Morawa to Perth

So we awoke to dry skies, but with the sun breaking through we packed up in dry and sunny weather. The tent and base sheet were very wet, but did manage to keep the water out of the tent and overall a good result considering the heavy rain that fell. As this was our last day it did not matter, so all went into the car to be sorted out later. We headed south and back thought the town of Perjorni. The road would eventually take us all the way thought the middle lands of the Brand highway and the Great Northern highway to Perth.

Our first stop was at the road house at Perjorni, for a cold drink and air for the car tyre. The electricity was still off, so no air, but the helpful cafe girl was full of information about the town as she had been there for six months as a back packer and was heading north in a week. As we were there a ute came in with a kangaroo stuck inside the grill. How it got there and did not pop the hood is amazing. The old timer seems unconcerned and was used to hitting roo's at speed.

He happily posed for the camera and thought it was fun. Tracy on closer inspection also found a dead bird inside the grill, so a feast of dead wild life. He was doing 140 km when he hit the roo so was lucky that he was still alive.

On the way south we saw a sign for a cave and of course being the intrepid travellers decided to give it a look. We were the only overseas visitors in the last 12 months and could see why when you have to drive so far down a dirt road and then park where its very isolated. The cave had been used as a source of guano droppings and sold as fertiliser. It must have been back breaking work to shovel it out into bags and then drag the bags up to the top to be carted to Perth and regional farms for sale. The surround area was wheat fields as far as the eye could see.

We then went to Moora and had lunch in the standard town park. It

was a lovely small town and has a tea house, bedding shop and was a reasonable size. It had a bowling green opposite the park where the locals were playing and a few churches still were operational. The town may just have the critical mass to survive and as the smaller town depopulate they may move here to ensure its survival. The road from Moora south began to have a few more houses and slowly you could see small clusters of houses and little villages.

The road was still quite empty, but life returned when we hit Bindoon. Once there it was short run back into Perth on the highway. There were more cars at the traffic lights at Guildford than we had seen in the whole day from Yagoo.

So what was learned or observed from the trip? Well, lets start with the basics:
1) Never assume because the sky is blue with no clouds and its over 40 degrees, that you can't get wet and cold within 4 hours from a thunder storm.
2) If going off bush you need two spare tyres
3) Never drive over 100 km an hour when the temperatures are over

40 degrees as tyres will blow.
4) Always fill up with fuel whenever you can
5) Hitting a Kangaroos at speed is like hitting a wall
6) WA is huge and has so few people, you need to be prepared
7) Water is not to be taken for granted
8) If something is wriggling around in hidden bush grass leave it alone!

Everywhere we went we could see slow and steady depopulation as people consolidated farms and what was 6 or 7 family farms twenty years ago is now only one. The farmers now live on a single farmyard generally close to a small town. I would say in ten years time half the small towns we visited will be gone and only the bigger ones will be able to survive with schools and shops etc.

And so ends another tour of new lands strange places and interesting

places. The impression one gets is of a move to larger more commercial farms with fewer, but bigger town. exciting times ahead for the wheat belt area and so roll on the next trip :)