Not a Skimpy Hole

The arrival of Emma and Bronwyn to spend a few days with us around Anzac Day meant that we altered our plans a bit, and the elephant in the room, Wave Rock, got a call up. We would go camping for 4 days, leave Perth and head west into Goldfields Country!

Tin Horse ballerina

Wave Rock at Hyden was originally on the planned route we would take. It got shafted pretty quickly by a healthy dose of realism from Sara ie "how good can a big rock be, I can't be stuffed driving all that way for granite". With some skilled negotiation from myself, and assurance from Tony that Kalgoorlie was also worth a look, we headed back East. My concerns that the kids had become soft after the green grass of Mandalay, and the comfort of living in a house again, were quickly put to bed.

The Tin Horse Highway was requested from the back seat after Ivy had been perusing the map and associated brochures. Not sure who taught her to read, but we are paying dearly for it. Pretty funny deviation though. We got to the rock, clambered over it, generally remarked that it was a fairly impressive piece of geological engineering, and headed out to find a campsite. A track was spotted off to the side of the road near some caves. We took it, and discovered a cleared area free from Wicked campervans. Tents were put up, food was prepared, and dry wood collected for a campfire. Fly nets on, we were no longer a team of doughboys, we were the very definition of a bush camp hardened family.

Tin Horse bar

The next few days were like that. Walking, driving, crosswords and bad eighties music in the car whenever Bruno Mars was resting (not often). We camped each night, with fires. Flies went on once, but the threat of a big storm never eventuated despite lightning storms that shut local mining down.



Hamma gets a wave

We arrived in Kalgoorlie after having survived the 2WD version of the 4WD John Holland track. The storms had all but closed the SuperPit to tourists, so we did the next best thing and sat down in front of a locally produced mining propaganda video to learn about how good mining actually is for the environment and local communities. This was followed by a far more entertaining video produced by a British company, that emphasised how dangerous, but ultimately boring and sad it must be to drive a massive tip truck in all conditions for 12 hours, then go out and spend all your money at the local pub paying extra to watch some equally well paid lass serve beer in her undies. The kids were agog as the skimpies pranced around. Not sure it left the best impression on them; take home message...stay in school!! 

Pink Lake???

We felt we'd seen enough and barrelled back to Perth via the brownest Pink Lake we've seen to date, and the 3rd biggest monolith in Australia. Estimated climbing time? 1 1/2 hours. Anderson climbing time? 25 minutes.The White Kenyans might still have us on the flat, we'll take them in the hills. Final night was a road side rest stop and we fell asleep to the gentle hum of road trains thundering through. Not looking forward to introducing them to Kimmy. And finally, to answer Nick's question, "Was Wave Rock worth it?" It was merely one part of the whole (hole) trip but I'd swap it for an elephant anyday!

H