Day 1: Perth - Hyden

We finally left Perth around midday and started our cross country dash from Perth to Cairns to catch our flight to England for Christmas.

First stop Wave Rock which is a 4.5ish hour drive south east to Hyden.

The journey started out great, windows wide open, sun beating down, IPOD on shuffle, Henry closely resembling Phar Lap as he cantered down the Brookton Highway. What would be next on this glorious day, or on the IPOD for that matter...

So I have painted the picture, we are all happy, Ol, Henry and myself, quite excited and glad to be back out on the road. Half an hour into our journey we come across the first plague of locusts. Up go the windows, Oly and I exchange nervous glances. These buggers were bombing us and there were thousands and thousands. I was seriously worried that they would work their way through the air vent into the van (like in the movie The Bees). So we drove for half an hour with the tiniest slither of window down and finally we finished driving through the swarm. Then we hit the next one. They came at us in waves all the way down to Hyden, it was like driving through a hailstorm. The day was really hot but there was no way we were going to open our windows!

We arrived in Hyden around 16:30 and went to the local supermarket to pick up a few provisions for our dinner. Back into Henry and he started really sluggishly, drove around the corner and he conked out. We called the RAC who said it was a fuel pump problem and they couldn't fix it fully until Friday but they cleared the blocked air which would allow us to drive to Kalgoorlie where we would have more chance of getting it fixed quicker as it is a big city. Oh, one condition, we drive when it is cool and set off around 5AM. Great.

Determined to not let that get our spirits down we limped to the the caravan park and spent an hour climbing Wave Rock, beating off the locusts and admiring the view (while hoping I wouldn't fall off). Wave Rock is a 15 meter high 110 meter long multi-coloured hunk of granite shaped like a surf wave.

We skipped dinner as we were too tired and bed beckoned us at 8PM, plus we have to get up very early.

Lets hope tomorrow doesn't bring the 9th plague.

Em

Distance: 350km
Time: 4 Hours
Temp: 33c
Music: IPOD shuffle

Aussie slang
She'll be right = It will be OK