A little drive through Hyden

Well on our latest camping trip to Wave Rock, we drove through a little old bush town called Hyden. The township itself didn't have much going for it, but in the car rest stop in town it was another thing. It was filled with metal people who use to live and work in Hyden, like ....











Here is Sarah in frount of Hyden's very first power station.... Fairdinkum mate!





Jacko, Harry and Sarah next to Marco and Carolina, were a local Italian family who applied for and were granted land in July 1956.


Old Don Munday the shearer is shearing a sheep which he did for over 73 years! Strewth that would of been hard yacka, just some info in shearing: In 1892 blade shearer Jackie Howe set an Australian record of 321 sheep in a day, it was not until 1949 that a machine shearer Dan Cooper was able to beat this tally a total of 500 fully grown sheep in a day.... bugger that!















Harry holding hands with Harry and his mum Hilda, back in the old days kiddies were taught at home on the farm. Till the first school was built in 1934, but only kiddies who lived within 15 kilometers managed to ride either bikes or horses to get to class fairdinkum.



In late 1924 a young would be settler named Mick mouritz set of for Hyden, riding his new bike along the faint tracks into what was still virtually a wilderness. He had brought a block of land at Graham Rock and soon settled their, he was part of the first wave of settlers to this district.











Hydey and Toby the horse... John Hyde was a sandlewood cutter who roamed all over Western Australia, around 1920 Hyde was camped near here when two surveyors passed through. They named the rock outcrop near his camp Hyde's Rock, but when the lands department named it's maps it became Hayden Rock. It is now more commonly known as Wave Rock.












Russ and his Bus! Russell Mouritz was the primary Bus driver in the deverlopment of local tourism, he once said 'We don't ask Why don't they do it - we are 'they'!'


Here are Harrison and Russ driving the Bus! And that was our drive through Hyden, not much more to the town except for this ripper rest stop. But it's really worth the stop here if your ever out having a sunday drive, and don't forget to say g'day to Russ.

Some polirod shots of Chase

Wyalkatchem or Bust!

Well what do you do when your sitting back on a sunday morning, with nothing to do.... Well you could make up a picnic, through a few kiddies into the commodore and go for a sunday drive. And when the Paul's go for a bush drive, we always add a few kilometers under the bonnet. And after a quick gander at the Perth map, we decided on a small bush town of Wyalkatchem.
And the first stop for a picnic breaky was a place called Meckering, which if you know your history is the home of Western Australia's biggest Earthquake. On a beaut Sunday morning in October (1968.... that's right I would of been about five months old.... oooohhhh.... so it wasn't that long ago, hay) an earthquake hit the town for over 40 seconds, and hit the richter scale at 6.9 knocking the hell out of Meckering. Miraculously, there were no deaths and only twenty Meckertainings were injured. With the Pub flatten the publican Gordon Berryman had the beer and equipment moved over the road to the Shell garage, and the establishment was known as THE QUAKE ARMS (but some people called it the SHAKE-INN).










Just down the road we came to Cunderdin, home of the Western Australian ETTAMOGAH PUB Mate!










Also in town is a ripper replica of a tiger moth airplane, which was built in recognition of the ELEMENTARY FLYING TRAINING SCHOOL. That was established here in the 1940's, it had 34 officers, 500 airmen and 51aircraft. All up 2000 young fellas trained as pilots, for theatres of War in the pacific and Europe.






Also in town is a beaut old water tower which use to fill up the old steam trains, you'll find these water towers in each old bush town along this highway. If you look at the bottom you will see the little fella Oscar. Also right next to it was this old train thing-eme-bob, which they use to fill up with coal and stuff.





Then just another 67 km's up the road we had made it to our destination, the town of Wyalkatchem! This central wheatbelt township is Home to 369 wyalkatchemiams, and is 192km's from Perth (strewth I didn't think we had come that far) The name Wyalkatchem is an old Aboriginal name first recorded years back, when one black fella said to another 'Why don't we go grab them sheilahs over their'. And the other fella said 'Why catch em' their only give ya the shit's'... Fairdinkum.



Unforturnly there's bugger all in Wyalkatchem to do or see, so the only thing to take a photo of was this board which the kiddies could hind behind. It turned out real funny because as I was taking the photo, Harrison was moaning and moaning and I didn't really know why. Then as we were walking away he said 'me no girl'.... I hadn't realised he was standing behind the little sheilah's face ha,ha,ha poor little sod!









But that was it for our desternation and it was time to head back home, along a different route which took us to a town called Dowerin. Which like most bush towns in WA has one thing going for it, in this case a BIG DOG called RUSTY. So we stopped for a photo with rusty, then drove the rest of the way back home.












Rusty with our little rusty!