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 m
orning 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 51
aircraft. 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 bo
ttom 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 192
km'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!