Travelling south-east from Perth you quickly leave the city, enter thick forest for about 50 km, and then suddenly hit the vast plains of the wheat belt, also known as the Golden Outback or Australia's Breadbasket. There is a stretch of hundreds of square kilometers of golden wheat fields surrounded by dry Outback and littered with pockets of salty plains, forests and rocky outcrops. The most interesting aspect of this area is how vastly and quickly the landscape changes from forest to desert to wheat fields to rocks. The forest is so thick and green that it almost feels like you're driving through a rain-forest. The desert could be mistaken for the African savanna. The wheat fields make you feel like you're driving through the North American prairies (including southern Alberta). And they all happen one right after the other, almost without warning.
In some parts of the drive to Wave Rock the area was so reminiscent of the African Plains that it felt like a herd of Wildebeest should be milling about.
The fields of golden wheat were a stark contrast to the red rock and green Gum Trees. At times it would have been easy to confuse this area with Southern Alberta.
Here is Wave Rock itself along with Nadia and Keva playing on it. This is a small part of a much larger rock formation in the area that is similar (although much smaller) than Uluru (Ayers Rock).
Another interesting rock formation in the area is called the "Hippo's Yawn".
Also, there was a small cave close to Wave Rock which contained some Aboriginal rock paintings. The legend says that a local Aboriginal made this cave his home after showing a great deal of anti-social behavior and being ostracized from the tribe. The story goes that he was so desperate for food that killed several people including some children. Eventually, the tribe caught him and he was punished with death and left out in the desert for the ants to devour. I think they should have tied him to a tree and let the flies harass him. Now THAT would have been torture.
The drive out to Wave Rock is quite scenic and the rock itself (and adjacent rocks/caves) are pretty cool. However, the drive itself is quite a long way from Perth. Unfortunately, at this time of year the flies are at their worst. As a result, it is almost unbearable being outdoors in certain situations. This was one of those situations. After driving for 4 hours to get to the rock we couldn't do a 1.6 km hike because the flies were so bad. If you stopped fanning yourself with branches or whatever else you could find, you'd immediately be swarmed by a dozen or so flies attacking primarily the face. We explored Wave Rock and it's surrounds as quickly as we could. After driving for 4 hours we only ended up staying in the area for about 2 hours before driving back for another 4 hours.
However, as they say "sometimes the journey is more important than the destination". In this case, when we were just outside of Perth we used the GPS to locate somewhere to have dinner. The first restaurant it took us to was closed. The second restaurant was a beautiful place overlooking a forested valley in the Perth hills. We managed to sneak into a table without a reservation and had a wonderful dinner, scenic view and beautiful sunset.
Overall, despite the flies this experience was an interesting one. However, if we travel away from the coast again it will probably be in the winter when we don't have to worry about the flies.
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