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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