Paynes Find

 23 – 24 October 2022

Thanks to a late checkout at Mount Magnet, we didn’t leave town until after lunch. Mick was keen to stay at Paynes Find as he had heard there was good birding there but first we had to stop and have a look around Kirkalocka.

The online resource Mick often uses had a number of spots around Kirkalocka Station and nearby that he was keen to find so first we stopped at the rest area and had a bit of a look. This is another one of WA’s well set up 24 hour stops – toilets, picnic shelters, dump points and heaps of space well off the main road. Unfortunately most of the bush nearby was fenced so this limited the opportunity to go looking for birds.

We drove back down the road to find the spots on the station, but it has now been closed to the public so we had to content ourselves with a spot near a ridge along a track – again, no birds, but millions of flies! We left somewhat disappointed and continued south to Paynes Find, a small pastoral and mining community in Western Australia’s Mid West region.

There isn’t much there except a roadhouse/tavern with camping and accommodation so we decided that would do. As we neared our destination, the clouds that had started to gather earlier in the day began to look quite ominous and the first drops of rain began as we pulled up at the roadhouse to buy fuel. We considered our options and decided that we would camp the night, and have dinner in the tavern.

Although there wasn’t much rain, it was enough to make it a bit miserable, and the temperature dropped causing us to reach for the jeans and jumpers for the first time in quite a while. It was a bit of a contrast to the singlets and shorts we had started the day wearing.  Dinner at the tavern was OK and we had been able to get one of only a couple of powered sites so we tucked ourselves in early and streamed some tv.

In the morning the clouds were still quite threatening so we packed up after breakfast then went for a walk around the campground. There were so many wildflowers – in variety and number – growing on and around old mullock heaps. We took lots of photos, then set off to continue our journey south, with Toodyay our next stop.