Saturday in Ironbark

Our accommodation is just five mins out of Meckering. We're here all day. The forecast is for twenty mil of rain.

The weather is fine, overcast, cool but not cold (except when getting out of the nice warm bed).

Deb starts her day with a short walk, to feed some crusts to the farm chooks.

Mid-morning we drive to the Meckering fault line.

There's not much to see. it looks like a long earth bank, barely 2m high. A local managed to preserve this, an actual crack in the ground has been ploughed over.

It's a view across yellow canola -- and surprisingly fascinating.

Next, we drive to town, Meckering itself. There's a memorial park with info and photos, interesting stuff.

We say hello to Yvonne Smith who was living here during the quake Her first time back, helping her grandchildren write a school report on the quake.

Deb and I remember where we were during the 11am quake. Deb in a maths class, I was eating in the back room eating breakfast, it was a Public Holiday (different schools!).

We fill the truck with deisel, drive to Cunderdin. There's a museum, for pump station 3 on the pipeline to Kalgoorlie.

There's steam boiler, pump, some historical info, all interesting.

Outside is machinery. Farm tractors and such. Most interesting is a railway carriage. Hard wooden bench for ordinary passengers, a dining car. Various stories of people involved in the railway. One bloke used to sneak on board, chat with his girlfriend (later wife) in the dining car then help with cleaning the dishes before sneaking off at the City end of line.

We have lunch, delicious fish, at the Ettamogah-themed pub.

Drive up to Cunderdin Hill Lookout where, no surprise, there's a geocache. Makes the whole trip worthwhile:-)

The hill is not very high but still higher than the surroundings.

We enjoy the view, including watching the clouds getting darker.

We drive to Bulgin Rock, it's not well signposted, Deb stops a few times to check the map. (Gogle, of course, is no help, no signal.

At the Rock there's a cold wind, rain definitely starting, no geocache... so we drive home. Park and... dash inside just as the rain starts pouring down.

Now the rain is intermittent heavy showers, wind is strong, we are snug and dry inside with the heater on.

Our early plan was for dinner in Cunderdin. Instead, we had a main meal at lunch. Just as well... It's a good night for staying inside :-) With curtains open so we can enjoy the view of wind and rain across the green farm paddocks.

It's just 3:30, light enough to see it all.

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