Day 24

Days 22 and 23 were basically spent relaxing at Mat and Nat's place.

Today (Monday) was the day we returned home.  A comment I made to Nat as we were leaving was that it felt strange saying goodbye this time because usually when we say our goodbyes to them at their house it would mean we'd have a 45min drive to the airport, catch a 4hr flight back to Melbourne and we'd be sleeping in our beds that night and that would be the end of our holiday.  But no, not this time.  We've still got a very long drive ahead of us!  Five or six days of driving, in fact.

One last thing to do in Perth; we headed into the inner northern suburbs to catch up for a coffee with a uni friend of mine.  Then we made our way out of the city and pointed the bull bar in the direction of Kalgoorlie.  To get there we had to drive past Northam; one of the two towns that was the base for a project that I managed for a while a couple of years back. 

To get to Northam we had to drive through Bakers Hill, which fittingly enough has a superb bakery up on the hill.  I learnt of it during the WA project and had to take Morgs there for a pie and chocky milk.  She's been raving about Jesters Pie's, so I had to show her what a real pie was like - she thought they were "OK, but still not as good as Jesters"... I think she just doesn't want to admit that I was right.  To this day I still have never driven past Bakers Hill without having a pie and chocky milk there.

To get to Bakers Hill we had to fill up in Midland... man, I'm writing this thing backwards.  The only interesting thing of note there was that I noticed the lady behind the counter at the servo was filling out a "Drive-off report" form. 

OK, Midland, Bakers Hill, Northam... that's about what I got up to.  I had never driven past Northam before, even though the WA project extended out as far as Meckering and Cunderdin, so it was interesting to actually see those towns.  Before arriving in Meckering we saw a sign "Meckering Fault Line".  "That was odd", we thought.  Further along as we came into Meckering there was another sign indicating tourist information for the Meckering Earthquake and fault line.  There was no way we were going to drive past since our interest had already been caught.

It turns out around the late 1960's there was a massive earthquake in the area which shifted parts of the earth's surface more than a metre over about 40 seconds.  Along the fault line, what was once flat crop country there was now a raised section of land!  In some places the earth even opened up!!  I think the quake measured 6.9 on the Richter Scale and the epicentre was around 10km from Meckering, but don't ask me how deep underground it was. 

Some buildings in town were flattened.  The water pipeline that crosses the countryside was "telescoped", and there is a piece of it at the tourist site in town.  A section of the railway line was also badly warped and was relocated to the townsite.  A lot of the crop land that had surface flatness issues were bulldozed and graded back to flat, although there are still some sites where the fault line is still visible today.  One such site was about 12km SW of town, so we went down to have a look.

Sure enough, when we got to the location you could see this big step in the ground - one side of the paddock was about 1m higher than the other side and the difference in height changed over about 2-3m on the ground.  No crop in this paddock though, so it's nice that the owner has left the land the way it was damaged by the earthquake.  Take away the tourist signs and you wouldn't even know what had happened.

Speaking of tourist signs, the local council mustn't have much money in their annual budget for litigation; a sign at the earthquake tourist information display stated "All persons entering or using these facilities are warned that they are doing so entirely at their own risk".  In addition to that the sign at the fault line paddock also states "Enter at own risk"... fair enough, it's most likely private property anyway.

Heading to the fault line paddock we also noticed the sign out the front of "Homestead Red Farm Home stay".  This was where a few of the guys from work lived during the WA project.  I never heard any of them mention about the Meckering Earthquake or the fault line.

Thoroughly amused by what Meckering had to offer (not much else though... The Big Camera had closed down a loooong time ago), we carried on eastward.  Cunderdin was surprisingly larger than I expected.  After that we were in territory that was outside the WA project scope and I knew nothing of the towns beyond.

In the middle of nowhere (Baandee lakes, maybe?) there was a burnt out car on the side of the road.  Burnt out cars are not all that uncommon - usually old Fords, Holdens or Toyotas.  Although this particular car was unusual.  When we drove past at 110kph I thought it was a Porsche 911, then after I turned around and drove past again I thought it was an Audi.  It turned out it was a Nissan 280Z or similar model... still, not your average burnt out wreck in the middle of the desert.  It appears as though it's had a frontal impact and caught fire.  You'd think that the vehicle salvage would have been covered by the insurance company... the orange sticker on the side that was left by the police suggests it's been there a little while.

We were hoping to get close to Kalgoorlie for the night, but Southern Cross was looking much more realistic at this stage.  The Camps Australia book suggested four potential campsites east of Southern Cross, but three of them were labeled as Rest Areas and the other was a National Park campsite right next to the highway.  None sounded appealing so we thought we'd check out the caravan park in Southern Cross first, which was adequate so we decided to stay there the night.

As I was pulling the tent out of the car it made me realise that it had been a whole week since we last had it set up at Bremer Bay.  Even though we've been on holidays for nearly 3.5 weeks it didn't feel laborious to be putting it up; in fact it was quite the opposite.  I think the week off from setting up the tent and the 3 nights at Mat and Nat's has revitalised our enthusiasm for camping out the rest of this trip.  Well it has for me anyway.

Morgs finally snapped a great shot of an Australian Ringneck in the wild at our campsite.  Those things are so flittery - they never sit still for more than a few seconds, and usually have their backs turned to our long lens.