On the journey from Esperance to Hyden we stopped for a comfort break at the small town of Varley. Varley is probably like many other small towns in the Wheat Belt of WA. Agriculture has become more and more mechanised since the 1950s and has seen the demise of many small towns across Australia. This is the case in my home town of Trundle NSW. Many of the towns have had to revitalise themselves by various means.
Check out Trundle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trundle,_New_South_Wales
Varley is close to the Rabbit Proof Fence and it boosts a Rabbit Cemetery and Memorial Garden dedicated to all those poor rabbits that met their death along the fence
Rabbit Proof Fence, the State Vermin Fence, and the Emu Fence, now known as the State Barrier Fence of Western Australia, is a pest-exclusion fence constructed between 1901 and 1907 to keep rabbits and other agricultural pests, from the east, out of Western Australian pastoral areas.
There are three fences in Western Australia: the original No. 1 Fence crosses the state from north to south, No. 2 Fence is smaller and further west, and No. 3 Fence is smaller still and runs east–west. The fences took six years to build. When completed in 1907, the rabbit-proof fence (including all three fences) stretched 2,023 miles (3,256 km). The cost to build the fences at the time was about £167 per mile ($250/km).
Steve Blackstock 