Melangata Station Stay & Perenjori, WA

After a short drive, morning tea was in Yalgoo. A place that has the smallest church designed by architect/priest Monsignor John Hawes, parish priest for the Murchison Goldfields and Mid-West from 1915-1938. Repaired in 1981 after years of disrepair, it sat alongside the Dominican Convent and Chapel of which only the chimney stacks are left standing.

Continuing another 70kms along a very well maintained gravel road we headed towards Melangata Station Stay. And the lovely wildflowers continued to amaze along the drive.


The station Homestead is a unique building being the only private residence designed by Monsignor John Hawes that was ever built in Australia, and also his first commission in the area before any of his churches were built. We did a Homestead tour which was very interesting and having history of how he was given the commision to design the homestead in the first place, which run over budget and took over 3 years to build and believed to not be totally finished. Remember, this was during WW2, with labour shortages. At the end of the day we were treated to freshly made lemonade scones and a cup of delicious coffee by Jo Clews owner of Melangata Station Stay. Husband Ken was out installing new fences to not only keep the dorper cross sheep in, but also keep unwanted animals out. A single, low down outrigger electric wire has been effective in stopping dingoes and even kangaroos from overrunning the fenced areas. Jo and Ken are also pushing dead fallen Mulga into wash away areas to help slow the movement of any water, and keep it on land when the rains fall.
New land owners are reinventing land management, and opening up their homes and land to visitors. The area is in desert type country: red plains covered in scattered Mulga scrub, granite breakaways, brilliant coloured rocks, and dry creeks that can flood and wash away tracks with the smallest amount of rain.




We chose to do a 4 wheel drive tag a long tour of the station which took over 3 hours and 50km. We were treated to views of the paddocks, breakaways, wildflowers in abundance and even some Aboriginal rock art (no photography allowed.)


We took another walk on the station, this was to the airstrip where Ian decided to see what it felt like behind the joystick of an aeroplane.


We drove out 15km to Dalgaranga Station, a neighbouring Station which is now owned by the Government in a well intentioned attempt to preserve it. Unfortunately a government department lacking funds and resources means the homestead is all but abandoned and the building , Shearer's quarters and shearing sheds are in disrepair. We saw Red tailed black cockatoos and pink galahs in the trees surrounding this homestead.





We found the bush supermarket and had a scout around.

Took a further drive to see the Dam built on the property. We walked up to the top of the rock cliff to have a good look at the dam. The usual build on the granite outcrops is to build a small height wall to channel rainfall water down to a low in ground dam. This was built as a large wall dam on-top of the granite outcrop. Continual raising of the dam wall height resulted in a major breach of the wall...obviously no dam engineer was used in this build. If only it could be repaired.

We took another drive to see the shearing quarters and sheering shed.

The Homestead offers when they have guests at the homestead, a 3 course dinner a cost of $55 per person. This is offered to the campers to fill the table if seats are available.
Ken has a Phoenix 1999 van, 15 foot with an East West bed. Phoenix is a precursor to Sunland Caravans. Interestingly enough he was eyeing off our van as he liked our colours. He did come to check we were looking after it. Lovely fellow.
The Homestead has a campfire setup each night, and everyone camping turned up at some stage it other to share stories. Jo and hubby Ken usually managed to make it over from the Homestead and furthered reinforced their passion for the rehabilitation of the property. Ken also took time out most nights to provide food for the stations 10 dogs by doing a little 'roo' shooting. He even has an app that provides info on the best time they might be active.

The evening campfire is so well maintained that even in the mornings the coals are still hot. Before we left on Thursday Deborah popped her new cast iron bread pan into the coals of the last night's fire and proceeded to pop some ice and a sourdough loaf of bread inside. Cook for 30 minutes before removing it from the fire. What a cracker of a loaf for the virgin voyage of this bread pan. What do you think?

On Thursday it was time to depart the Homestead sadly after a frosty start to the day. We headed off by 9am and has our first stop at Yalgoo on the way.

We saw an abandoned home south of Yalgoo, at the entrance to Bunnawarra Station, and decided it was a perfect destination for our morning coffee.

We picked up some supplies at Morawa IGA, and continued our drive to today's destination Perenjori Caravan Park. $17 a night, for an unpowered sites was good for us.
We were set off for a walk to the small town hall festival tonight. The musos were Jed Parson's from New Zealand and Alana Wilkinson from Australia. We had such an entertaining night. If you get the chance, do yourself a favour and go to one. They are touring small towns at the moment.
https://festivalofsmallhalls.com And a lovely old 1928 Ford out the front of the Town Hall.

Wreath flowers, Pindar wasn't able to provide them so our next go to spot was a gravel pit just north of Perenjori. Guess what? Due to rain they seem to have gone on holidays. So either due to heavy rains the wreath flowers are going to be later in the season or missing in action this year. Thankfully we found some colour in the canola fields.

Perenjori offers another spot called Orchid Ridge. It didn't take long to find beautiful flowers and orchids. We also saw the farmer spraying the field.


On our trip back we took a detour into Camel Soak and again it didn't disappoint. The orchids and wildflowers were in abundance.

A walk around town took us to the Perenjori Information Centre which has a community garden and a few old machines from bygone days. Interestingly a few are from the old Perenjori bakery, which appears to have closed in 1996. A large dough mixing machine was originally from the Dunsborough bakery not far from our home town, a bread slicer from Esperance bakery used in Perenjori from the early 1970's.

Saturday in Perenjori happens to be Show Day. Ian checked out the program and tonight there is fireworks. So we decided to stay another night and enjoy the fireworks. We moved from the caravan park next door at $17 an unpowered site, a day, to the free paddock next door for us fully self contained vehicles. We had the best views in town of the Fireworks. Perenjori certainly knows how to put on an outstanding Fireworks Show.
We also found another church designed by Monsignor John Hawes. This one was originally sketched in 1917 but new plans didn't get finalised until 1936, with the building finished in 1937. It's a definite difference in design to his earlier style, being more modernistic in it angles and materials used.

The journey continues...