Day trip
Drove out to the breakaway today (photos). The story here is that water has eroded a section down to the granite bedrock so you can see a nice cross section of the top layers. The kaolin is a very soft, very white powder that William was soon covered in. The pinkish grey you can see scattered below it are smallish (1-3mm diam) pieces of quartz that are embedded in the clay where it has not been weathered yet.
This very white clay is pretty common in this part of the wheatbelt as you can see driving around if you look at the dam banks. I'm pretty sure it is the type of clay used for china/ceramics such as basins and toilet bowls. There was talk of a commercial mine near Wickepin a few years ago - I don't know if anything came of it
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