In the 90's a series of droughts had left the wheat-belt towns struggling and a local one had collapsed into a ghost-town. A town meeting decided Kulin wasn't going to go that way, and would listen to any ideas to keep the town alive.

The Kulin Bush Races was one of them and has been able to contribute over $1M to all sorts of local groups in the last 25 years.

A farming couple who had always been active in the local sports clubs left their $1M estate to the town to be spent on sports facilities and the pool. Back then that was proper money. Someone heard of a large waterslide becoming redundant over in the Eastern States. Several volunteers and some farmers took their trucks over, disassembled it and brought it back. Now the village of Kulin boasts the largest waterslide in rural W.A. Mrs D is a well known fan of waterslides, but unfortunately it's not officially summer here yet (in spite of the 34C days) so we didn't get to use it.

Fri 11 Oct Kulin to Karlgarin

Another short day because we'd seen good reviews on Tressies Museum and Caravan Park here, so broke our trip to Hyden. The camp leader said we should have come via Dumbleyung to see the replica of Donald Campbell's boat. Apparently he broke a waterspeed record on Lake Dumbleyung, and is still the only man to win a water and land speed record in the same year.

He also warned us against leaving thongs/shoes outside the caravan as there is a fox that takes them.

Karlgarin Village is tiny, does have a cafè/gallery but it was closed at Fri 3pm. The 2 biggest buildings were the Country Club and the Catholic Church, Our Lady Help of Christians, re-dedicated in 2016 by the Archbishop of Perth, the Most Reverend Timothy Costelloe. Yes the engraver put an 'e' on the end.

We then went to see the Buckley Breakaway, a granite feature. Regular Readers (Bless You) will agree that granite is quite featured, and well thought of in this part of W.A.

In spite of the overcast sky and gentle breeze, the flies thought it was a Flyday Friday and really took the edge off our granite experience. We will carry the head-nets with us in future. The flies generally take a few minutes to let everyone know there's a human, and by that time you're a few minutes away from the car.

A couple of days ago we'd called into this sprawling general store in the tiny village of Broomehill. Unfortunately it was mainly full of overpriced old used, non-fiction books.

We'd seen the couple before us come out with a re-pack dozen wines, and the elderly lady proprietor said they were older ones from their vineyard that they were selling off cheaply. It wasn't until we went to put a shiraz to the test last evening that we realised that, in our unstinting couple of months of oenology (we will not be accused of stinting) we hadn't yet come across corks. So no corkscrew on board. I'll report back on the results when that is rectified. The 2004 sav blanc tastes more like a chardonnay.

Sat 12 Oct Karlgarin to Hyden

When he heard the rainy forecast the camp leader said there was a 90% chance that it wouldn't get to here. He didn't know about the Duffy Factor. It doesn't just work in blood, but also rain, light and steady most of the night. He'd said that he didn't have water worries because this is a runoff area.

Camp leader Charlie took us for a tour around the museum. His father had acquired family and local stuff with a cut-off of 1966 - change to decimal currency here.

The Ag Report

The 7mm rain last night would do more harm than good to the local farmers according to Charlie. They would have just sprayed paraquat for grass and weed control and the moisture would give those more of a chance to bounce back.

Tractors: 8 wheel drive vs 12 wheel vs tracks

Charlie went to a demo of the comparisons. The triple wheel and tracks meant less soil compression, important when modern methods often mean repeating the same lines. There was less slippage with the triples and minimal with the tracks, which meant more ground covered for the same amount of diesel. The triple wheelers are so wide though that he would have had to build a new shed to put it in, while the tracked one fit into the same shed as the double he was trading in.

Because the soil is so shallow, farming here is essentially no-till. If you haven't got enough rain to form the grain you might cut it for hay, which was a possibility last year when the eastern states were in drought. If the price isn't high enough you can't just plough it in or leave it. You might bale it anyway without selling it, leaving enough stubble to hold the soil together against wind erosion.

You might cut and wind-row it into one main wind-row and burn that, which should be hot enough to kill weed seeds. Or you can buy a $400k pulveriser attachment which chops it small enough to kill most weed seeds and sprays the plant matter back onto your paddock.