By the time we left the park in the morning, almost everyone else was either preparing to go, going, or gone, leaving the park very empty, and the way we presume it usually is when Woolorama is not on.

While eating breakfast, a fellow camper came across and we were discussing the costs of caravanning versus tenting. We told him that because the caretaker had not called the previous evening to collect the camping fee (as advertised), we’d have to slip it under the laundry door (also advertised as the alternative payment method). He then told us that the caretaker had called on the previous evening at 7pm, which is when we would have been eating dinner, only 2m from our tent. We could not understand how we’d been missed in the fee collection, but took it as a bonus, and did not bother leaving the fee on the grounds that the caretaker should have approached us. A small present for our last night’s stay in the state.

After driving through broadacre cropping farms for a couple of hundred kilometres, we arrived at Kondinin and took the turn-off to Wave Rock. The map we had marked the road to Wave Rock as a high-grade road, similar to a highway, but a sign warning “INTERMITTENT SINGLE LANE ROAD NEXT 55KMS” suggested otherwise. However, we were in the middle of nowhere, and it was the road to Wave Rock, so we drove down it. We soon discovered that “intermittent” meant “ninety five percent of the time”, with sections of two-lane road only over hills and around corners, exactly where it is illegal to overtake a slower vehicle anyway.

Wave Rock was a lot smaller than we were expecting, which surprised us. We’ve seen so many pictures of the place that we estimated it was about 400-500m in length, but in reality, it was about 100-120m. The height was as we envisaged, based on the height of people in the pictures we’d seen, but the length really surprised us.

After admiring the rock from the socially-correct angle, we then climbed up the side of it, to walk around on top. The actual wave part of the rock is only a small section of the rock, which is about 2km in length, sticking up out of the ground for no reason. Also on top of the rock were four deaf people who looked about to pass out from dehydration, but were still staggering around. We’d taken water up with us, but they had none, and were really feeling the heat of the 35C day.

We left the wave part of the rock then, and drank a 1.25L bottle of lemon soft drink between us in record time, and drove to another part of the rock called Hippo’s Yawn, so named because it looks like, well, you guessed it. Hippo’s Yawn is separated from Wave Rock by a 1.4km walking track, and when we arrived, the four deaf people came staggering along the track, barely able to keep going. Two of them were too weak to walk back to the car, so the other two started to walk back and get it, then drive around to this part of the rock, as we had done. We offered the walking two a ride in our car back to the carpark, and had to play a weird game of charades to indicate that we could give them a lift back to their car to save them walking. Neither Trav nor Di can do sign language, and neither of them could lip-read. Great. Still, we got the message through, and they got back okay.

Our good deed done for the day, we drove into the nearby town of Hyden to get lunch and allow Diana to qualify as “Stupid Person Of The Day”. Yes, it had taken the entire holiday for Di to be nominated for the award, but she made a fantastic entry. Getting two bottles of soft drink out of the fridge to have with our lunch, the condensation on the sides of the bottles proved too much and she dropped one. Ordinarily a plastic bottle of soft drink will just bounce and be shaken up, but the bottom end of this one cracked, and the sudden shaking of the bottle added enough pressure to spray most of the wall, counter and Trav’s legs with soft drink. In order to stop the bottle from soaking absolutely everything, Trav grabbed it and headed for the door. The only problem was that Di was between Trav and the door, saw the bottle of spraying liquid coming her way, and bolted backward, blocking the doorway. By the time the sticky mess was outside, it had stopped spraying, so everything had been sprayed inside the shop. No other entrants need apply - Di had taken the award for Day Ten.

After lunch, we checked out the original Kondinin homestead, which is apparently classified by the National Trust. We expected to find out a little of the history of the area, but it was just an arts and crafts shop in disguise. Neither of us felt like buying a bar of soap for $5, or a rocking chair for $400, so we left pretty quickly.

On the road back to Perth, we passed through a town called Corrigin where the main claim to tourism fame is - we kid you not - a dog cemetery. Naturally, we had to stop and pay our respects to the graves of Snoopy, Rusty, Cobber, Bluey, and others.

As we got within 50kms of Perth, we began to get concerned about the amount of fuel remaining in the car. Due to the Hyden petrol station being the most expensive fuel price we found in all our WA travels, we had not filled up much there, and were beginning to get quite low. Adding to that was the fact it was a Sunday afternoon, and a lot of the small towns had closed petrol stations. We eventually managed to find an open petrol station with about two litres of fuel (~25 kms driving distance) remaining, which was a relief.

After cleaning the car to return it to the hire company, and having dinner, we had to kill time in Perth on a Sunday evening until our flight left at 10:55pm. We decided to check out the Burswood Casino, and were surprised to find such a nice-looking exterior featuring a dark, dingy, run-down dump inside. We actually had to argue our way inside to have a look because the doorman told us we could not go inside with jeans on after 8pm. Trav pointed out that, as it was only 7:57pm, we could still go in, and after a look of great disgust, the doorman had to let us in. We only ended up staying in there for about 15 minutes, suddenly realising that Crown Casino in Melbourne is a beautiful place in comparison to Burswood Casino.

With the late flight and time difference, we arrived back in Melbourne at 5:05am, and went to bed for a few hours before driving down to Glenormiston to take soil nitrogen measurements. It would have been nice to take a break for another couple of days before easing into it, but then again, we were lucky to get that much time away from the paddock and glasshouse (thank you to the people that released Trav of duties for ten days!).

So what did we learn from the trip?

1. Western Australian tourist bureaus are lousy.
2. Western Australian beaches are fantastic.
3. A Hyundai Excel can easily cover 3983 kms in 9 days of driving.
4. Diana survived the whole time sleeping in a tent.
5. It is good to take a vacation.

Categories: Travel, WA 1999