We’ve beeen gradually getting closer to home slowly since leaving Perth but yesterday was the first major day of travel towards Melbourne. We left our family behind in Albany to travel nearly 500 kilometes east to the costal city of Esperence..
For the first 100 kilometres we travelled through extensive wheat fields although these were mostly hidden behind roadside scrub. Thick Mallee type scrub with its characteristic small multi-trunked trees spread for about 50 metres on each side of the road reserve. We could get occasional glimpses of broad farms of wheat or grain that spread to the horizon. A month ago, when we travelled west, these fields were green but now they are starting to become golden.
Closer to Esperance, the land had become more pastoral with flocks of sheep and herds of cattle.
After an hour of travel, we reached the tiny town of Welstead. It was nothing more than a servo and a few houses but it did have a nice little park, toilets and community centre. We stopped for a few minutes for a leg stretch.
Some of the farms (stations) around here have long impressive driveways from the road along avenues of trees.
We passed through a number of localities that exist in name only, apart from the their large grain silos. This one at Gairdner was typical.
Like other localities, Gairdner is small rural locality and farming community with only around 100 residents. It was was first settled in the 1960s. It exists around broadacre agriculture, focusing on cereal crops like wheat and barley, as well as sheep and livestock farming. We have seen many signs along the way to a “CBH Site’ but only in Gairdner did we understand what these initials meant – Cooperative Bulk Handling.
We stopped in the tiny town of Jerramungup for a coffee. It was full of people taking a break while travelling and without them there would hardly have been anyone in town. It even had a small supermarket, cafe and school. The local area became part of a soldier settlement scheme after WW2. and this is reflected with a large mural under the verandah of the commnity centre building. I have never seen happier soldiers on active service in my life. than in this mural.
We next stopped for lunch in Ravensthorpe, the largest town along the way. It, and the surrounding area, is home to a ‘whopping’ population of 350 people. By then, we had travelled more than half our distance for the day..
Ravensthorpe is a small sheep and wheat town on the Highway 1 (the South Coast Highway). For the latter half of the nineteenth century the district was rural and the town didn’t really exist. Then, at the end of the century, gold and copper were discovered, the town grew, and for a brief moment it was a prosperous mining town. The mines were short-lived and today it is just a stopping point for people driving the South Coast Highway.
At the edge of town are painted grain silos. The images on the six silos show the evolution of the flower of a banksia – a local endemic species that only grows in this area.
Perhaps, because it was Saturday, we had trouble finding somewhere that was open so that we could buy a sandwich for lunch. Like looking for wildflowers (where the more you walk around, the more that you see), I decided it was best to walk along the Main Street and eventually found a small cafe with a sign that said ‘open’. They had almost sold their entire stock of food but a lovely young women offered to make me a couple of egg and lettuce sandwiches. They were really delicious.
While waiting for the sandwiches to be made. I walked around the corner and found the local post office. I was amazed to find that it had almost 450 post boxes from which people could collect mail. Apparently that high number is because there is no mail delivery in this part of the world and people in town and from surrounding areas have to go to the post office to collect their mail. Maybe this is less of a feature now with electronic communications.
On one corner of the main street was a large pub, typical of rural areas in Australia. It was built in 1907 with local bricks. II believe that is even more spectacular inside with Jarrah furniture, an Edwardian stained glass window in the stairwell, an impressive ornamental staircase and some beautiful stamped metal ceilings.
We reached Esperance by mid afternoon but decided to detour around a scenic road along the ocean.The weather forecast suggests rain over the next few days so I wanted to see some of the sights while the sun was out. There were some superb coastal views but we ran out of time and will have to back for another look, perhaps in less brilliant weather.
I imagine my grandfathers brother landing in Esperance and taking his grocery store to Kalgoorlie, what a trek this pioneers had