Monday 9th, Tuesday 10th and Wednesday 11th September, 2024

After our night at Yandanooka Rest Area we drove back to Mingenew to return the telescope, as well as other chores. The staff at the council where we took the telescope were lovely. We told them about the problems and hope that they will have them fixed. However, it’s apparently unusual for it to be hired out. They gave us a refund for the full amount, as well as our deposit. I had only meant to be helpful in pointing out what needed fixing, so it was a bonus.

Of course, we dropped into the bakery again. We had lunch and took a cake with us to have later in the day. By the time we reached the Watheroo Station Tavern later in the day we had travelled over 200kms, quite a lot for us. Watheroo Station Stay offers power and water hookups as well as toilets and showers that are open all night. The tavern opens at 5.00 p.m., but we waited until 6.00 p.m. to go in and have dinner. The cost of the dinner was our fee for all the facilities we used, what a nice way for them to get a bit more patronage. We really appreciated it.

On Tuesday we drove about 100kms to the Wannamal Rest Area. Although the scenary is no longer stunning, we enjoyed seeing the beautiful green and yellow fields. The shallow lakes along the way were all full thanks to the abundant rain.

Last time we visited the Wannamal Rest Area (2 years ago), we arrived in time for abundant wildflowers, including orchids. This time the flowers were a little past their prime and we only saw one rather sad looking orchid. Apart from the common cowslip orchids dotted about.

We love staying at Wannamal, partly because my mother used to live there, and partly because of the flushing toilet and good spaces to camp. They leave a very bright light on all night at the toilets, and this was something we had forgotten. Fortunately we were facing towards the light, which meant it didn’t affect us.

The morning was coolish, sunny, with light clouds. I set up the projector ready for the 9.00 a.m. US presidential debate. We thought we might just watch it for half an hour, but ended up watching the full 1.5 hours, and even some of the local commentry afterwards. Kamala Harris normally spouts word salads, especially when trying not to answer questions, but in this case she did a good job of answering at least some of the questions. She also spent time goading Trump to bring out his worst side, and he fell for it several times.

It was worth watching, one of these people will be the next leader of the free world. I don’t agree with some of the woke agenda of the Democrats, but Kamala feels like a safe pair of hands. She makes nothing of being a woman, and being a person of colour, and I like that she doesn’t position herself on these identies, but as the person she is.

After that, we needed a bakery! So, what better thing to do than head for the Bindoon Bakehaus. I needed a nap afterwards, so it was quite a bit later before we headed home. We like the Tonkin Highway as a way of entering the city. It was very busy indeed, so it was stressful driving, but we made it home safely and had a cup of tea.

We didn’t have much food left, so went out to the Hong Kong Tea House for lunch yesterday. In the evening we had cheese on toast with baked beans. I put in a click and collect order with Coles which I picked up this morning. We now have a variety of food for making meals.

It feels strange being home at the moment and we miss the Sherwood. I’m sure we’ll adjust quite soon. We’ve spoken with Matt and he is booked in to come to visit Sunday night for tea. I’ve picked up a Starlink Mini to trial. It is tiny compared with our other Dish, a Gen 3. Not as fast, but it appears to be reliable and is certainly going to be easier to handle and store away when travelling. And, we have a new Instant Pot Pressure Cooker as our last one was leaking a bit and had to be thrown away. I’ve been missing it. This is the larger size which is best for using at home.

Here are YouTube sharable links to the two videos in the last post. They should be better quality.

Monday 9th September, 2024

On Wednesday we drove from Morawa to Mingenew. We passed into the wheatbelt early in the drive, which meant much fewer wildflowers. Later in the journey it became more interesting as there were hills and quite a long drive down what felt like it had been an enscarpment. The day was cloudy and there had been a little drizzle in the morning and we had one bout of heavy rain on the journey.

When we arrived we went to the lovely Mingenew Bakery for hot drinks, sandwiches, and a shared peach tart. We shopped, then checked into the caravan park at about 2.00 p.m. They wisely gave us a site that was a bit tricky to drive into (if you have a caravan) and assigned Marie and Geoff a much easier site. They didn’t arrive until after 4.00 p.m. and by then it was raining heavily, which made set up quite unpleasant.

We had drinks under their awning in the late afternoon. We had to really rug up to be warm enough to sit outside, indeed, that included lap rugs, and it was good to do some catching up.

The next day was extremely wet, with squally fronts coming through, continuing into the afternoon. Stephen and I took it as a sign we could have a rest day, though I did some washing and Stephen walked over to the shop in a dry spell. Geoff felt like a drive so they went out for a couple of hours.

On Friday we went out for a walk at Depot Hill. Hats with fly veils helped us to stay out much longer than we otherwise could have done, although the men seemed OK. We saw cowslip orchids as well as everlastings. The walk seemed to just peter out into a number of dead end trails, so we didn’t actually get to the top of the hill. There were trenches left over from WW2, hence the name, Depot Hill.

We then drove to a tracking station that is set in fields of canola. We weren’t allowed into the tracking station, but had our lunch with a view of telescopes and canola. Naturally, we had bought sandwiches/rolls and cakes from the bakery for our lunch. It meant we could all make our own choices of food.

In the evening we had fish a chips made by our hosts at the caravan park. We decided to stay in our individual vans to eat, it was still very cold and after our day out it was good to just be comfortable inside.

On Saturday we went to the Coalseam National Park. My impression from our last visit was that it wasn’t all that interesting, with mainly yellow everlastings. However, this time I found it quite beautiful. There was some water in the river, swiftly flowing, and as it was quite a cool day, we could really enjoy being outside. We stopped to do the river walk, then went up to Irwin Point for the view of the Gorge.

We had our Bakery bought lunch in the car, there were still enough flys to be a problem, though not as bad as the day before. On the way out we went to the Miners Campground. This was very lovely as well. You could walk down to the water and there were some little waterfalls. As well, there were lots of everlastings. There is a day use area as well as the camping ground. It looked so beautiful that I really wanted to come and camp there.

Geoff had to negotiate two water crossing in the park. The first one didn’t have a paved ford, and it looked like other drivers were wondering what to do. There was a marker to show depth and it didn’t look too deep. Geoff drove across in what appeared to be a shallower part on one side, and didn’t have any problems. The second water crossing was a proper ford and we could see how deep it was. When we were leaving there were people walking across the ford, so we could really see that it was shallow. We didn’t have to go through the other crossing again as we left the park another way.

Of course, I was wondering how we would go in the Sherwood, especially going up and down a couple of steep parts of the road. The internal roads were gravel, but very well graded, so we would have been OK. Being higher, the water crossings would have been OK, though I might not have sensibly chosen the side of the road for the first one, as Geoff did.

In the evening we went to the pub and three of us had the savoury stew with vegetables that was on special and Geoff had a more traditional pub meal of chicken. It was a good way to round off our time together.

Of course, we must speak about the telescope. Stephen found he could hire one from the shire council. He picked it up Friday morning and spent some in the afternoon trying to work out how to use it. There were two problems with the equipment. One of the tripod legs didn’t have a lock, so it could only be used in the lowest position. In addition, the scope, that helps you locate stars, appeared to have a flat battery. Eventually he was able to work out how to focus on distant objects such as leaves and a distant RV’s lights and window.

The main object was to use it at a Stargazing and Planisphere at a free camp about 20kms south of Mingenew. We are close to the Yandanooka Town Hall, which has flushing toilets that are always open.

Last night, after talking with Matt on Facetime, we set up the telescope and took it out to the Planisphere. Stephen had found it very frustrating to use when he tried to see stars on Friday night. It remained frustrating. In the end he was able to focus on the sliver of the moon. We could see the craters even though the moon was very, very bright. Unfortunately, there was some high cloud developing and the night wasn’t very clear.

We have booked into a stargazing fest at Curtin University in a few weeks time and are hoping to learn a lot more about how to actually use a telescope. It seems that it isn’t simply a matter of getting out on a dark night and finding individual stars and planets. You really have to know what you are doing. Still, we have learned quite a lot from this experience and now have some knowledge. It doesn’t help that the earth is rotating at quite a speed. Some telescopes have in built tracking so that they stay aligned, but otherwise you have to manually adjust for the rotation.

Otherwise, this is a lovely little spot to be. There were seven of us altogether last night, mostly spread out although there is a caravan quite close to us. The occupants also came over to the planisphere after dark to see the stars.

I will upload the Apple generated slideshows to Youtube later so that they can be viewed at a higher resolution. Unfortunately WordPress downgrades the videos.

Monday 2nd and Tuesday 3rd September, 2024

We’ve had a couple of wonderful driving days since Yalgoo on the way to Morawa, with everlastings carpeting the bushland as we travelled along. Cream, pink, blue, mauve and white. Today we even saw some of the rare wreath flowers. They like the graded edges of roads.

I’ve taken photos and videos of the flowers, but can’t seem to show just how incredible it was for us. With little traffic on the road we were able to cruise at about 70kms today, which allowed us to really take in the changing scenes. The everlastings seem to like flat land more than hills. When we reached the Shire of Morawa we were entering the agricultural region and then we only had flowers on the roadside verges or where there were little patches of bush.

Our overnight at the cemetry was lovely visually, but the flies were so dreadful that we only went outside when necessary. Our location tonight is also plagued by flies, but we have neighbours who are sitting outside, I guess with their flynets on.

We put our fly nets on for a bit of a walk here in the late afternoon, just to check out the area where we are staying. The constant buzzing is annoying, but with long sleeves and long pants they couldn’t actually land on us, apart from our hands.

On the way here we called in to Morawa for hot drinks, shopping, and to visit the dump point and to fill up at what we hope is a potable water tap. We have some spring water bottles left, plus sparkling water, and will only drink the water from that tap if we boil it, just in case. We used it for our afternoon tea and Stephen said it tasted a bit salty.

Of course, the water is fine for our water tank as we only use it for washing, dishes and us.

And tomorrow it is off to Mingenew to meet up with Marie and Geoff and explore that area, including looking for everlastings, wreath flowers, and hopefully other flowers as well.

Monday 2nd September, 2024

We’ve had a couple of good overnight stops. On Saturday we spent the night at Lake Nallan about 30kms north of Cue. When I planned the stop I didn’t immediately realise that we had been there before, but it seemed very familiar. After setting up the Starlink we confirmed that we spent a night there in June, 2021 in the Adria van. In fact, we had the same campsite on the edge of the lake.

The lake was much fuller last time we were there, but the shrinkage worked in our favour as the wading birds were a bit closer to us when they were on our side of the lake. We saw herons and ducks, but no swans this time.

We had our chilliest night yet, 8C outside and 9C inside. As it was sunny in the morning I just rugged up and didn’t use the heater, knowing the sun would warm us up fairly quickly.

The flies were bad in the afternoon when we arrived, but we have fly nets and could still get outside in the evening to see the birds. Someone disturbed them by walking around the lake, and they flew to the other side. It was tricky to photograph them as I don’t have a long enough lens. But, I still liked some the shots due to reflections of the birds and the evening colours.

We’ve been seeing a lot of wildflowers since leaving Port Hedland, but after Cue we’ve begun seeing everlastings, sometimes large clusters. Just before Mt Magnet is a place called The Granites and we called in there to have our lunch.

We refuelled in Cue and had a coffee in the rather nice American diner style cafe. So, with Mt Magnet we just passed through and went on to our park up. It’s nothing special, just a rest area with a large field where you can camp away from the road. I’m not sure if it is private property, but we can see a fence a long way behind us and there are no livestock around. There were two other campers overnight but we were able to find a spot well away from them.

Of course, as it was Sunday, we spoke with Matt on Facetime. Now that we are in the same time zone he sees us preparing and having our meal, then washing up. He used to just join for the washing up. He seems happy enough to just hang there whilst we chat to him and do what we would normally do.