Wave Rock

One of the best day trips from Ravensthorpe is definitely Wave Rock. It’s fairly famous as natural rock formations go in Australia. There’s Ayers Rock (aka Uluru) of course and after that… Well, I am not sure what people outside of Australia would have heard of. Some will probably have heard of this place though.

Wave rock is about a 2 hour drive from Ravensthorpe if you take the direct route. We took a slight detour via small town called Newdegate (see below) so it took us over two and a half hours driving.

I am not sure exactly how water formed the large ocean wave shape into one side of the rock. But it’s one of those things I am quite happy not knowing. It just looks cool and that is more than enough for me on this one.

Nearby is the so called Hippos Yawn rock formation. That’s the good thing about this place. You may not know (or care) exactly how the geological formations were made but at least it’s pretty obvious where they got their names from.

More Silo Art at Newdegate

On the way to Wav Rock we stopped at the small farming town of Newdegate. The reason? Well, it has more from the WA Public Silo Art Trail. This is about 400km south-east (ish) of Perth and the best part of 200km from the south coast.

These silos were painted by Brenton See, the same artist who painted the mural on the Norseman visitors centre (see here for that one). For me these were the best silos we had seen so far in WA – from an art point of view. If you check the Norseman mural you can definitely see it is by the same artist.

Rabbit Cemetery

The rabbit proof fence is well known in Australia. The rabbit is basically frowned upon in Australia – and rightly so. A non-native species that had completely taken over parts of the country and run amok causing havoc and ruin. See this rabbit post from almost two years ago in case you missed it.

To combat the spread of the fluffy big eared vermin, the government erected the Rabbit Proof Fence in the early 20th century. When the 1,139-mile fence was finished, it was the world’s longest unbroken fence. It’s one of those immense human construction projects that goes under the radar but is still a tremendous achievement.

So this next place took us somewhat by surprise. In between Wave Rock and Ravensthorpe in the tiny town of Varley we came across the Rabbit Cemetery.

The Rabbit Cemetery, Varley, WA

This curious little feature was made to commemorate the bunnies who met their demise in the fence’s barbed wires and acres of chicken wire. The local community made the effort, and the deceased rabbits live on in handmade headstones and beautiful mosaic tributes at this unique and comical memorial. Flowers and colourful stuffed rabbit toys line the “graves”. The fence behind the small cemetery is actually a section of the original Rabbit Proof Fence; a stark reminder to try better in the future and not introduce non-native species to fragile ecosystems.

Well, I guess I have covered my fair share of human pioneer/historical cemeteries in this blog. So it’s only fair to give this unique eccentricity a mention…

Note: For those interested and who have not yet read about the historic pioneer cemeteries we have visited simply type in “cemetery” in the search bar on this website and take a look through the results.