so—assuming they have that right—that would mean that the original cottage was built in 1911.

There is a wee brook the flows past the farm cottage and I presume that this either becomes Lesmurdie Falls, which is about two miles away falling over the edge of the Darling Ranges, or it feeds into the creek that is Lesmurdie Falls. Hence the name Falls Farm.

The picture above turned out so well with a bit of sun breaking through the trees on the rocks (in the foreground in the creek) and the storm clouds gathering over behind the cottage that I am thinking of putting it on 500 pixels—although it is REALLY hard to get votes for your pictures over at 500 pixels.

In what would have been the front yard of the cottage there is a rose garden with rather large rose bushes. Well it is mostly roses but there are a couple of other plants in there as well. I really needed a wider angle lens than the 18-135 zoom I was using. Even from the very end of the path I could not get the lens wide enough to capture all of the garden but you can see most of it in the picture below. And for those saying “All you had to do was back up a little further” there was no more room to back up. The path ends there and there is garden behind me.

I know it is a little corny and I generally don’t go in for close ups of flowers but I couldn’t resist the next picture.

I just loved the colour of this rose in the rose garden. It uses all the possible shades of pink going from an extremely subtle pink, that could almost be mistaken for white (but it’s not white), through to a very solid, almost harsh, pink (see the bud in the middle)—but without turning into anything that could be considered red.

I have tried to get the colours just right on my screen so this shot came up as I saw it in the garden. However my screen is colour calibrated. You may not get the full effect if your screen is not set up correctly.

For anyone interested in more information about Falls Farm I found the following two Web pages:

• “Farm vital part of Lesmurdie history” (here).
• “Falls farm 100 not out” (here) from the Echo newspaper.

There is also a family barbeque area in a natural bush park setting alongside Falls Farm complete with a park bench and a free electric push button barbeque hot plate. I didn’t try the electric barbeque hot plate so I can’t guarantee that it works—but it probably does.

My last picture of the Falls Farm location is of this old fence which I presume is either the original fence or a restored version of it. From the weathered grey sun-bleached look of the wooden planks I think there is a very good chance that it is the original fence.