It was
7.40am when we left Albany & a beautiful day. We'd enjoyed our stay, albeit a longer one than planned. Now, we wondered what lay ahead. Esperance was 467km away & so we planned to break the journey by spending a night in Ravensthorpe. We were leaving a lovely part of Australia - when would we see such lush green hills again? The sheep & cattle grazed contentedly & a kookaburra observed us from a telephone wire above.
Two hours later, we were travelling through grain country - huge plains stretched endlessly on either side of us & fields of wheat or barley covered most of the land. There were very few settlements & those who lived in the remote homesteads that were dotted sparsely over the countryside, must have been brave souls indeed.
They'd have to enjoy their own
company & revel in solitude, or perhaps be downright anti-social! Either way, they must have derived great satisfaction from farming the land, for the crops were flourishing. The occasional comical mailbox indicated that those who lived way down the track had managed to retain their sense of humour.
At Ravensthorpe, we filled up with diesel but, as it was still well before midday, we decided to continue on to Esperance. The drive had been relatively easy up to this point & we hadn't met with much traffic. However, we had two scary moments ... a dog appeared at the roadside, out of nowhere, & was obviously intending to cross the highway. Fortunately, it waited for us to pass but then ran straight infront of the roadtrain behind us! Miraculously, it reached the opposite verge safely, by the skin of its teeth. We'd just recovered from that, when a small plane flew right across our path - it was
very low & gave us quite a shock.
We stopped at a roadhouse for some lunch, then set off again on the last leg of our journey. Our route had been an interesting one, providing us with a variety of attractive scenery.
Suddenly, we spotted white sand dunes to our right - our journey was almost over!
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