What's the one thing that money can't buy?

The Premier Mill Hotel - Not just any old building in any old wheatbelt town.

It has been a pretty full-on year at work: by that I mean my real job. I have been in the game for 30 years and I can't remember a year where we kicked off so hard, in the hardest of conditions.

Biological surveys in the Kimberley in the peak of the wet season!

The air is beyond saturated, the ground is a quagmire, ambient temperatures are nudging 50 and the temperature in the chopper was another 10 degrees on top of that. Not easy.

Then it was a million miles walked, and a hundred hills climbed chasing native cats (northern quoll) in the Pilbara in similar conditions.

And what do you think was the one thing that kept getting put off?

You guessed it - riding bikes!

So, as the days started to get shorter, wetter and colder we realised the urgency and dove straight into organizing that lil' weekend ride that we just did not seem to be getting around to doing.

It was a ride my dad had been keen as to do for nearly four years, and the back story goes a little something like this.

Dad grew up in Katanning, on a farm about 15 miles out of town. His folks (my grandies), like most of the salt of the earth in the era, were fond of a daily bevvy or three at the 'local'. The Exchange was their watering hole of choice.

So, after they would pick him up from school they would head to the pub for a middy and, immediately bored as kids get, dad would tear out of the pub to go find his own fun. Typically, he was straight out the door and straight under the feet of the 'baggers' working in the Premier Flour Mill down the road.

As Occupational Health and Safety was not nearly even a concept back then, he would be straight into the Hopper where the flour was coming out of the shoots, into hessian sacks and onto the shoulders of the baggers. The baggers would then heave them into horse-drawn carts which were then dragged across the way to the rail yards.

This photo was taken a little before Dad was born, but the draught horses were still doing their thing in his time.

All that was a long time ago and was, until this weekend's ride, not much more than a distant childhood memory of days gone by.

Fortuitously the recent reno that turned the derelict flour mill into the Premier Mill Hotel gave dad the perfect opportunity to relive those (mis) adventures, all for the ticket price of only about $350 per night for a room. More expensive than fairy floss and a ride on the 'tea cups' at the Katanning Ag Show, but it was worth it.

Coffee at Boyup Brook. How lucky we are that so many of these small towns can serve a decent coffee these days.

Our ride started out of Bunbury, travelling the B roads from Donnybrook, through Boyup Brook and past Kojonup.

Believe it or not, we have a street named after us in Kojonup. Fancy living on Ladyman Street! I wonder if the people living there are asked, as often as I am "How do you spell that?"

After a morning cruising the south-west we ended up in Katanning. Once we had checked into the Mill, it was pretty much access all areas with no questions asked.

We drifted from landing to landing, floor to floor following the remnants of cogs, chains, braces, pulleys and belts to see where the flour started its journey before it ended up on the shoulders of the baggers my father would constantly be under the feet of.

So well renovated is it that you can even get deeper into the bowels of the old place to enjoy a beer or a cocktail in the engine room. The coziness of the basement bar was much appreciated after the 300 km trek to get there from Bunbury.

It can't have been any cozier in that engine room.

We even managed to saunter down the main drag to check out some of the street art. I can absolutely recommend, if you have the time and the inclination to do the miles, that you plot out the south-west Silo ride, taking in Albany, Ravensthorpe, Newdegate, Pingrup, Merriden and Northam.

A taste of the art that is part of the Southwest Silo Tour.

Katanning was such a simple and enjoyable weekend that one has to wonder why we don't do it more often. The simple answer is that life gets in the way!

Take it from me, if you are thinking of doing a decent ride with your Dad (or mum) or with your mates, think long and hard about the cost and the time.

And then think longer and harder about the cost of taking too much time to think about it.