Day 177 Wagin (Dumbleyung & Lake Grace)

It was a touring day today and we are again experiencing lovely warm conditions with a high of 25 degrees today.  Perfect.  We mapped out our journey to Lake Grace and Dumbleyung on Google Maps and decided to go to the furtherest point which is Lake Grace - a distance of 120 kms - and then work our way back to Dumbleyung that is just 35kms from where we are staying.

The scenery is much the same on our drive with acres upon acres of summer crops.  We both commented that we need my farmer Uncle Kenny with us to name the crops for us.  We are just guessing but we can most definitely pick out wheat and canola that is now starting to lose its flower and going to seed.  It will be canola harvesting time very soon.

We stopped at a paddock of newly cut grass and breathed in deeply that wonderful smell of cut grass.  There was windrow upon windrow of what we think is oats ready to be baled when it is sufficiently dry.  The farmer is using a grass cutter much the same as the one we used to cut flinders grass another lifetime ago.

Lake Grace is a sleepy little wheatbelt town but by the number of brand new harvesting machines in one of the shops, it is also a wealthy town.  We have been told that last year was a bumper grain crop and in fact the grain trucks that we hear passing along the highway each night are still carting last years grain!  We walked along the main thoroughfare of Lake Grace and stopped to read the plaques along the footpath.  I particularly enjoyed this one because it is strangely familiar 😂.  

There are lots of buildings in Lake Grace Main Street that have been lovingly restored and it is always a joy to photograph them.  I got up a little to close to a beautiful flowering bush in front of the post office when Philip grabbed me by the arm before I got bitten by the gazillion bees all over the shrub.

Approaching Lake Grace township from Wagin you pass over a long causeway across the large salt lake - Lake Grace.  It sometimes takes on a pinkish tinge from the salt and I think that just maybe you can pick up the colour but maybe it's just my eyes.

We started making our way back along the highway to Dumbleyung and by the time we reached the little town it was after midday so we headed straight to the Grand Olde' Dumbleyung Hotel for lunch.  The pub is being brought back to its former glory by its new owners, starting with the roof, but they have a lot of work in front of them.  In one large room near the bar there is an area devoted to the history of Donald Campbell and the "Bluebird".  It was interesting reading.

We started talking to one of the owners and it turns out that he is from Townsville (managed the Vale Hotel for many years) and how we got to that conversation was because we started talking about the footy.  We said that we are rugby league supporters and don't know much about AFL, and he said, "Me too. I am a Cowboys supporter!" Talk about a small world.  Philip ordered a B.E.L.T. (BLT with fried egg) and for me it was the steak burger.  Man, it was massive but I did manage to gobble it down.

After lunch we headed to the interpretive centre where we watched a terrific video of Donald Campbells record breaking race across Lake Dumbleyung and from here we went to the building that housed the replica of the "Bluebird".  We both commented on how small it was at just 8.3m in length, 2.25 metres high and weighing 2.5 tonnes.  It ran on Kerosene and used a whopping 2954 litres per hour.

Adjacent to the Bluebird Replica was a monument honouring the CWA ladies of Dumbleyung.  What a great organisation and how wonderful that they should be honoured by the community.

I guess we were doing things a little bit back to front but our next stop was Lake Dumbleyung where the water speed record was recorded.  We drove up to Pussycat Lookout where there is a monument to Donald Campbell and the views from up here were excellent.  I could almost hear the thunderous roar of the Bluebird as it skimmed across the water at a record breaking 444.71 kmh.  It's hard to imagine that incredible speed and watching the old video showed just how very little of the Bluebird was actually touching the water.

The only stop we made on the way back to Wagin was to photograph some of the wildflowers that are now in abundance everywhere we look.  Tomorrow we head to Kulin specifically to walk one of the towns wildflower trails that I had read about.

Another GoPro: