Hyden WA March 18, 2015
Yes, well it's a day late, but hey, what can you do?
Just north, about 17km, from Hyden and the Wave Rock, is another bunch of rocks called The Humps. at the Humps, there are two points of interest, Mulkas cave and the Gnamma holes.
Mulka's cave is interesting in that the Aboriginal story would have us believe that in the dream time, two people married 'wrong way', i.e. not in the right skin group and their baby, Mulka was a half-witted, cross-eyed giant. Mulka ran away and hid in this cave, which was OK, but when he started eating babies the tribe tracked him down and beat him to death. So, don't go marrying out of the right skin group or else. Oh, and if you're a child and your ma says to stay near the camp, do so, or you will get et by a hideous giant.
Anyhow, its a cave, more of a big rock with a hollow under it, in which the ceiling has a few hand prints painted. Nothing else, apart from graffiti, just hands.
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| Mulka's cave. Hyden WA |
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| Mulka's cave. Hyden WA |
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| Aboriginal hand-print. Mulka's cave. Hyden WA |
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| Aboriginal hand-print. Mulka's cave. Hyden WA |
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| Brian. ace photog. Mulka's cave. Hyden WA |
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| Mulka's cave. Hyden WA |
A gnamma hole is a hole in the rock in which water pools. Further around from the cave is a very large flat area of rock with a few of these holes, complete with water. The aboriginals knew where they all where and quite often kept them covered with a rock to stock them drying out. The early explorers found out about them and in most cases drank them dry before moving on in their search for whatever was out there to be found.
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| Gnamma rock hole. Hyden WA |
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| Gnamma rock hole. Hyden WA |
While we were there Judy saw something scuttle across the rock, then stop and vanish. We kept looking and once we saw it again we tracked it with our cameras, an Ornate dragon Lizard. They are about a 100mm long and pencil thin. They stop and blend perfectly into the rocky background, before sitting up and running to another spot. Eventually, they hide under a tiny rock shelf. Cute.
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| Ornate Dragon. Gnamma rock holes. Hyden WA |
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| Ornate Dragon. Gnamma rock holes. Hyden WA |
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| Ornate Dragon. Gnamma rock holes. Hyden WA |
Nearby we noticed a whole pile of tadpoles in one of the pools. It's the usual story, the holes dry out completely and stay dry for months. The moment some rain falls, they are swarming with all kinds of aquatic life.
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| Tadpoles. Gnamma rock hole. Hyden WA |
Now, the countryside around here, where it hasn't been laser levelled into monster paddocks for the growing of wheat, looks a lot like this
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| Landscape. Hyden WA |
In the middle of all this scrub and salt lake desolation, the local progress and tourist mob have built an Airport (pretty impressive building, dirt runway) and a Resort (looks like a retirement village), but which also has this pool, that they claim to be a 'hot salt water pool'. It was just a shallow body of bright green sludge from what I could tell.
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| Swimming pool, Wave Rock Resort. Hyden WA |
Anyhow, doesn't matter. Judging by the carpark sizes and the other amenities, they must get some pretty solid crowds up here during the season. Or not, who knows?
Hyden the town is a typical tiny country town which exists because it has a railway siding and silos. They have a great sense of purpose though in attracting tourists, they have really tried to make the most of the natural attractions, and have added some unnatural of their own. We've seen heaps of odd sculptures made from rusty bits of metal, but this was a whole row of them based on pioneers and characters of the town.
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| Russ and his waggon. That's our waggon behind it. Hyden WA |
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| Don and his trusty shears and rusty sheep. Hyden WA |
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| The three bikes are hooked up to a generator and its dubbed the first power-plant in Hyden. Hyden WA |
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| Johnny the mechanic. Hyden WA |
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| Horse and buggy. Hyden WA |
We took one last look at the Wave Rock and climbed up the top for a look around the landscape. We were probably not surprised to find a whole pile of these silly cairns that people seem driven to build. (I admit to having added a rock to the one on top of Camel Back in Namadgi, but I'm not a big fan)
By the time we had gotten back to camp we had a camper van a metre away from our annex and there were 10,000 teenagers running loose. Needless to say, each and every one had their phone going flat out on the net so any bandwidth that existed had disappeared, which is why you get these today, not yesterday
Cheers, Brian and Judy
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