Southwest - York, Wave Rock and broken bus

Moin Moin guys,

On Sunday the 13th of April 2014 my host mother Cécile was so friendly as to drive me into the city of Perth at 6:30am in the morning as there was no public transport possibility for me to get there. She dropped me off at the YHA Perth on Wellington Street where I asked another waiting backpacker if he is waiting for the Esperance Tour and he was! Andre, a German backpacker and I spoke a little bit about the usual stuff (where are you from, how long are you here, if and what did you work, what will the tour be like etc.) while another old guy joined us. At 7am a bus with a trailer approached, the tour guide Damian stuffed our bags into the trailer and we hopped onboard together with three other girls. There were already a few more people waiting. This was the last pick-up point and so there were eleven passengers and our tour guide on the bus. Lots of space, yeah!

Our next stop about an hour drive away was the little town York where we had a little Meet ‘n’ Greet and then I explored the really small town together with Andre while the others went into the supermarket.

This is our great bus. I was surprised that it said Western Xposure and not Nullarbor Travelers or Adventure Tours. We would find out in the next days why this is the case.

While we drove towards Hyden we stopped for fuel where we saw some huge machineries for wheat farming around this area.

Then we stopped at some left-overs of the second rabbit-proof-fence that went almost all the way from South to North Australia (so over 3000km) to stop the spreading of wild rabbits which were set into freedom in New South West (another 3000km to the East from this point). Early European settlers brought rabbits with them to keep them as pets and to hunt. But as there were no natural predators the rabbits multiplied, well, like rabbits all over Australia. Thousands of rabbits everywhere destroying the native flora and fauna. There is also an Australian movie called “The rabbit-proof fence” which I hopefully will be able to see soon.

Then we stopped at some really bizarre place. A dog cemetery in the middle of nowhere. Hmm, whatever.

In Hyden we drove past some iron figures like a mechanic or an Echidna while Chrystelle and Q-Yuan (I am sure this is written wrong, sorry about that!) bought sleeping bags in the nearby supermarket.

Then we finally got to the Wave Rock formations. We first stopped at the “Hippos Yawn” (can you see it?) and then walked around the granite to the Wave Rock where we took some “surfing" pictures. Awesome! :-)

It was time for lunch: sandwiches! Lunch was a bit longer than planned as there was some alarm button in the bus that went off every now and then and a mechanic was on his way. It was really hot, so we walked into the little gift shop which was air-conditioned and waited there. Damian apparently was able to fix the problem himself and so we took off towards Esperance, about 360km away.

Just outside Ravensthorpe Damian started to swear like a Pro and stopped next to the road. The water tank leaked heavily and therefore we would have to camp closeby. Everyone started talking about the movie “Wolfcreek” where outback travelers get killed and stuff like that. AHHH!

We waited for the bus to cool down, Damian refilled the watertank and we drove back to Ravensthorpe and to a caravan park where we set camp in the darkness and prepared dinner: Burritos! This is our BBQ-Chef Andre.

And these are Chrystelle and Q-Yuan.

As this is a camping tour we had swags (little mattresses inside a cover) where we would put our sleeping bags into to sleep in. But we had tents as well, so I got into a tent together with Asha. Only Chrystelle and Q-Yuan slept in tents as well, everyone else decided to sleep under the open sky. It was still a very cheerful evening as we hoped to get the mechanic in early next morning and then we could drive off with just a few hours delay.

Yours Wave-Rock-surfing Stefanie