First stop was a little town called Mingenew ( pronounced min gen ew ) , it's smack bang in the middle of wheat territory , and has a large grain handling facility , with railway connection as well . The scenic lookout is a flat top hill just west of town giving views over town and the wheat fields that stretch to the horizon !!
After a drive around town - about 5 mins - we headed north toward Coalseam Conservation Park - about 30 klms away . All this area is catchment for the Irwin River that meets the ocean at Dongara , Coalseam Park is also part of that catchment , and Irwin River flows through it - when it flows of course !!
Many of the fields have been harvested , but there are still many more to be done - we haven't seen them being harvested before , we've seen them before and after , but not the actual harvest , till today!!
Todays drive was about 180 klms , and all but about 30klms was through wheat fields - that should give you a little bit of an idea of the size of the wheat industry here , and we barely scraped the surface - there is an awful lot more !!!
We reached Coalseam Park and drove up to the Irwin River Lookout , giving us a view down the river valley - not very deep , but interesting . All the hills here are flat - being the sea floor at some stage - and have a layer of hard laterite stone capping the top - it's an orange / red colour from iron deposits .
We did see the remains of a large amount of everlasting daisies and other plants that have finished flowering weeks ago , there was one single tiny little flower in a group with 5 or 6 others that were still flowering .
We looked out over the river and saw the picnic area below , and walked back to the ute before driving down to another picnic area beside the river bed , it's called Fossil - due to the presence of some fossils and a coalseam .
There are easily identifiable layers of shale on the bottom , with a layer of sandstone above that , then another layer of a different type of sandstone on that , some coal seam on the far left of photo and also the layer of Laterite on top . The shale dates back 280 million years , the next layer of sandstone 269 million years , the thin coal seam 265million years , the next layer of sandstone about 50 million years , then the laterite about 40 million years - a spring chicken in the scheme of things !!
After lunch beside the river bed we headed toward Walkaway ( a small village near Geraldton ) , and took a side road that would lead us through many more wheat fields , and over the higher country on the way back to Port Denison . The patterns left in the wheat fields look great !!
Arriving back at Dongarra , we refuelled and headed to the beach for a swim , it was 36 degrees with an offshore wind . We cooled off nicely , then sat and dripped off , before the onshore breeze came in and started to drop the temperature back down .
Time for a beer & salsa !!
Todays map :-https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=z1G8gwwxwyYo.kShNfXseQFf8&usp=sharing
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