The Rainy Weekends of Our Lives
And so the weather turns, another rainy weekend.
Only it wasn’t just going to be rainy. The Australian Weather Bureau were predicting possible storms, hail, and near hurricane force winds. We packed up the truck and went anyway.
As we headed east, the road was shiny wet.
One of our first stops was Cunderdin, a town located in the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia. Due to it being on the route of the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme it is also on the Golden Pipeline Heritage Trail. There is the pipeline at the town entrance.
The road changed to red dirt and the sun came out as we took a look up Cunderdin Hill.
Guidance from the top of Cunderdin Hill.
Back in the town of Cunderdin, I had to get closer to this unusual looking structure. They say that The Ettamogah Cunderdin typifies the “outback pub” concept, and operates under a traditional country pub atmosphere.
View of the preserved former water tower at the site of the former narrow gauge railway station. I looked at this structure oddly, John said, “Think Petticoat Junction.” Oh, cool, I snapped a photo.
While we were traveling in the area, what a surprise to see The Indian Pacific, an Australian passenger rail service that operates between Sydney, on the Pacific Ocean, and Perth, on the Indian Ocean.
It is one of the few truly transcontinental trains in the world. The train first ran in February 1970. The train’s route includes the world’s longest straight stretch of railway track, a 478-kilometre (297 mi) stretch of the Trans-Australian Railway over the Nullarbor Plain.
As were were traveling we could see winds kicking up dirt in the distance.
We found ourselves entering Tammin. The surrounding areas produce wheat and other cereal crops.
The name “TAMMIN” means grandmother or grandfather according to the “Descriptive Vocabulary of Aborigines of WA” by G F Moore. Other theories are, that Tammin was named after the Tamma, a small animal that once inhabited the area or the Tamma bush which grows throughout the district.
We left Tammin, chasing the sun, trying to escape the rains. We headed in a less rainy direction towards a nature reserve. Before that though, I had to ask John to stop the car so I could capture these colors.
Outside of the reserve was this tower, I thought it was interesting.
Right across from the tower were continuous wildflowers.
Some were a different kind of everlasting.
My camera isn’t water proof, so at times I stayed inside the truck. Nasty winds were kicking up again.
When I could get to see the flowers, it just seemed like infinite beauty. No end.
Splashes of color everywhere.
At some points it was dense and intense.
Awww … pink is a favorite.
Even some Ptilotus in the mix.
A leek orchid.
A mix of happiness.
These looked like yellow buttons, and there were so many of them.
These everlastings could take over the world 🙂
We then decided to head south where we had passed by one summer, to see what it looked like with water.
I think John was expecting more water with all the rainy weekends, but I guess there was more than in the summer when we came.
There were the sandy areas where we could see the kangaroo tracks.
We stayed there for awhile, and saw that even more rain was to come.
It was worth the wait to see this vivid rainbow.
And so it was, back to rain and winds again.
I guess we knew they were calling for dangerous weather, we were even following a nephew’s tales on Facebook of downed trees in his area, but the next thing we knew, a tree was down in the road in front of us.
To detour to the other roads was out of the question. John took care of it. 🙂 This is not his first tree hugging photo.
