Emu Walk (900m)

Set just north of Balingup, Racecourse Flora Reserve carries an unusual local history in its shape as well as its bush. What survives here is not only a patch of native vegetation but the ghost of an old country racecourse, with the oval form of the former track still readable in the landscape. That overlap of regrowth, remnant forest and community history gives the reserve a character that feels distinct from the larger forest blocks elsewhere in the south-west.

The place grew out of the old Balingup racecourse, first cleared in 1905 and used for meetings from 1906, with racing continuing on and off until the late 1980s. In 2005, three separate reserves were combined to form Racecourse Flora Reserve, folding the old track into a broader protected area of mainly indigenous vegetation. Even without knowing the full story, the layout makes more sense once you understand that this was once a social gathering place as much as a bush reserve, and that its present landscape has been shaped by both clearing and recovery.

That setting places the reserve within the wider Balingup district, a part of Western Australia's inland south-west where orchards, farmland and small townships sit close to jarrah forest and older pockets of native bush. Around Balingup, the transition between settled land and forest is often abrupt, so small reserves like this can feel surprisingly intact despite their modest scale. They also help explain why the district is so closely associated with wildflowers, birdlife and the mixed woodland character of the Blackwood Valley hinterland.

The reserve sits in Wardandi and Ganeang/Kaneang Noongar Country, within a broader cultural landscape that long predates the racecourse era. Today, the appeal of the place lies partly in that layered story: a fragment of south-west bushland, a reminder of Balingup's early recreation grounds, and a small but telling example of how local reserves can hold both ecological and community memory in the same piece of country.