Lesueur National Park in Jurien Bay; stunning flowers and hiking
Jurien Bay is a well known, stunning coastal town just over 2 hours north of Perth. We’ve visited many times, but never made it to Lesueur National Park, which you can see from Jurien Bay, and is hugely popular for its stunning views, wildflowers, hikes and amazing scenery.
On a recent trip to Jurien Bay, we finally got an opportunity to check Lesueur National Park out, and weren’t disappointed at all. We spent the better part of a day walking through the various tracks, and soaking up the amazing wildflowers and views.
In many ways it reminded us of the Fitzgerald River National Park near Hopetoun and Bremer Bay, with similar temperatures, great flora and plenty of amazing walks to do.
Where is Lesueur National Park?
From Jurien Bay, Lesuer National Park is 23km away in a North East direction, and Google says 17 minutes. You’d get there in a bit less though, with the last 8km being good condition gravel (and Google always over-estimates these!).
It’s also not too far from the amazing Karda Camp Ground, which you should 100% stay at.
What does it cost to enter?
Being a national park, the normal entry fees apply. It’s $15 for a normal vehicle, or $8 for concession. As usual, if you are visiting more than a few National Parks, you can get an annual pass to all national parks in WA, or a holiday pass for 4 weeks.
Even better, if you are with RAC you can save 50%, and avoid paying these individual fees (which I reckon are a bit of a rip off, but that’s another story).
The scenic drive
To see Lesueur National Park, you have to commit to doing an 18km loop drive, which starts at the entry fee station, and meanders its way through the park on a one way bitumen road. You must do the whole drive to get out, and you end up almost where you started (just further north).
The drive has a number of places where you can pull off, with signs pointing to various tracks and plants, and then there’s two main car parks where the larger hikes start from. Both of these have toilets, and are good spots to sit and have a bit of a picnic too.
What hikes are there?
I was surprised to find some pretty serious hikes at Lesueur. The two main ones are Yued, which is 6km from Cockleshell Gully Picnic area, and the other is the Lesueur Trail that is 3.5km return, and heats to the top of Mt Lesueur.
If you are really keen, there’s a multi day hike that covers 26 kilometres from the same point that Yued leaves from.
We only walked a few hundred metres on the start of the Yued track, and enjoyed the wildflowers poking around.
Checking out the wildflowers
Our visit was in mid August, which is when the flowers are starting to come out more. We could see a lot that weren’t quite out, and I would assume a few weeks later would be better, but it was still incredible. If you haven’t taken the time to see the WA wildflowers, its so worth doing, and in particular a visit to Coalseam Conservation Park.
It’s a great place to visit
We really enjoyed our visit here. The wildflowers were poking their heads out quite well, its extremely well set up and a great place to relax, or walk some hours away. If you haven’t been, put it on the list!
