kathndes: wheat belt travels

From Esperance we travelled to Munglinup and had 4 nights at the beach. One good day and then the gale force winds found us again. We’d had enough of the beaches at this stage so headed inland. We travelled through Ravensthorpe to Hyden (Wave Rock country). The country has a lot of area effected by saline and we passed several large salt lakes. One of these was Lake King and it is one of the smaller ones. There's a lot of salt in creek beds and in the fields also. This is part of the southern wheat belt, very dry this season, and many crops failed. Wave Rock was quite impressive and some photos show the wall built on top to direct water into the local dam. Met some people from Nambour in Hyden who told us about “The Tin Horse Highway”, where farmers have made statues of horses out of old farm machinery and drums. We took 34 photos, but will show you only a couple. They were hilarious and very clever. This took us to Kulin where we stayed overnight. Had to go to Corrigin to get car tyres rotated under warranty and saw the local DOG CEMETRY. This was started by a local burying his dog in a grave and has gone on from there. People travel for miles to bury their dogs here. They have to get permission off the local council, so has turned out to be bigger than Ben Hur (see photo). Travelled north through more wheat stubble to Kokerbin Rock (the third largest monolith in Australia, after Mt. Augustus then Ayres Rock). The photos don’t really do it justice, as it is very large. We camped 3 nights here, with great facilities. We climbed to the top to look at more wheat fields. It’s hard to imagine how large the wheat belt is out here. We have just touched on a small part of it, and we have travelled about 600klm through it. Travelled NE and got to Northam. A very pretty town on the Avon River. Here we saw the rare white swans. This part of the country is very dry as they missed all the winter rains and the river level is quite low. Camped at Noble Falls (no water, mind you) 5kl NE of Gidgegannup (find this on your map!!!) A nice spot where Des may spend his “free time” while I’m in Qld. Left here and travelled out of the Perth hills and almost reached Midland before we headed east again up the escarpment to Mundaring. A very pretty, well established town on the way to York. This town has a lot of heritage listed buildings. Wandered around in 40 degree heat and were going to stay at the van park until we discovered they wanted $32 per night. Went on to the small town of Beverley where we stayed for $22 per night and had free use of the washing machine. All these small towns are very clean and tidy and some residents are very yard proud as well. Considering the lack of water and the surrounding country looking as thought it has no life at all, the townspeople really make an effort. The photo of the restored railway station and the mural on an adjoining wall are examples of this. On through the wheat to Brookton where there are a couple of displays of old drays and wagons. From there we travelled to Narrogin (a much cooler day today) and got some good info at the visitor’s centre and camped at a nice campground in the Dryandra woodlands just north of Narrogin. We did a night excursion at the local animal sanctuary for endangered species. Following an introductory talk we did a spotlight tour of the compound where we was some rufous hare-wallaby, bilbies, burrowing bettongs and others. They run breeding programs to re-introduce these to the wild. Very interesting.