Coolgardie to Dowerin

Thursday 25 August 2022

Day 11
Coolgardie to Dowerin

We leave quite early after another cold night.  We're really missing the diesel heater... Luckily the motor heats up quickly and provide us with some warmth during the trip.  We are on our way to Dowerin today, where we'll meet Kevin's cousin Neville. 

First stop for morning tea is next to an old cemetery at Southern Cross. 

Further down the road is a cache to be found, so we stop across from it and I walk over to get it.  It's an easy find, because of a very clear hint.

# 2393 - The Birds are Back (traditional cache)

Somewhere down the road we have stopped along a huge pipeline to find a cache, but it was on the wrong side of the pipe and I am not that agile anymore, so gave it a miss.  The pipeline delivers water to
Kalgoorlie from all the way down at Perth's Mundaring Weir. It is 566 kilometres long and the water takes 11 days to travel from Perth to Kalgoorlie. It was constructed, I believe, in 1893.

 

In the meantime the landscape has changed again and we are now in the wheat belt.  The area looks like a patchwork of green and gold/yellow when the fields of wheat alternate with fields of canola.

Around midday we arrive at Merredin where we first try to get fuel.  We stop at a 'pre-paid' fuel station and put in for $150 worth of fuel.  However, no fuel comes from the bowser, just a bit of smoke.  That looks a bit suss, so we give up on that one.  I ring the company about the money and they tell me to ring the bank.  The young man at the bank is very helpful and with the press of a button the money is back in our account!

Being hungry by now we stop in town for lunch.  After that Kevin walks over to the Railway Museum while I pop into IGA for groceries. That done we get fuel at a different service station and are on our last leg of the day, the road to Dowerin.

At Wyalkatchem (Wylie for short) Kevin wants to stop for a photo and I discover that there should be a cache hidden as well.  Alas, we wasted our time as we could not find it.  An earlier log was a DNF also, so it might not be there anymore.

Finally we make it to Dowerin and stop at the Bear Pantry Café for afternoon tea.  A chai latte for me, a cappuccino for Kevin and a lovely pecan tart for both of us.  In the meantime Kevin rings Neville, who comes to meet us at the café.  We are offered hot food from the hot box at 50% of the price by the owner of the café , so we buy some pizza slices and a pie for dinner.  

Neville arrives and guides us to the free camp where he is staying.  The Dowerin Field Days were on this week, a sort of country fair and display of farm machinery, the reason Neville was here.  We have happy hour together and then it's dinner time.

I finish with a photo of the setting sun (what else?) and will take photos of the campsite tomorrow.