Wagin: A Dog's Tale

We had decided to make a break in our journey to Fremantle (as the total trip was about 500 miles) and booked accommodation for one night just outside a small country town called Wagin.

The journey to our overnight stop involved 300 miles of driving through parts of WA that are off the tourist trail. Farming dominates this part of the state and the landscape isn't dramatic but small country towns offer a glimpse of rural life. The area is called the eastern wheat belt and we passed vast fields that indicated harvests had already taken place ahead of autumn. Between larges swathes of wheat fields were equally large expanses of native bush.

One of the features of driving in Australia are the arrow straight roads. Often the road would stretch off as far as the horizon without even the hint of a bend.

The road goes ever on and on...

Our inland journey also took us through a dry and arid landscape of salt lakes and nearby towns taking their names. Lake Grace and Lake King appear as large areas of water on the map but in reality are largely dry. Salt and mineral deposits sparkled in the sunlight.

Lake Grace

After a long day of sharing the driving we arrived in Wagin, a small town and a centre of sheep farming - in fact it holds the largest annual sheep show in the southern hemisphere and celebrates this fact with a statue of a giant merino ram.

What a big boy!

We stopped in a 130 year old farmhouse about 5 miles out of town. Tanya, our host welcomed us, showed us our room and we made a cup of tea. Her dog, Digga a friendly and good natured 4 year old Red Kelpie was also welcoming and keen to make a fuss of us. Parrots flew around in the eucalyptus trees and we sat drinking tea soaking in the peace and quiet.

After this we returned to town to explore. Wagin isn't very big so it didn't take long to see a few old buildings (I liked their library) look into dining options (few) and have a pint in the local bar/hotel.We settled on buying a pizza and a bottle of wine from the 'bottleo' and taking it back to the farmhouse.

We then spent an evening chatting with Tanya and chilling out and entertaining Digga with play fights and fuss. I confess I drank at most of the bottle of wine (Mrs B. helped me a little)......

Digga

This wine was appropriately named!

.....so the next morning my head was a little sensitive...but a coffee revived me and we continued our journey towards the coast and our last port of call: Fremantle.