After a fun few days with Frances and David at Wooleen Station we headed north to Carey Downs Station. The recent rains that had allowed swimming and canoeing on the Murchison River, also meant there were plenty of wash-outs and road closures. We fuelled up at Murchison Settlement, checked out the road report, asked Wink and the roadhouse for his local knowledge, and opted to take the most direct route via the back tracks…but kept our fingers crossed.

We set off on our meander through WA with no set time frame and no planned route. There was however a couple of places we knew we wanted to go which gave us a rough skeleton of a plan when we left home on the south coast of WA. Wooleen Station was one of those places. We’ve visited Wooleen a few times before, in fact we photographed Frances and David’s wedding a couple of years ago…

The pub at Yalgoo is quite spectacular when seen for the first time hot pink and glowing in the late afternoon sun. However, it’s the paint job inside that’s the show stealer - the liberal use of a garish green the likes of which I’ve never seen before, certainly not in nature, but somehow, in this setting, it actually works. The walls are largely bare except for a couple of jokey 80s-style alcohol-related posters, a collection of old Yalgoo number plates, and an upside-down Exit sign.

Yalgoo, affectionately known as The Goo, feels like that one-horse town. There’s still plenty of evidence of its once thriving past, and the town has obviously realised that if it is to stay alive in the 21st century, it needs to keep its history alive too…

If ever there’s a man who seizes the day it’s Mick, and his wife Judy seems more than happy to be going along for the ride…

Just when I was thinking that nothing much had changed in Mukinbudin, I discovered that this tiny Wheatbelt town was far more progressive than I’d imagined…the Men’s Shed had women members too!