AGO Holiday Planner 2026

Central to community life, pubs are where births, marriages, deaths, farm centenaries and local footy wins are all celebrated. At the Mukinbudin Hotel, 298 kilometres east of Perth, you’ll find a classic pub menu, a bed for the night, and an unexpected drop at the bar. You may meet Calvin Squire, occasional barman, local farmer, and owner of Dandanning Brewery. A trained winemaker, Squire returned to his farming roots, establishing a microbrewery producing beer and mead from locally grown and harvested grain and honey back in 2017. The on-farm brewery also boasts a tasting room open by appointment.

more). The Big Camera isn’t simply a landmark, local photography enthusiast “Chic” Wadley establishing it as a home for his collection of over 1,000 cameras, projectors, zoetropes, kaleidoscopes and more. An example of life imitating art, 15 minutes east of Meckering, you’ll find The Cunderdin Pub, also known as its fictional inspiration the Ettamogah, its cartoonlike exterior based on the leaning structure of the cartoon created by the late Ken Maynard. The goings on of the Ettamogah first appeared in 1959, published for decades in The Australasian Post. More than just a curious Cunderdin landmark, it’s a working pub and motel.

Curiosities are to be found throughout the Wheatbelt from long past events to present day residents taking an unexpected path. On 14th October, 1968, Meckering, 130 kilometres east of Perth, was all but destroyed by an earthquake registering 6.5 on the Richter scale. Today, a 1-kilometre section of the fault scarp can be viewed and ‘Salisbury’ homestead, damaged in the quake, stands as a weathered monument of the catastrophe. Passing through the town on Great Eastern Highway you can’t miss The Big Camera. Rural Australia has a thing for landmarks. Think, the Giant Ram in Wagin (225 kilometres south-east of Perth), which at 15 metres long and 7 metres high is the second largest such effigy of a ram in Australia (yes, there’s at least one

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