In the morning we needed to head west and decided to do some more real back road travelling and see more of the old heritage towns. The road took us first northwest and then through hamlets like Moordebing and Nan Nan. These small towns of the wheat belt all seem to have a slogan on their name signs about themselves. The one in Moordebing was " Work hard and be happy". The hamlet was about ten house and they had an old tennis court and community center that has recently closed. It was obvious that in the past a lot of locals came in from the surrounding farms, but the plaque was dated 2013 and commemorated the last 100 years when the place had a center. The last player played tennis there in 2013. In a few years all the houses will be deserted except for one to manage the grain shipments for the train.

We headed due west on a ridge road from Nan Nan and the next main towns we stopped in were Beverly and York. These are all old farm towns about the size of a small Tullow. The bank buildings in both towns had been turned into heritage museums and the shops converted to coffee shops and houses. There is a lovely street in York, but again its slowly turning into a tourist town, with no real local soul. The farm land around has still got smaller farms and the roads have more houses and there are schools and its more developed that further east, but the signs are there of change. It is clear you are getting closer to Perth as the shops get bigger and the traffic increase to seeing a few cars every half hour.
The remaining towns we passed where all very tidy and there was great pride in them. Most were entered as part of the Australian tidy towns competition and so the grass was cut and the litter was taken up and the flowers planted where ever they could. Houses prices in these towns have fallen so fast that in many cases you could get a house for less than $100k Aussie for a three bedroomed house with a view and small farm. Basically come live here and we give you free accommodation is the catch cry.

York was nice place to stop and we wandered around all the small heritage shops and second hand junk shops with antiques. Joe was looking vicariously at everything on behalf of his mother who would have so enjoyed the town. So much stuff to see and observe.

Once we left York the road takes a run through various Avon valley reserves and the Wando national park is all on the south side. We stopped for a walk at Woottating nature reserve for a walk and to see the hills and vast swath of trees south towards the Bibbulmun track that we had walked only a few months before. The road took us onto the Perth hills and an hour later we were over the crest and heading down into Perth.

A absolutely great trip and the three stand out items are the miles of open country roads with sunshine and unending farmland, the super pit in Kalgoorlie and the endless scrub forests around Barra rocks. Lessons learned would be bring plenty of spare fuel and water and don’t drive at dusk for the kangaroos really do like to bounce onto the road and then stop to stare as you try to swerve.