Day 6 – Travelling to Hyden

 

A wheat field under gloomy skies

Hyden is a little community in the middle of nowhere, about 350 kilometres east of Perth.  Its claim to fame is a geological feature called the Wave Rock.  The quickest way from Margaret River was a 450 kilometre journey through Busselton, Bunbury and then northeast through small towns in a very sparsely populated area called the southern wheat belt. 

 

We got ourselves a takeaway coffee in Margaret River and then headed for our first stop at Bunbury where there was an undercover farmers’ market where we could get something for a picnic.  I had assumed it would be a real market with each producer having a small stall, however it was a large store that was like Moore Wilson’s on steroids.  The range and quality of produce was excellent.  We got our picnic food, a salad in my case, and in Bev’s a mini platter of meats, dip, cheese, vegetables and fruits.  The roads we took to Hyden was lightly trafficked and for long periods of time, we would not see a vehicle on either side of the road.  The little towns we went through seemed to have been abandoned to the flies. 

 

Just a small part of the Farmers Market

We stopped for lunch at William, where there were two pubs, a petrol station, a sculpture of the endangered numbat and no shops.  In the picnic/play area we saw more vehicles than we had seen in the previous 150 kilometres since leaving Bunbury. There was even a coffee cart there.  There seem to be very few camper vans, instead people have large utes towing equally huge caravans.  Many of them coated in red dust.

It's a cold and windy picnic

 

Further along the road we came across a sign saying we were in Albert Facey country which referred to a man who wrote a fascinating memoir called A Fortunate Life. In this memoir, he recounted a very tough life as a child living with relatives in this area.  Eventually he moved back after the First World War to farm until the Depression forced him to abandon it and move to Perth.  Then about forty kilometres on, we came to a town called Wickepin where we found the house that he had lived in when farming.  It had been moved to this location where the only thing that moved were the cars passing through.  The surrounds had barely a blade of grass, just lots of red earth and dust.  If you have ever watched the TV series Mystery Road or Rabbit Proof Fence, then you would get the idea. We stopped and looked at the simple house but unfortunately it was closed so we couldn’t see inside.  My guess was that it would have been very sparsely furnished. 

 

Red dirt in Wickepin

Albert Facey's relocated house

All the while we had been passing through wheat field after wheat field broken only by long lines of trees.  It was both beautiful and seemingly abandoned apart from the odd harvester working fields. 

 

We arrived at Hyden around 5pm after an interesting but long drive.  We were able to travel fast due to the speed limit of 110kph on the dual carriageway.  We don’t even have that speed on our NZ motorways!  The roads were in remarkably good condition. 

 

The only accommodation in Hyden was the Wave Rock Motel which was large by anyone’s standard for such a small community.  This hotel had been built in the 1960s after the local farmers became sick of drinking under a tent in the middle of a paddock. They decided if no one else was going to build a motel, then the community would, so money was donated and raised for its construction. 

 

Like all the other towns we had visited, it was a red dusty little place that actually had a supermarket, bakery and an agricultural supplies company (of course).  Tourism has no doubt played its part. 

 

The only place to eat was the hotel and we had a delicious good old-fashioned roast and buffet meal.  It was quite reasonable compared to some of the other meals we have had.  Then it was time to call it a night!