Wheatbelt Wander

We were sitting at the table having breakfast on Friday morning when Steve checked for new caches in Western Australia. He said "Zodiachorizon and Blondie have put out more of those nano's on machinery. (They had already put a series of them out and we did them when we went to Esperence) Do ya wanna go?" I said "sure" not really meaning it. But before you know it we're packing a bag and booking  accommodation, just for the night, back the next day...and off we went!

Our first stop was Goomalling. The old train station has been done up very nicely!

We visited a number of towns and historic sites, some are no more than a wooden sign marking a place that used to be. Toodyay, Goomalling, Dowerin, Wyalkatchem, Cowcowing, Koorda, Badgerin, Mt Marshall, Duri-iring well, Trayning,  Kununoppin, and Yelbeni then returning to Perth.  

The first geocache on this sculpture, a nano wasn't too hard to find and was our first, FTF (first to find) for the trip!

The wheat belt is very busy at the moment, farmers getting ready for seeding. Paddocks were burning, truck delivering fertiliser and picking up hay and men on tractors ripping up the ground.

This is Rusty, a tin dog created by local students of Dowerin. It is just up the road from Tin Dog Creek. In the late 1800's the creek was used as a resting area for gold miners who left tinned beef cans scattered about, so was named after them. The cans of beef were colloquially known as tinned dog.

Another nano on machinery, this was an easy one in Wyalkatchem

By the time we got to Koorda we had done seven caches and had three FTF's and one DNF (did not find). When we rang up for accommodation in Koorda the only place we could get was a shire unit. We had to take our own sheet, blankets and pillows. Our main concern was that there was a television in the unit so we could watch the footy, St Kilda v Freo, Freo won yah! It was quite a roomy place, only problem was there was no phone reception which = no INTERNET! I don't know how people can survive without it! Oh well it was only for one night so we just watched telly and went to bed (separate beds, mind you!).

We thought it would be really cold out there at this time of year, but it wasn't. 

Next morning we were on our way by about 9:30am. Our first stop was just around the corner at what seemed to be a bit of a machinery museum. We had to try and find a nano on that old Beford truck. We did! Yah another FTF. The little building on the right looks like some kind of prison cell. Wonder who was held in there? We did a few more caches around Koorda one ended up being a bit of a pain, but we got it in the end. 

We made our way west to a couple of caches in the Badgerin area and then headed east to Mt Marshall. 

This is a well, these just amaze me every time I see one of these beautiful constructions, so well made it will probably be here for thousands of years to come. It is called Duri-iring which means, snake in the grass near a campsite.

After this photo I forgot I had a camera and didn't take any more photo's of that part of the trip, hmmm. We ended up in Trayning and for some reason I looked in the back of the car and realised we had left our doonas and pillows back at Koorda. This meant we had to drive all the way back. We didn't think we could get back there and then to Perth that night so decided to stay in Wyalkatchem. I rang a woman in Koorda and told her we were on our way to get our things. She said just use the key we had put back in the metre box in the morning, get our stuff and replace the key in the box. No worries, EASY!  We were starving by now and found a place in Trayning that had frozen pies and sausage rolls which the kind lady who owned the shop microwaved for us. She quite liked to have a chat so we were there for a while. Finally we made our way back to Koorda and drove straight to the units. Looked in the box, no key! Great! Can't ring anyone because there is no phone access. We went to the local IGA...closed! Hmmm a phone box, yay! Rang the number...no answer! What now?? We went to the local pub and explained our problem to a lovely old gentleman who ended up making quite a few phone calls to finally find the right person to unlock the unit. We were very grateful. After picking up our things we drove back to Wyalkatchem and booked into the pub for the night.

Wyalkatchem Pub

Next day we drove back to Perth after doing a few more caches, including getting the DNF now a FTF we couldn't find the day before.

This butcher shop was owned by my cousin Harry Payne many many years ago.

We ended up doing 23 geocaches and got 11 FTF's!