Flinders Range

Colleen says “We left Streaky Bay in South Australia and travelled all day across the top of the Eyre Peninsula..again, very arid and almost another Nullarbor...very hot. We were planning to stop a night at Port Augusta at the top of Spencer Gulf, but it was still hot and the place did not inspire us so we decided to push on to the Flinders Ranges a few hundred kms north..ie into the REAL outback! I know we should not have been surprised, but we are still astounded at how HUGE this place is..what looks like a hop and skip is many many miles..and when you see it on the map of Australia it is barely a freckle. The Flinders Ranges rise up from the flat, scrubby landscape into a surprisingly high and scenic mountain range which span from quite high in SA to down near the Adelaide Hills. The part we went to was called Wilpena Pound which is a huge circle of mountains which looks like a giant meteorite crash site or the centre of a huge extinct volcano. The middle bit is quite lush and the most amazingly beautiful huge trees called Red Gums grow there right along the creek beds..the subject of many famous paintings. There is a lovely resort there and the caravan park is natural with kangaroos, emus,goannas and lots of bird life wandering amongst the campers. It is part Drakensburg, part Magaliesburg in appearance..bright red Buffs with the wonderful colours of the Red Gums. We went on a walk/climb for 8 + kms to a lookout where you could see the whole Pound surrounding us. There are many hiking trails all around, but we won’t be doing anymore cos of the 37 deg heatwave!! Instead we took a drive on what turned out to be a dreadful road ( 4x4 track really) to the Brachina Gorge ( 100 kms round trip) where it has some of the oldest rock and fossils on the planet..over 640,000 million years old. These huge red folding cliffs were an awesome sight, and I believe there have been real breakthroughs in science from some of the fossil finds in that area (the missing link between amoeba and living creatures). But at one stage we were literally driving down a rocky river bed! Once again the heat did not help, but we managed to see some more scenic gorges before heading back to camp. We will leave tomorrow and head closer to Adelaide where we will probably stay for awhile.