We are not too far from Perth. Our end-goal for Christmas. We start driving later and drive slower. Today we left the wheat plains for the forested hills further west. Mining activity is going on in these hills.  From gold in Kalgoorlie, it is Tin, lithium and other minerals now. We had a look into a deep open pit mine in  Greenbushes Mining started with Tin in 1888 but now concentrates on Tantalum and Lithium. All minerals found in the local Pegmatite rock (a type of Granite). The pit was closed down and reopened several times. Ownership was also for ever changing. Outside town are several worker camps for people doing week on week off shifts. Fortunately the forests are large and the many hills hide the mining activity. So the area is still touristic. To attract more tourists some towns are “RV” friendly which means there is an area set aside for free camping.  This one we are staying is next to a sport field and a water reservoir.

Of course along the way more street arts seen. (Jamaliah new hobby. Photographing street arts).

We took a “rest” day and stayed at the same place. Well rest day from driving…. Not from walking! The idea was to do a short walk around the lake behind the campsite and after that make a start with the annual Christmas letter. After jumping over some fence wires we ended up on a nice gravel path through the forest. The signs indicated a circular walk (Greenbushes loop)  through the forest. On our GPS we could follow the route. It was a great 13 km walk through a Marri/Jarrah tree forest. At one point we followed the 1000 km long Bibbulman track from Perth to Albany. Like any walks, the first hours are fine and relaxed but after several hours you get a bit tired. We looked at the GPS much more frequent hoping that we could find a shortcut which was not there. Luckily it wasn’t a hot day and with a cool breeze, a good day for walking (unfortunately the flies were awake too).

The long and short of it is that we had a very nice extended 4 hr walk through the forest and later did not have energy left for writing a Christmas letter.