THE FAMILY CARAVANNING BABY ADVENTURE: DAYS 71 to 74 - SWIMMING OUR WAY ACROSS THE WHEATBELT

There was a film I once saw as a boy called The Swimmer with Burt Lancaster where a man decides to make his way home via his neighbours swimming pools. Well travelling through the Western Australian wheatbelt felt similar as each town had a wonderful swimming pool to cool ourselves off in as we made our way down from Perth to the south coast. These towns we travelled through had received funding for their nice state of the arts swimming pools through the Royalties for Regions funding project to inject life into these tired dusty towns. Not only did these towns have new swimming pools but also often brand new shire caravan parks which were very cheap to stay in but of a high standard.

So from Wave rock we travelled about 100 kms to the town of Kulin with it's 18 meter high, 182 meter long water slide. The campground had lovely brand new double concrete pads to park on and the toilet block had individual bathrooms with posh fittings and huge shower cubicles. Ayla loved the waterslide sitting on my lap as we went down at speed. Kyra was not so keen. The first day I had the wrong top on which slowed us down but the second day without a top we really did fly down the slide, painfully bumping knees and elbows as we went. There were only a few kids using it so we never had to queue.

The next day we drove without the caravan 70 kms to the dentist who mucked up gluing my crown tooth back in. Hopefully he is a dentist! Who knows out here in the wheatbelt, anything is possible! He still didn't do a great job filing my teeth down to make them fit together better. Roll on dentures! So we made a day of it visiting the Grain discovery centre explaining how the whole wheat growing process works. I wrote in the visitor book that I was gluten free! Then we visited the Hidden hollow for a picnic and the girls learnt to make a rock cairn. From there we drove to Buckleys breakaway, where erosion has cut through orange laterite exposing beautiful coloured cliff.

sunset over our lovely camp spot at Kulin

The day after we got up early to climb up the monolith of Jilakin rock with it's great views over the salt lake below it and then we drove along the Tin Horse highway stopping to take photos of the hilarious barrel drum sculptures which locals have made which line the road into Kulin.

After Kulin we drove south slowly heading closer to the sea and stopped at the small town of Lake Grace for one night. It takes it's name from the huge salt lake next to the town which stretches as far as the eye can see. At this town they have a 50 metre pool which was just great for Steffi and I to do laps and it had a great children's paddling area for the girls too. I took a photo of the pool for the blog and the young guy running it came up to me to ask me what I was doing. I told him about the blog and he just gave me a blank stare and said that people weren't allowed to take photos of the pool. He repeated this a few times to make sure it sunk in. Reminded me of the days of being arrested for taking photos in countries where the people were paranoid of spies.