Jan19-20 (Day 334-335) - Goldfields to Wave Rock to Perth

800km - Jan 19 in blue, Jan 20 in red

Tuesday Jan 19 - Goldfields to Wave Rock

 

The water pipeline from Perth to Kalgoorlie
runs alongside the main road

We headed from our campsite and drove along the highway heading west towards Southern Cross. As we drove we could see the pipeline running alongside the road, the same pipeline we were camped near overnight.  This is the pipeline which was run back in the early 1900's from Mundaring Dam in the Perth hills out to Kalgoorlie to provide a stable water supply for the goldmines. It was this pipeline which helped the goldfields expand and become more profitable, as a lack of water was one of the biggest challenges they faced in the early days.

This little guy had two ticks in his ear! :(

After turning off at Southern Cross and hitting the dirt roads again, we saw another lizard on the road, a blue-tongue this time. But when we picked it up to move it off, we noticed it had two ticks living in its left earhole! :( So with some restraint and with Bek on the tweezers, we managed to extract the little blighters and give them a quick burial under our heels, while Bluey was released to the wild sans-bloodsuckers!

 

Removing the ticks in its ear

Lizard Surgeons 'R' Us

Our next stop was a place I'd heard about recently - Gibb Rock. This is a rainwater tank out in the middle of nowhere but that gets rainwater filling it up! It's located on the side of a granite hill, but engineers have built a small gutter wall towards the bottom of the hill, so any rainwater which lands and runs down the rock face gets collected and runs into the tank!

 

The catchment wall / gutter at Gibb Rock

View of the tank from the side of Gibb Rock

Panorama of Gibb Rock

 

Our next stop was another rock, but this time one we'd heard a lot more about - Wave Rock! We took a walk around and over the top of it - it's amazing seeing how tall it is! We were sent a photo from someone who used to live in Perth as a child and the rock looks pretty much identical!

 

Wave Rock also has a catchment wall to let
it collect rainwater

Amazing scale of this rock!

We then made an impromptu stop at the Hyden swimming pool. It was only about $10 to get in for all of us or something pretty reasonable like that. They even had a diving platform over a 3m plunge pool! We had a great time!

 

After all this we found a free camp further along near Gorge Rock.

Wednesday Jan 20 - Wave Rock to Perth

York Town Hall

Pretty uneventful day, except we had a LOVELY time in York! Wow! What a pretty, tidy but old-world town it was! Bookstores, museums, tea rooms yet it's all running as a modern town, not as a vintage town! It's in some ways more realistic than a pioneer village because no-one's pretending. We loved it!

York

 

York main street

 First things first, we got some morning tea / lunch at a bakery before stumbling across the York Motor Museum. This is a privately-run museum with lots of old vehicles in it, including some Mim and I remembered as 'normal' cars as kids!

 

Mim's family had one of these...

... and my Grandma had one of these!

 

Old fuel bowser out the front

We headed off and back into Perth. We went along Great Eastern Highway because I wanted to recapture this view we had when we drove over to Perth in 2007 - you get such a lovely view of the city as you come through the hills.



And that's pretty much it! We got back to Mim's parents' place where Mim's dad had sourced some work desks for the kids and had them all set up ready to go!

So where from here? Well since I'm writing this towards the end of March you'll find out soon enough, but I will post a few summaries of what we've done in the time we've been in Perth shortly.

-- Greg