Day 84 - Wave Rock (near Hyden)
Trip Start
Jul 04, 2011
1
43
49
Trip End
Oct 05, 2011
Wave Rock, Western Australia, Australia
Sunday, September 25, 2011
The drive took us firstly through the stunning Stirling Range. Although we didn't have time to explore this area, the view from the highway was impressive enough and the numerous mountain peeks contrasted well against the valleys of wild flowers below. We then drove through miles and miles of lush farming fields, many of which were thick with some type of brilliant yellow flowered crop – we think it might have been canola, but we’re not sure. As we approached the Lake Grace region the terrain then changed yet again, this time to one of vast salt lakes and flats.
We stopped for a late lunch and refuel in the town of Lake Grace and by mid afternoon had reached our goal – Wave Rock. Wave Rock is a bit on the way to nowhere and as a result hadn’t planned to visit, but as the bad weather was driving us inland, we thought we might as well visit as it was kind of on the way to Kalgoorlie from Albany.
As the name suggests (and pictures show) the rock formation looks pretty much like a massive wave which is about to break on a beach. It doesn’t stretch for long but is an amazing sight none the less. The kids have looks of fun running up and down the face to see how high they could get (Neil won!) and enjoyed taking the obligatory surfing photos standing on the wave. We then went for a walk around and then up the back side of the rock, which is not dissimilar to the surface of Ayers Rock when walking on it. Neil actually got a few photos of the kids climbing up and across and told them that we could at least pretend we got to climb Ayers Rock, even though we didn’t.
We hadn’t really planned our stop for the night and decided to head further up the Emu Fence Road towards Kalgoorlie before finding somewhere on the road to free camp for the night. The road was dirt for a lot of the way but was very good quality, so we ended up knocking off another 100km before we stopped in a little pill-in for the night. Leesa cooked up a very nice Moroccan chicken dish and we finished the night off outside in the cold looking in awe at the amazing stars on display. It was a perfectly clear night and after we got our night vision we could see more stars than we could believe. We then got the binoculars out and were even more amazed. When we looked at the Milky Way through the binoculars we realised that the milky effect was actually just millions of more stars, which we could see clearly – just amazing!
