Wed 9 Oct To Pingrup. $20/night has been our cheapest so far. 80% to the Shire Council who built and maintain the area and 20% to the community. Community volunteers do the reception and some of the cleaning. It looked like Shire guys cleaning the BBQ, waterblasting, and raking leaves. Behind us is a horizontal bin (with half-silo sides) that has stadium seating and a fireplace inside for the local shearing competitions. It's also used for other community events, and the Lions Club meets there. Lions are really strong in southern W.A and have a lot of parks, playgrounds and things to their name.

We timed our visit well, as a close in salt lake recently got a little water and turned pink again. The bacteria that do that were discouraged after a dust storm some years ago. We were able to get a photo of it and the silos in the same shot.

It got to 34C today and woke up the flies. Worst yet, so after we got set up we went an hour up the road to Newdegate to check out their silos. It was 34C and bulk flies there too, so we ducked into the local pub for a frosty beverage and a game of pool. It was hard to see how it could survive - in dire need of cleaning, painting and general maintenance, but the last two take money.

There and back I tried to avoid the blue-tongued lizards crossing the road without swerving but they didn't make it easy.

Fortunately by bbq time the flies had taken the evening off.

Thurs 10 Oct to Kulin

To the Pingrup visitor Centre (not quite a shire office but it is also a government access point) Early photos of horse drawn plows and implements, still resulting in mountains of bags of wheat. (After filling them you had to stitch them shut by hand. The early government had made some local dams, and there was water carting back then. Even then it was an art to dig a dam without breaking into the salt layer. One photo showed a couple of brothers who did it as a business, with a special dam-digging plow and 4 keen hardy horses. The caption said that, although they always had too much work on, they would always find time to dig a farm dam for a new farm family. It did look pretty time-consuming with just this 4 horse plow arrangement.

A lot of straight roads and salt lakes today. The last section into Kulin is called the Tin Horse Highway, where there are multiple art-works on a horsey theme to promote the annual Kulin Bush Races, which celebrated their 25th meet last weekend, with thousands attending.

When we called into the only pub in the afternoon to enquire about dinner there was no-one else there. By 7pm the bar had several locals and the dining room was doing a roaring trade, mainly caravanners, so it was good to see this outside money being spent in the village.