We go to the Hyden place (part four of many)
The next morning, December 24, 2004, Bev, Dwayne, and I got into Dwayne's car for the purpose of seeing Wave Rock, but also to run some errands down in Hyden. We took a dirt road for miles and miles, stopping the car every so often to snap a photo. At one stop, we encountered a racehorse goanna - a type of lizard that's built nearly as solid as a horse, but only a foot long or so. The goanna is nothing like that lizard you occasionally see on National Geographic that runs on its back legs at amazing speeds while its face fans out to comical levels - it looks more like a toy dinosaur. At another stop, we reached the line between the Shire of Yilgarn and a neighboring shire, so we took a photo of that as well. Not quite the same as a state line, but it was new territory for me, anyway. The line also has an historic rabbit-proof fence along it, so we shot that too.
Eventually, the dirt road reached a point where the neighboring shire thought it was worth paving a bit of it. If traffic counts are low, there's not much point in paving every road in sight, after all. Some shires such as Yilgarn, in an effort to save money, will pave a single 4-meter lane down the center of a two-lane dirt road. You drive on the asphalt until you come across another car, and then each car has only its inside tires on the asphalt, and the outside tires on the dirt. I prefer the safety of the completely paved road that we usually have in the US suburbs, but I can understand why this is done out in mostly uninhabited WA.
And then we came across an interesting land formation. The Humps are a pair of hills/mountains north of Hyden. There's nothing that unusual about them, except that the surrounding land for miles in all directions is pretty flat. It's a little like Uluru (Ayers Rock) or Stone Mountain because of the strange constrasts. So I shot The Humps a few times from a moving vehicle. (This was before . . . that song . . . came out.)
Finally, we reached Hyden, where Dwayne needed a little work done on his car. Bev and I went across the street to look in some of the shops. The grocery store was an interesting experience, in that it was nothing like a suburban US store. When you're the only store for an hour in any direction, you don't need to do anything fancy with your wares. You don't need lighting, or a 150-foot long greeting card and magazine rack. You certainly don't need a fancy misting system over the vegetables that plays canned thunder right before it comes on. You just need the basics, and this place had it. Still, the black walls and ceiling were a bit depressing, and made me think the place might have been a Miami nightclub in a past life. We picked up some cookies and other non-perishable goodies for the house, and a few lottery tickets as well (they didn't win - I'm not sure how the taxes would work if they had).
Finally, we drove out to Wave Rock. Wave Rock is an interesting geological formation, which was probably carved out by subterranean water flow thousands of years ago, and then the sediment was eroded away by wind to expose it. Or something like that. Basically, it looks like a giant wave is about to break right over your head. Surf's up, dude! I was tempted to find a skateboard, but then I remembered that I've never actually tried to ride one before. But that didn't stop us from taking pictures of ourselves looking like total dorks.
Eventually, we found an unorthodox way to climb Wave Rock. There's a chain link fence separating the 'park' portion of the rock from the 'Hyden reservoir' portion of the rock. It's a little precarious, but you can use the chain link to prevent yourself from falling, and to scale up over the 'breaking wave' and walk around on top. And as it turns out, there are some other interesting rock formations on top of Wave Rock. One looks a little like a giant 'space turtle' from The Empire Strikes Back. Another one back down at the base of Wave Rock looks exactly like a hippopotamus yawning. It was a fun hike. Thankfully, getting back down was easier than the ascent.
By this time, we'd worked up a pretty good appetite, so we went to the tourist trap across the street to get some lunch. We browsed the gift shop while we waited for our meat pies and lamingtons to be brought to the table. After this visit and two subsequent trips to Australia, I am prepared to tell you that every single gift shop in Western Australia sells the same exact wares. I didn't know this at the time of this visit. But it doesn't matter if the shop is inside a mall, or out at Wave Rock, or even Albany and Walpole. They will all have a few didgeridoos and boomerangs. They will all have stuffed kangaroos, koalas, emus, wombats, kookaburras, platypi, and echidnas - but no quokkas (except one, which I'll get to in another entry). They will all have the same postcards, the same CDs with no-name artists covering Australian classics and folksongs, and the same toddler T-shirts with the same cartoon animals on them. It's both annoying and a good thing that it's so predictable, because it means you can spend less time in the souvenir shops without worrying that you might have somehow overlooked the one gift your friends back home might actually WANT. Whatever that would be.
The drive home was hot yet uneventful. Christmas Eve dinner was again wonderful. I broke out one of my gifts for everyone a little early. It was in fact a re-gift, but an intentional one. My parents live south of Ocala, Florida, which in recent years has become a huge area for raising horses, particularly Derby winners. When Atlanta did their Cow Parade a few years ago, Ocala answered with a Horse Parade. And in 2004, Ocala also decided to have a special wine made to honor the area. So my parents asked if I wanted a bottle, and I said 'yes', already planning to bring it with me.
So at dinner, I apologized once again for asking Bev to marry me without first seeking her father's permission, and said I felt like a horse's ass for having done so. And then, I broke out the bottle . . . of 2004 Horse's Ass chardonnay. Everyone had a glass, including Lisa (Rodney's gf) and it turned out to be pretty good.
Yeah, it was corny. But it was worth it, because it finally felt like things were going to be okay between her family and me. And I still think so today, though it had far more to do with face-to-face time than the bottle.
After dinner, we relaxed for a few hours, watched some TV, shot some pool, and listened to music. But at 10:30 or so, we piled into two cars and drove north to Southern Cross . . .
ETA two spelling corrections
Eventually, the dirt road reached a point where the neighboring shire thought it was worth paving a bit of it. If traffic counts are low, there's not much point in paving every road in sight, after all. Some shires such as Yilgarn, in an effort to save money, will pave a single 4-meter lane down the center of a two-lane dirt road. You drive on the asphalt until you come across another car, and then each car has only its inside tires on the asphalt, and the outside tires on the dirt. I prefer the safety of the completely paved road that we usually have in the US suburbs, but I can understand why this is done out in mostly uninhabited WA.
And then we came across an interesting land formation. The Humps are a pair of hills/mountains north of Hyden. There's nothing that unusual about them, except that the surrounding land for miles in all directions is pretty flat. It's a little like Uluru (Ayers Rock) or Stone Mountain because of the strange constrasts. So I shot The Humps a few times from a moving vehicle. (This was before . . . that song . . . came out.)
Finally, we reached Hyden, where Dwayne needed a little work done on his car. Bev and I went across the street to look in some of the shops. The grocery store was an interesting experience, in that it was nothing like a suburban US store. When you're the only store for an hour in any direction, you don't need to do anything fancy with your wares. You don't need lighting, or a 150-foot long greeting card and magazine rack. You certainly don't need a fancy misting system over the vegetables that plays canned thunder right before it comes on. You just need the basics, and this place had it. Still, the black walls and ceiling were a bit depressing, and made me think the place might have been a Miami nightclub in a past life. We picked up some cookies and other non-perishable goodies for the house, and a few lottery tickets as well (they didn't win - I'm not sure how the taxes would work if they had).
Finally, we drove out to Wave Rock. Wave Rock is an interesting geological formation, which was probably carved out by subterranean water flow thousands of years ago, and then the sediment was eroded away by wind to expose it. Or something like that. Basically, it looks like a giant wave is about to break right over your head. Surf's up, dude! I was tempted to find a skateboard, but then I remembered that I've never actually tried to ride one before. But that didn't stop us from taking pictures of ourselves looking like total dorks.
Eventually, we found an unorthodox way to climb Wave Rock. There's a chain link fence separating the 'park' portion of the rock from the 'Hyden reservoir' portion of the rock. It's a little precarious, but you can use the chain link to prevent yourself from falling, and to scale up over the 'breaking wave' and walk around on top. And as it turns out, there are some other interesting rock formations on top of Wave Rock. One looks a little like a giant 'space turtle' from The Empire Strikes Back. Another one back down at the base of Wave Rock looks exactly like a hippopotamus yawning. It was a fun hike. Thankfully, getting back down was easier than the ascent.
By this time, we'd worked up a pretty good appetite, so we went to the tourist trap across the street to get some lunch. We browsed the gift shop while we waited for our meat pies and lamingtons to be brought to the table. After this visit and two subsequent trips to Australia, I am prepared to tell you that every single gift shop in Western Australia sells the same exact wares. I didn't know this at the time of this visit. But it doesn't matter if the shop is inside a mall, or out at Wave Rock, or even Albany and Walpole. They will all have a few didgeridoos and boomerangs. They will all have stuffed kangaroos, koalas, emus, wombats, kookaburras, platypi, and echidnas - but no quokkas (except one, which I'll get to in another entry). They will all have the same postcards, the same CDs with no-name artists covering Australian classics and folksongs, and the same toddler T-shirts with the same cartoon animals on them. It's both annoying and a good thing that it's so predictable, because it means you can spend less time in the souvenir shops without worrying that you might have somehow overlooked the one gift your friends back home might actually WANT. Whatever that would be.
The drive home was hot yet uneventful. Christmas Eve dinner was again wonderful. I broke out one of my gifts for everyone a little early. It was in fact a re-gift, but an intentional one. My parents live south of Ocala, Florida, which in recent years has become a huge area for raising horses, particularly Derby winners. When Atlanta did their Cow Parade a few years ago, Ocala answered with a Horse Parade. And in 2004, Ocala also decided to have a special wine made to honor the area. So my parents asked if I wanted a bottle, and I said 'yes', already planning to bring it with me.
So at dinner, I apologized once again for asking Bev to marry me without first seeking her father's permission, and said I felt like a horse's ass for having done so. And then, I broke out the bottle . . . of 2004 Horse's Ass chardonnay. Everyone had a glass, including Lisa (Rodney's gf) and it turned out to be pretty good.
Yeah, it was corny. But it was worth it, because it finally felt like things were going to be okay between her family and me. And I still think so today, though it had far more to do with face-to-face time than the bottle.
After dinner, we relaxed for a few hours, watched some TV, shot some pool, and listened to music. But at 10:30 or so, we piled into two cars and drove north to Southern Cross . . .
ETA two spelling corrections