Sunday 10/14 Koonalda Homestead

Where's Elmer Fudd when you need him? Probably admiring old Holdens and Fords.

      I climbed out of the tent right around sunrise to check out our home for the day. First thing I noticed, hundreds of rabbits. Australia has a well-known feral rabbit problem, but with the introduction of a virus specific to rabbits, Myxoma, in the 1950's the population plummeted. It began to increase again with when resistance to the disease developed, but another, Calicivirs, was introduced in 1991 which again caused a plummeting of population. Of course each time the rabbit populations fell, feral foxes upped their daily intake of native critters. So now you see signs all over the country warning pet owners to keep their dogs out of certain areas because poison bait toxic only to Canis has been set out to try to control foxes.  Ah the English, also brought starlings and sparrows, as if the native birds weren't good enough.

       Thus far in our travels we hadn't seen that many bunnies. But the old Kanoolda Homestead is overrun with them. Their trails go off in every direction, and warren mounds up to a meter high are scattered around the property. Perhaps the disease introduction program hasn't had that much effect so far from any population center.

    Ever since I was a little kid I've loved auto junk yards. The homestead, besides being a sheep station, served as a roadhouse for the old Eyre Highway, a gravel road that connected South and West Australia. There are two yards filled with derelict cars that had probably been towed to Kanoolda when they broke down on the rough road and couldn't be fixed. When the new paved road was built in 1986 well south of the old road and much closer to the coast, the days of serving through traffic was over. So there is a nice collection of cars from the late 40's to the late 70's rusting away, and I wandered around taking photos in the early morning light.

The rabbits love building warren under the wrecks

      The peacefulness of the evening before turned to strong wind during the night. At first in the morning our west facing terrace protected us, but while I fixed breakfast the direction of the wind shifted it and began pushing out tent southward, sliding it along the concrete floor. We tore down camp and went for a hike.

The latest tenants of Kanoolda Homestead

A cool blow hole

     I've mentioned the thick mantle of limestone underlying the Nullarbor Plain. We'd gone out to the ocean to see a wave blow hole, but conditions were wrong for it to be in action when we were there. Another type of blow hole can be found further inland. There a narrow passage eroded by rainwater connects the surface to underground caverns. Again, under certain circumstances, air pressure, temperature, and wind, air will blow from the cavern through the blow hole. Simo had told us that about a kilometer up one of the old homestead pathways we could find a blow hole, and that the escaping air could blow your hat 10 meters into the sky. After a short walk we found the hole, but since the wind was so strong that it could itself elevate my hat into the upper atmosphere it seemed ridiculous to attempt such a launch above the blow hole. But there was a very nice chilly breeze emanating from the cavern, and after sitting above it and nearly in it were reluctant to leave and return to the homestead in the heat.

Blow hole, cool 60 F air venting from the ground

There are flies, damned flies and Australian flies

     While we're talking about blow holes, allow me to vent about Aussie flies (ha ha, get it , vent... blow holes... I amuse myself). There is nothing in existence, so far in my experience, as annoying as the flies that populate the outback. Chalk board scratching, snoring, leaking roofs, these are a few of my most annoying things. But the Oz Outback flies take the cake. They seem innocent enough, slightly smaller versions of our house flies. They don't bite, they don't sting, they don't even really like getting on you food. What they covet is faces. They swarm about, landing on your cheeks, lips, eyes, nose, trying to crawl into your nostrils or into your ears. Aussies have a difference of opinion as to what they seek on the human face, could be moisture, could be salt, but they seem to detest them as much as we do, although we were talking to one Australian who blithely continued a conversation with us as a fly explored his hairy nostril.

     They only come out during daylight hours, and the hotter the temperature, the better. I've tried to steel myself to their presence, knowing that they really mean me no harm, but when one of the buggers gets stuck between your glasses and you eyes, or crawls along your lip, or lands on the tip or your nose and starts spelunking, then it's impossible not to go a little bit crazy. You'd think a strong wind, which Oz has plenty of and might classify as my second most annoying feature of the continent, would blow them away, but anything less than a good flag-snapping gale is useless. They do favor the lee side of your body in the wind, and it's nothing to see a dozen or more flies resting on your partners back as you walk into the wind. Of course the return trip is a different story and the eddies and whorls created by your head makes a favored hover and landing zone. We've heard that as we go north towards the tropics the fly problem abates. But then it's the mozzies that go after you.

     We got back to the car and drove the 6 km to the Kanoolda Cave. It is completely shut down to visitors to protect its cultural features, but it's an awesome sight to behold, even from above. We enjoyed watching the sparrows and kestrels soar in and out of the cave on the winds coming from beneath the earth.

Kanoolda Cave

     We went back to the homestead and looked around the old shearers shed. Then we took over the shearers kitchen to do some writing, not that there was anyone else around. It was quite warm in there, but at least it was fly free.

Shearer's Shed

Kevin writing blog in shearer's kitchen

     One of the posts holding up the veranda on the main house is a reused timber that has a very nice mortised hole in it. I examined it closely, admiring the craftsmanship, and pondering the fate of all fine hand work and the people who have mastered it. I've made a number of mortise joints myself. You mark the opening carefully with a  pencil to precise dimensions, down to the width of the pencil tip itself, get a finely honed chisel, and with a hammer carefully carve out wood until the desired result is achieved. You're never quite satisfied with the end product, maybe because your initial chisel cuts were off by a fraction of a degree, or the sides of the cut weren't glass smooth. But when you slip the similarly worked tenon into the mortise and feel how smoothly and securely the two pieces fit together, there's a degree of satisfaction that overcomes the sense that it wasn't quite perfect.

Mortise in old post

     Some carpenter made this mortise a long time ago. He worked carefully, thinking that no one else would ever examine his work but knowing that he'd worked the joint quickly and well enough. Then at some point years later someone took the mortised and tenoned pieces apart and used the big beam to support the roof of the terrace. And now even that use of the timber has become only a part of a tourist's curiosity.

     Such is the Kanoolda homestead on a grand scale, built from discarded railroad ties of the old rain line and reused window frames from the obsolete telegraph station, and now itself abandoned. And surrounded by wrecked old cars that were once the pride and joy of their original owners.

     We ate leftover roo bourginon and watched the sunset, then slept in the shearer's kitchen to stay out of the winds that were just picking up.