After the big climb , it was time to get a bit sedate , so we went for a drive around the countryside ending up at Mt Barker . There's a great lookout below the huge television aerial - it's the Rotary Lookout , and as soon as we saw that sign we thought , oh dear , will it be another overgrown waste of time . No it wasn't , there's a timber deck area with seats and explanatory signs , and you get a view to the Stirling Ranges to the north and down to Albany in the south . The mountains in this photo are the Porongorups .
We headed back to Cranbrook via a network of gravel and tar roads , letting us stay off the highway and associated traffic .
Next day we decided to check out some of the salt lakes to the north of town , the 1st one was Pink Lake , and from the side of the road it looked like it could be a bit pink , so I got the drone out . The water was like a mirror , perfect reflections .
It was only once I got some height that the colour really started to show itself . The road is on the left and you can see the ute . The sand was an interesting mix of colours as well .
Here's another from straight above , the top edge is the road .
After getting a few more photo's & videos we went on a bit of a search to get to another lake we'd passed . It was about 50m from the road , surrounded by wheat fields , there are many lakes here that you just don't see when driving around the place , you can only see them from above . My fascination with them started on one of our trips to or from Sydney via jet , from 36,000 ft I could see all these lakes - they were all different colours , some yellow , pink , orange , grey & brown - so I wanted to find some of them . Now this may not have been the exact spot where I saw them , but I won't let that ruin a good story hahaha.
The drone was coming into it's own here , I guided it up & over the trees and onto the lake , passed all the sand , then salt build up and lowered it to get the reflection of the Stirling Ranges in the background , it didn't work quite as well as I wanted , but was still okay .
After a video & some photos we then went upwards to our 120m limit - now we had some colour !!
Blue skies , puffy clouds , green fields and trees and the stunning orange/pink of the lake itself .
Panning the drone around revealed many more lakes of all sizes .
Looking straight down again revealed the salt build up and the graduated orange colour .
And that was our last look around Cranbrook as we are heading out tomorrow . Collie was our next destination for a couple of nights . We packed up and left Cranbrook on Anzac Day , which worked well for us , the traffic was very light on the road we had chosen - another back road - we only saw about 10 cars in the 229 kms that we drove .
We settled into the park at Collie and had lunch before going for a drive around town . The Collie River meanders through Collie , and there are lots of park areas beside the river that get well used by the locals . The river is very clear & clean , and one we are keen to go for a paddle on when we return in the future .
Collie is bigger than we expected , having both a Coles and Woolworths supermarkets , and one set of traffic lights . The train line seems to separate the town into north & south and there seems to be 2 main streets , this is on the south side .
We checked out the railway and discovered this old locomotive shed , complete with turntable .
From town we headed out to Harris River Dam which is a water supply dam for about 40 towns - mainly to the east of Collie . This next photo is a part of the Bibbulmun Track - the walking track from Albany to Perth . This section seems to have thousands of grass trees .
The dam is down quite a way and hasn't been overflowing for quite a while . It was built then commissioned in 1990 , and has some great views from above .
That's it from Collie , only a quick visit this time as we have a few things to do in the next week or so . Tomorrow it's down the hills to the coast , staying with friends that we met at Cape York for a few days then back to the southern suburbs of Perth for a week or so , stay tuned .
Here's a map link : - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IC5Q4-jFxShnS-ERMKB9oVkCxJCfNxAr&usp=sharing
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