Northwest Days Eight, Nine and Ten: The Long Road to Perth

After leaving Karijini, we stopped for lunch in the mining town of Newman. Mining is a huge and still growing industry in Western Australia. It has contributed to the increasing wealth in Perth and an economic boom. We ate lunch in the shade of of a giant dump truck and spent a bit of time looking around the mining museum.

Lunch on Day Nine was in the town of Cue and they made us kangaroo meat to try. It was incredibly good, but then again, our tour guide is an amazing chef! We met some Aboriginal children at the park who invited us to a big footy game that was happening in the park. A team had come down from Meekatharra for the day. It was a big community event. We got to hang out, some of the other students went to go play around with them for awhile, and we got to hold the cutest little puppy!

That night, we stayed at Wogarno sheep station. We had the option to stay inside a barn, but I was ready for one more night under the stars. After eating an amazing dinner of lamb curry, we moved over to a big bonfire. We taught the Europeans how to make s'mores and they loved them! We had to substitute shortbread cookies for the graham crackers since apparently they don't have those in Australia, but they were still great and they didn't know the difference anyway! It was a great way to spend our last night together before the rest of the long drive back to Perth.

Although we spent hours upon hours sitting in the bus, it was the place where some of the funniest memories from the trip were made because it was definitely good bonding time. Most of our bus time was spent eating loads of snacks, taking naps, having giant dance parties and plotting water balloon attacks on the other bus! When we pulled up in the Village (the apartments where we live on campus) everyone just hung around talking. None of us wanted the week to be over. It was a great experience and hard to imagine it was over so quickly. But now back to the reality of school work and assessments!