Day 3 Mon - to Perenjori (274km)

Northam had a Toyota dealer so we stopped in to get them to have a look at our fuse problem. The mechanic had a look and took some time to find the culprit. Eventually all was fixed. It turns out the mechanic was from Friesland in the north of Holland. He moved out here with his wife and 2 kids about 4 months ago and was living in Goomalling. We had a good chat. He was quite surprised to find that Anne can speak pretty good Dutch. We wished him the best with his future in WA and headed off.

After fixing the car we headed up through the mid-west wheat areas of Western Australia via Goomalling, Wongan Hills, Ballidu, Pithara, Dalwallinu and Wubin ending up in Perenjori. This area is where a large amount of the wheat in Western Australia comes from. Unfortunately this year they have not had much rain so it is quite dry and many of the farmers have not been able to sow their crops. If they don’t get rain with the next few weeks they will have no crop in for the year. Last year many did not get crops in either or had very poor crops that were not worth harvesting.
At Goomalling we stopped for lunch at the train station cafe and had a lovely, hot carrot soup followed by Devonshire teas. Outside the station was a magnificent white gum tree that had many forks and a lot of character in its bark.
The wheat silos at Goomalling are quite interesting as they are a conical shape rather than the normal longer shed style that is prevalent around most of the wheat belt area.

The Perenjori caravan park was empty. We had a choice of any spot we liked. The only other person in the park was in an on-site cabin. We walked into town (900 metres) and had a drink at the local pub. They had a great fire burning in the bar. We had a chat with a few of the locals and the barmaid who was an Irish lass over here on a working holiday. Once again it was very cold and windy but not as bad as in Northam. We didn’t need the heater on. Perhaps we are getting used to it.