How lucky am I? It’s Valentines Day and I get to sit next to my true love for a 586 km journey to Kalgoorlie. Bliss. I was under no illusion that the hand holding would cease after 20 km or so either because of the sweaty palms or Caleb’s retching noises. 
We set out, excited to be on the road again. Caleb commenced his school work just as I received a call from the Home Schooling Authority. A couple of issues to tidy up, but hopefully everything will be ok. 
We stopped for morning tea at Meckering, home of Australia’s biggest earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale, October 14th 1968. There was an open air museum with all the facts and statistics. Caleb made some voice memos on the phone to assist with him writing about it later. (ICT skills must be covered in his home schooling curriculum!) 
I keep a little stash of boiled lollies in the glove box to suck on as we drive, the weather has been so hot that they have melted into a glob of sweetness that no one can fit in their mouths. I attempted to break them apart using the handle of Caleb’s light saber but he wasn’t impressed. It will have to wait until I can find the hammer. 
We drove on to Cunderin where we were flabbergasted to see an Ettamogah Pub. Not sure why it was plonked in the Main Street but it looked fairly new. Ray noticed that it was missing the truck ute on the roof and it didn’t have “ya” dog out the front “mate”. We didn’t go in, lest we should discover more inaccuracies from the original one in Albury New South Wales, so we kept driving. You can read about the history and the other Ettamogah Pubs around Australia here if you are interested.
Just outside of Merredin we came across the site of the beginning of the construction of the “Rabbit Proof Fence”. In 1901 the construction of the fence began which was to become the longest fence in the world. Rabbits had soon multiplied in the East after being introduced in 1859 for sporting purposes. One clever English chap let 24 of them loose on his property to hunt, but they obviously had other things in mind and decided to do what rabbits do best – multiply. The rabbits threatened Western Australia’s agriculture as they moved across the Nullabor Plain in droves. 
The fence building began in earnest to beat the rabbits and now runs from Esperance to Port Headland. It was totally finished in 1907. These days it is maintained to provide a barrier to wild dogs, cats and emus who are after feed during times of drought. It was very interesting. 
We were hoping to make Kalgoorlie but discovered at 5:30pm that we still had 120km to go. It must have been all the love songs we were singing for Valentines Day slowing us down. We decided to pull into a free roadside camp for the night. 
We made dinner, lit the candle Tinie gave us for the romance of the occasion and enjoyed the absolute silence of the Australian outback together. Bliss!