Hello to all our readers from the southern forests of WA and a small town called Walpole. We have been moving over the last few days, two nights here and two nights there. So we have seen a huge range of landscapes and had an opportunity to look at some very interesting parts of WA. We started about a week ago in a town called York and the first picture shows our cottage. It is built of tin and was the old barn for the house. It was wonderfully snug and comfortable with a claw foot bath and open fire. The owners keep alpacacas and sheep as well as a range of farm birds and a tame roo called Katie. She and I bonded over a banana skin and she held my hand with her front paws as she took the delicacy from me!!
York is a National Trust town as its buildings are architecturally so important. We, as they say here, 'gave it a good go' with a walk that took us to the very edge and the bush. It is fascinating to see how the towns and villages literally stop and the the bush starts. York is in a region called the wheatfields and as the name suggests is an enormous agricultural area. In order for farming to take place the forests were cleared and this has had a devastating effect on the land. This clearing coupled with climate and the underlying geology has created massive salt 'lakes' whose salinity has killed all the plants that were growing there. The photo shows the typical devastation. While it had a certain surreal beauty the farmers are struggling to stop the process - the equivalent of ten football pitches a day becoming unusable. The science is complicated, but basically the trees took up so much water that they kept the water table (and therefore the salt) deep. Take away the trees, the wheat uses less water and so the water table rises bringing the salt with it. Trees you see are so important. If the early settlers had only been to one of my lessons they would have known that!!
We moved on from York to Hyden to visit the Wave Rock. Again the area was virtually a wasteland in the middle of which were great granite outcrops. The edges had been eroded by the water running over them creating these wonderful wave shapes. We stayed in a resort again right 'on the edge'. Pretty bleak, however as you can see from the photo we got some pretty amazing sunsets which we could watch from our verandah. Very little wildlife here but we did find lots of roo tracks crisscrossing the sandy paths around the houses. We left this rather bleak area nad drove to Katanning a largish (5000) town on the edge of the wheatfields. Is was meant to be stopping off point as it was ANZAC weekend but because of that everything was closed and we stayed for two nights. An excellent B&B with the comfiest bed in WA!
We are now in the Southern Forests and the area could not be more different. Tall trees as far as the eye can see and the coast just beyond. We will blog more from here once we have explored. Just for now here is a visitor spotted last night just a few feet from our cottage. We are in a wildlife paradise at the Riverside Retreat, in a cottage whose verandah gives us wonderful vistaa over the trees down to the Frankland River. The place is called Nornalup and is about 8kms from Walpole. Enough from me now, here is Fogg. Best wishes from me, Phileas
Hi. Fogg here. Stunning photographs again. Of course, as ever photographs do not do justice to the sights we have seen. I did not even attempt to take the wheatfields. They are so vast but beautiful and quite breathtaking. We are exploring such a small area of Australia and yet the distances between towns is immense and our driving has been challenging. We stop on the way by the roadside and marvel at where we are. We know how incredibly lucky we are.
So my very best wishes to you all. Fogg x
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