South Oz (pt 3)

The plan was to walk the last four days of the mammoth Heysen Trail, walking north from Wilpena Pound to Parachilna Gorge. Ella, Jacques and I hit the trail on foot with ample supplies of 'pocket cake', whilst Helen took the 'support vehicle' on enjoyable drives during the days and met us each evening (with more cake) at campsites which were fortunately accessible by 4WD. This gave us walkers the opportunity to walk with relatively light packs, not needing all the camping equipment ... which we replaced with medicinal portions of cake.



The going was really fairly flat, and considerably less tricky than the rock-hopping we got used to in Tassie. We covered decent distances, and ended up doing the four scheduled days in three instead.



The scenery was very interesting - there were lots of ridges surrounding us and scores of dry river beds that we often walked along.





Dumb and dumber!





The temperature was fairly cool, and there were a few rain showers, but generally speaking it was good walking conditions. Not so good for the local Kangaroo / Wallaby populations though, as we saw lots of dead ones along the way.



Despite the arid landscape there were some truly immense trees. Some of the dried up rivers were massive, (I'd love to see some of these rivers in full flow) but it was in these that the largest trees were found. In this photo you can see Jacques at the base of the tree showing how big it is.


Some of the great geology on offer in the Flinder's Ranges.


It was a great walk, and we didn't even feel that tired after three days walking ... thanks in no small part to Helen for driving and meeting us at the end of each day, and the cake she'd provided. And here she is, trying to keep warm as we finished the walk!


All good fun and the holiday was only just beginning. We were heading north, to the desert to experience frozen tents, more campfires ... and to eat much more cake (to keep us warm of course).

South Oz (pt 2)

I said 'towards' The Alice, not to the Alice!

We drove north out of Adelaide and headed to the Clare Valley. It seems like every spare patch of ground in SA is cultivated with grape vines and Clare Valley is one of the famous wine areas. We weren't there to see the vineyards, but I did want to check out the winemaker Knappstein, who also brew an interesting lager. More on that later...

From Clare we veered north-west to get to Mount Remarkable National Park, passing through the kind of green pastures we're supposed to call "rolling". I didn't see much rolling, but there was a nice lazy feel about the area, and a beautiful golden sunset:


We camped at Mt Remarkable National Park for the night and woke to see Emus wandering around the site. We saw a lot more of them on our trip...

There was a particularly friendly young Kookaburra too.

After a walk to Sugargum lookout we hopped in the car and drove up to Port Augusta to get some provisions, then on towards Wilpena at Flinders Range National Park. We had arranged to meet Helen and Jacques who were adventuring their way down from Queensland via the dirt roads in their desert cruising Navarra.

Progress wasn't quick though as Ella wanted to get shots of the landscape as it changed from farmland into a kind of liminal desert scrub.


After a night with H&J we got motivated for a good long walk - a welcome bit of exercise after a lot of driving (see the map at the bottom to see our progress so far).

Our first walk was to the summit of mighty St Mary Peak - 1170m. This turned into a really nice day's walking.

The peak is part of the range that forms a ring, or 'pound' known as Wilpena Pound - a truly impressive and unusual geological form. After walking up to the peak from the outside of the perimeter range we went down into the pound and across its centre back to the camp site. You might be able to see the path we took down in the second photo.




It would have been impossible to not notice how spectacular the hardy trees were in this gnarly country. Although winter is supposed to be relatively wet, it was extremely dry; we were coming across river beds dry as dust but wide to suggest torrents flow when it does rain. This tree truly did shimmer silver in the winter sun!


A wife in a tree!


That was a good opening walk to get us started, we were to see a lot more stunning SA scenery in the coming days.



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