Kondindin to Corrigin 1995

Kondindin to Corrigin, day 7, Wednesday 1 November 1995. Rain had fallen during the night. There didn’t seem any need to rush for an early start since this wasn’t a challenge day, the wind wasn’t going to get any stronger and might back a bit more southerly as the day went on. I had decided to go to Corrigin via the Pioneer Cemetery and Kondinin Lake. Tourist brochures show this lake as a shining expanse of water with a yacht on it but of course I’m a local and I knew it would only be that good under exceptional conditions.

Corrigin

The winds were fresh from the west and the skies threatened more rain. I left Kondinin at 8:43, heading south out of town instead of north, the usual route to Corrigin, which would have taken me back part of the way I had travelled from Narembeen the previous week.

I found the Pioneer Cemetery and spent some time there. It was a nice peaceful place with a nice feeling. There was a fence, a road for the corteges to come in and plots laid out in rows. Some of the graves had their original stones and markers, many were not marked, but this was in the process of being remedied, presumably by the local shire, who had carefully discovered who was lying in each plot and were preparing roughly engraved, sometimes misspelt brass markers for all the unmarked graves.

One of these marked the grave of an Italian prisoner of war who was ‘accidently’ killed in 1944 while working on a local farm. There were numerous children’s graves, some only a few weeks old, others a few months or years. One grave contained Hannah Oborne, who was born in 1884 and died in 1937. I felt that she was much loved when she was alive.

I resumed my journey and looked out for the facilities for the recreational use of the lake. I never found these. Despite the road being shown as sealed on the map, I ran onto some gravel which went on and on. It wasn’t bad gravel but I had a fair way round to get back to the main Corrigin road and worried about having a longer and more difficult trip than I had expected.

I never saw much water or any recreational facilities. The map told me that about 14km out of Kondinin I should be making a sharp right turn north to get back to the main road. The sun finally peeped through long enough to suggest that I was heading southwest, rather than west. I started to worry when I passed a sign saying ‘Shire of Kulin’.

At 3121, 13 km out of Kondinin, I came to a T-junction. The distance was OK but I had been expecting a crossroads. The north-bound road had a sign saying some sheep station, suggesting that this was the driveway into private property rather than a public road. I made a drink stop and got out the map. I was attacked by a swarm of flies, the backpack fell upside down, spilling its contents, and I swore a bit as the map blew away. I retrieved and studied it and worked out a theory, which ultimately proved to be correct, about what had gone wrong.

I had been so intent on staying on the gravel and wondering how much of it lay ahead that I had missed a fork in the road, where I should have turned right. Roads often look different in reality than they do on maps. Often, a fork will be shown as a main road running on and a side road going off to right or left, but when you get there the sense is different. In this case the main run of the road had been to the left, not to the right as suggested by the map, and the way I wanted to go would have required an actual right turn instead of just following the road. I had been looking to avoid a left fork and of course none appeared.

Anyway I turned north, up this sheep-station drive, which I soon realised was in fact a public gravel road. At 3125 I saw a truck approaching from the west, trailing dust, telling me I was coming to a gravel cross-roads. When I reached this I stopped again, got out the map and saw that this was where I should have come to and turned right if I had been following my intended route. I wasn’t going to head back east to see the lake. If my theory was correct, the main road should appear at 3130. I kept going north, then at 3127 a heavy rain squall rushed in from the northwest. Fortunately, before I had gone too far, I came to one of those sheds that farmers have at the driveway entrance to their properties. I crossed the road and sheltered in there till the rain stopped.

I got on my way and had a bit of a climb, then a descent, and there indeed was the shining bitumen road, about to cut in at 3130. The gravel had been turned to mud by the rain and the pedals were slippery, and as I turned thankfully onto the bitumen a westerly gale sprang up and tried to push me backwards, and another heavy shower soaked me through this time, no shelter being available.

I passed a peg saying CO 30 at 3132. Only 30km to Corrigin didn’t seem much; I was on the right road, a sealed road and bike and body were still working. The rain and wind eased off and I had a bit of a downhill run. I was cold and felt as if I had nothing on because my thin cycling clothes were wet. At 3136 as the sun shone briefly I had a drink stop, then at 3137 the rain started again. Again I was lucky to find a shed. This one had three kids’ bikes in it and smelt doggy, but was roomy enough for a fourth bike and rider. The rain poured down for a long time. Rivers of mud flowed past the shed. I decided just to wait.

Eventually the rain cleared and I got on my way. The road climbed around a hill and turned from due west to NNW. It was still in my face but mainly across me, and the going got easier. I took another drink break at 3150 and finally reached Corrigin at 1:08, 3162, just as I was about to get wet from another shower. My unintended detour into the shire of Kulin had added about 5.5 km of mud and gravel to my trip.

The Windmill Motel was next to the roadhouse, on the main road in and out of town. It was quite nice, though at $48 it was as dear as the Hyden Motel, more expensive than the Kondinin motel and not as good as either. But it was all right. I had to get a globe from one of the other lights to put in the bedside light, which flopped about. The people who owned it were friendly and helpful enough.

The wind was still strong. My right knee was hurting and stiff. I had tea and biscuits and a rest, then went down to the pool. It was open, it was only a dollar, it was open, there was no-one else there except a boy who didn’t stay long. I jumped off the high board a number of times and swam a number of lengths, slowly. This was a most enjoyable and beneficial experience. On the way back to the motel I was walking quickly and freely with no pain.

I looked round the town, did a bit of shopping and booked the Quairading Hotel for the next day. The woman asked me if I wanted a bathroom in the room, and I said yes. Neither the hotel nor the motel at Quairading are listed in the Accommodation Guide, and I could not find the motel in the phone book and the map showed it a bit of a way out of town, going east.

I looked at the old Corrigin Hotel, where I stayed one night in 1962 when I used to go and spend time in the country with friends who used to travel about. On that occasion the temperature on my hotel windowsill was 26F, or -3C, in the morning.

I had ham steak and mushroom soup for dinner in the motel restaurant. The TV was on so I could see that the weather was going to become more helpful to me in the days ahead.

The second night in Hyden I had started the habit of a walk just before going to bed, to stop the jumpy-leg problem. I have Valium for it but was worrying about having to take a Valium each night of the trip in order to get any sleep. I never used to have to carry on like that. I wanted a non-chemical remedy to work, and this walk seemed to. It is interesting for a city-dweller to walk around a small country town at night. There is no-one about and the background silence is so deep that you can hear distant animals and birds and hear the faint humming of the lonely street-lamps.

Reading at Corrigin: 3162. Km for day: 54. Aggregate: 329. Km/day: 47. Km/hour to Corrigin: 12.1. This pathetic speed was of course calculated on total elapsed time, including one long sight-seeing stop, two lost stops, three drink stops and two long rain stops. When I was actually moving I was going well enough, considering the headwind.

Charles A. Pierce

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Kondindin to Corrigin 1995

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