The sun was out when we got up in the
morning and the whole area was quite pretty, lots of wattle trees with their
blossoms shining in the early morning sun. It was also very very cold, with a
layer of ice over the car and the tent, and frozen pools of water on top of our
trailer cover. Tony got another fire going, and the kids gradually emerged out
into the cold and sat around the fire before having breakfast. The kids rescued
a little skink from the fire and played around the campground. Millie was keen
to leave, she didn’t like the place at all. I’d hoped to get up and going
early, we were all moving pretty slowly though and it was 10.30 by the time we
had everything ready to go.
On our way to Wave Rock (only another 30km)
we saw a pig farm, with lots of big pigs and a group of very cute little
piglets. There had been a war memorial at our campground and as we drove I
noticed that many of the road names were the same as the names on the war
memorial – I guess they would have been farmers around this area, and I don’t
know if the roads were named after the family who lived there, or in memory of
the men who fought in the war. We got petrol in Hyden, which had cool
decorations around the town. The old railway platform was covered in iron
sculptures of people and seats and equipment – as if they were all waiting for
the train to come.
Wave Rock is somewhere that I’ve wanted to
go since I was a kid, and I didn’t think we’d be able to fit it in to this
trip. When we looked at the best way to get home though, it worked quite nicely
as a stopover on our way to Esperance (if we are willing to skip Kalgoorlie. I
would have liked to see it too, but Wave Rock and Esperance seemed more
exciting). We paid our entry fee and when the lady gave me all the information
about the area I briefly wished we’d stayed at the rock instead of where we
did, so we could spend more time there – then figured it wasn’t worth worrying
about what we could have done if we’d had more information, and just to enjoy
what we did do.
We rugged up, there was a wind blowing and
it was pretty cold. We walked around to the Wave and it was very very cool. So
weird to see a rock curving out like that, and it was high and long and quite
impressive, well worth the drive out to see it. The kids climbed up the slope
as far as they could, and slid down again, We wandered along it’s length,
reading about how it was formed and the geography of this area – it’s a very
rocky part of the world, and Wave Rock is the most famous of a great number of
cool rock formations around here. I wasn’t expecting the colours on the rock,
lots of vertical stripes of black and orange and yellowy colours, caused by
water and lichen and cyanobacteria, which made it look even cooler.
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Past the end of the wave we were able to
walk along the side of Hyden Rock (the larger rock that Wave Rock is a part of,
and start to climb up behind the wave. There was a dam here, they had built a
dam wall to catch the runoff from Hyden Rock, and that supplies the town of
Hyden with its water. So cool to see sensible usage of rain water. Walking
along the rock up above the wave was pretty cool, Hyden Rock rose up a lot
higher behind it, and there were rock pools, wildflowers, trees and boulders
scattered across the rock. There was a concrete wall built along the length of
the wave, 20m or so from the edge, to stop people going to the top of it. We
decided to do the short walk across Hyden Rock, which took us the length of the
wave – then we had to climb over the concrete wall and walk down the sloping
rock to the ground. It seemed a bit ludicrous, but that’s the way the trail
went, and the climb down was fine. Cool to see yet another view of the wave
(from the side as we sloped down next to it).
Back at the car we got some lunch ready,
then finally headed off around 12.30. The countryside was beautiful as we drove
south east. Lots of crops, green and yellow, lots of sheep and occasionally
cattle. Wildflowers here and there, hills in the distance. The land was undulating,
with areas of flat ground as well. There were lots of low lying areas that
obviously filled with water when it rained – many of them were full now – with
dead trees throughout them. As we’ve been driving around Australia we’ve seen
lots of cleared paths running from the road into the trees or bush to the side,
then suddenly stopping, and we couldn’t figure out what they were for. Here,
those cleared areas were full of water, so it looks like they are drainage
channels to help keep the water off the road when it rains.
The little towns we past through all looked
interesting. Lots of them had done interesting things with their now out-of-use
railway stations. One town (Lake King I think) had a tractor museum (a large
open shed full of tractors). We stopped
in Ravensthorpe to go to the toilet, then drove mainly east from there – eyeing
off the black clouds to the south and hoping we’d get to
With a forecast for gales and lots of rain,
we decided to stay at a caravan park that wasn’t right on the beach. I’d found
the one that claimed to be the cheapest, and when I went to book in the girl
said it would be $60 for unpowered – the kids were $10 each! That’s the 2nd
highest amount we’ve paid ANYWHERE, and by far the most for unpowered. I went
back out to the car to discuss with Tony – the wind was picking up and it was
feeling more urgent to get a spot and get the tent up, but we’re also still
needing to be careful of our spending. I rang another caravan park and while
they were giving me a price (which was even higher!) the girl came out and said
that seeing as we had 3 kids, she’d only charge $5 each. So that made it
affordable and we were happy to stay. She also said that there wasn’t much
demand for the unpowered sites at the moment, no one else was game enough. She
said we could pick either of the corner sites, whichever we thought would give
us more protection from the wind.
When we got to the unpowered area, we were
the only people using it. There was a fence surrounding most of the area, on 3
sides, so we were able to set up in a corner with a fence on 2 sides of us, and
were mainly protected from the wind. We got the tent up as quickly as we could,
and managed it before the rain started. I set up the beds while Tony and the
kids went to the camp kitchen to start getting dinner ready.
The rain was quite steady throughout the
evening, easing off occasionally, when we could make quick dashes over to the car
or tent if we needed anything. We watched the Olympics and some ABC3 shows, ate
a fantastic butter chicken dinner, filled in our Census form and hung out in the
(slightly warmer – there was still a breeze coming through above the windows,
its really just an enclosed shed) kitchen area for the rest of the evening. Tony,
Caitlin and LiAM went and had a shower before bed, Millie was asleep before
they came back and we snuggled into our beds – it was warmer than last night
but the rain made it feel less comfortable.
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