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Published: August 28th 2007
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Well there we were, settling down in the camper for another quiet night, when there was a knock at the window and a ‘nice’ ranger man said that we couldn’t spend the night there and would have to leave. Not too much of a problem in most countries, but in Oz, particularly out west you don’t want to be on the road at or after dusk. The reason why? In a word - Skippy. Well actually, we’re not talking a cute little kangaroo hopping around harmlessly and helping needy folk out, but thousands of the buggers bouncing all over the place. They are seen as a pest out here and actively culled in some places and you guessed it we did our bit for the cause and not only took out a roo, but the front of the van as well. Now, there’s a night going from bad to worse - what was I saying about the joys of ‘free camping’..
The problem is they can appear in front of you with a single hop (and this one did), so however slow you are going there is not much you can do about it. The common rule is ‘don’t swerve’
because more people end up killing themselves by careering off into the bushes, whilst trying to avoid a dumb animal staring at them in the middle of the road. As you can imagine we were a little shaken and had one headlight out, quite a lot of plastic missing and the bumper flapping slightly. Luckily it didn’t stop us driving the car or come through the windscreen, so it could have been much worse. We drove on a little further to find somewhere off the road, probably only 10km or so, but it seemed like an eternity with plenty more things to hit still wandering around.
Neither of us slept very well that night, particularly Lexa who saw everything a little too clearly (I think I shut my eyes!) and we were both fretting about the cost as we had taken out the cheapest insurance with a $2000 excess and I was fairly sure that we would be saying goodbye to all of that. The next day things seemed slightly better, well briefly anyway. It was difficult to be very positive , Lexa kept getting an instant replay of events, which didn’t improve her mood and we kept getting
a recurring feeling of ‘did that really happen last night’, which I guess goes hand-in-hand with any freak happening in your life.
We called the rental company from the next town and after he had stopped ribbing me about watching ‘Skippy’ on television as kid, he told us to head back to Perth where we could exchange the van and sort out the financial damage. The local panel beater reckoned we were looking at about $3000, but he couldn’t help us anyway because he was already overloaded with work. His order book had not been helped by the other two people that had turned up that morning with roo-shaped dents, which at least made us feel like we weren’t the only ones. We joked with the garage owner that he had a roo-breed and release program going to boost business.
So, we turned northwards heading into the heart of the wheatbelt and back towards Perth, taking in the famous Wave Rock near Hyden on the way, which you guessed it looks just like a wave! In fact it is quite impressive, ‘unnatural’ in a way and actually rates quite highly in our ‘interesting looking rocks list’. To be
quite honest and you know it’s not in my nature to be cynical, there are rocks the world over in the middle of nowhere (and believe me this one was) that some random bloke has come across and decided it looks like an iguana or something and is now flogging tickets to see it. They must spend hours walking around looking at them from every angle and eventually saying ‘Ah hah! If you lie on your back and squint this boulder looks like a penguin with a broken leg’. Six months later it is in every visitor guide in the country and it becomes a ‘must-see’, ‘tick-in-the-box’ sight that sucks in every directionless tourist looking to satisfy their attraction-hunting organ. It all seems a bit of a money spinner to me; I would guess that land prices are generally pretty low 5 miles south of bleedin’ nowhere, in my experience rocks are pretty cheap to maintain and ultimately it’s something that nature created and should surely be accessible to everybody. Anyway, it seems fair game to build a car-park next to a rock in the middle of nowhere and charge poor tourists $4 that have already spent about $50 on
fuel driving an extra 400km to get there - not to mention the kangaroo bill. Personally I blame it on people with Marketing Degrees (as would any engineer…), but maybe I should stop before I lose any more friends and beside I must go as I’m off out to find myself a bit of the earth’s crust shaped like a mattress and call it ‘Bedrock’, build a visitors centre and then lie back sipping cocktails by the pool of my seven bedroom mansion, whilst thousands of Japanese tourist take photographs of themselves lying on it.
Rant over, it’s safe to come out now and I know that you are all dying to know how this wonder of the natural world came about - well fret no more, here are the facts and figures behind the world famous and unmissable Wave Rock.
Wave rock: a granite cliff, is 15 metres high and 110 metres long, Its rounded like shape has been caused by weathering and water erosion which has undercut the base and left a rounded over hang. Water from the springs running down the rock during wetter months dissolve minerals adding to the colour of the rock. There
you have it, go and tell your friends.
By the way, if you ever want to find Wave Rock, drive to Albany on the southern coast of Western Australia and then take the only road north for about 3 weeks, you can’t miss it, there is nothing else but wheat , dried up salt lakes and of course kangaroos….
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Love the junk art.