I will never truly be able to do our next
week justice in words. The Flinders Ranges is a very special place. Ancient
hills nearly 1 billion years old weathered away into spectacular panoramic
ranges and deep gorges snaking their way through. In the aboriginal dreamtime
the ranges were created by the powerful dreaming serpent Akurra. We will
treasure our time here. We drove up from the Barossa through the Clare Valley
arriving at the Wilpena Eco Resort inside the national park just on dusk. This
is starting to become a bit of a worrying trend. The Kearneys are becoming very
poor risers in the mornings. Henschke was a pretty good excuse for our delayed
start thoughJ
It was the eve of Maria’s birthday so we
decided to treat ourselves and stay in an apartment for the next 3 nights. Immediately
we were greeted by the resident young male kangaroo, which the kids named
Charlie. Charlie was quite tame and took pieces of apple out of the kids hands
which was cool until we unpacked inside and read in bold – “DON’T FEED THE
KANGAROOS” in the welcome information sheet. Oops.
Morning Charlie
After a restful night in a big bed we were
eager to explore Wilpena. We went down to the visitors’ centre which is
excellent and decided to go on a 7km walk into Wilpena Pound and up to the Wangara
lookout. Wilpena Pound is a huge natural oval bowl surrounded by hills for most
its circumference. It was so named as it appeared to early pastoralists to be a
natural place to hold livestock, like a pound. Wilpena being the aboriginal
name for…How wrong they were. The walk in was very peaceful following a creek
bed, through large red gums and pine trees. As we came into the pound itself we
arrived at Hills Homestead which was home to the family who tried to raise
cattle and grow wheat inside. While the tale is not unfamiliar, looked good
when they arrived, then famine, drought, sickness, failure (in 15 years they
turned a forest into a dust bowl) the history of the settlement was written
from one of the daughter’s perspective, which made it seem more human and
tragic.
Wilpena Pound is nothing short of
incredible. The view from the lookout was jaw dropping but our photos just
don’t give it justice I’m afraid.
Intrepid Explorers
View from the lookout
In the afternoon we drove around the
national park on a loop road through several of the gorges, Brachina (bratch-na)
and Bunyeroo as well as heading home through the Aroona Valley and some pretty
cool lookouts. It was a step back in time viewing 800 million year old rock
formations. Seabeds which had been turned on their ear by a fault line over the
eons. You drive along some fun dirt roads and basically drive through the signed
geological history of the area 800 million, 750 million, 560 million etc. Along
the way we all received a thorough lesson in geology as well, which was really
interesting and useful for the kids. We passed a couple in a Mazda 3 who didn’t
seem like they were having any fun. What possessed them to drive this road is
beyond me as I was in 4WD at the time!!
Our final day in Wilpena dawned with some
excitement as we were tackling Skytrek! Skytrek is a 76km track created by the
owners of Willow Springs station, a working sheep property about 20km NE of
Wilpena just outside of the national park. It has everything a 4WD enthusiast
could want. Steep tracks, bull dust, open plains, beautiful gorges, ancient
aboriginal art, pastoral history of the station and some of the best views in
the Flinders Ranges particularly of Wilpena Pound. I could rant for sometime
but will hopefully let a few photos tell the tale. The trip took us a touch
over 6 hours on the one-way track. I have to say I was extremely proud of the
Prado particularly going up one of the steep tracks in low range to Prominent
Hill. I think Maria and Grace were a little worried but we came through safe
and sound. We took a video of the section of bull dust. It was a hoot. Bull
dust is extremely fine, almost powdery soft sand, which can suck your wheels
and bog you in an instant if you are caught by surprise.
video to come...
Thankfully we were
behind another group on this section of the track so were ready.
They don't rate all of the campsites it seems
The reward after a very steep low range hill climb
Oh What a Feeling!!!
What a birthday treat this was for Maria.
I’m so pleased I could share this present with herJ Very
satisfied we headed back to the resort for a birthday dinner in the restaurant.
Happy Birthday Mia!!
Buzzing from our stay at Wilpena it was
time to head up to Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary. After getting a tip from our
waitress we decided to head to Arkaroola via Blinman, through the Parachilna
Gorge road and stop at the Prairie Hotel for lunch. Then continuing up to Leigh
Creek for fuel then across to Copley and 130km dirt track to Arkaroola.
The drive through Parachilna Gorge was
delightful so we took our time. We were even treated to see a whole family of
baby emus drinking and feeding in the creek. We arrived at the Prairie Hotel
for lunch bang on time and were greeted by the flies. We had to hold onto Grace
as she was in danger of being carried away. I’ll try to get this next bit right
but as we entered the pub it was almost as if we entered a Star Trek teleporter
and were back in the Rocks in Sydney. Outside literally dessert, dust and
flies, inside - cultured, inviting, warm and funky. Maria read it is actually
classed as one of the hippest hotels in the world. We met the owner Jane
Fargher who was great and did up a special Feral Antipasto for us (with a bit
of chicken and ham for the girls). Kangaroo Metwurst, salami and pastrami as
well as emu pate and feral goats cheese with sundried wild tomato and roasted
veges and olives. For desert some homemade gelato.
Parachilna Gorge
Prairie Hotel Parachilna
Feral Antipasto
Arkaroola was founded by Reg and Griselda
Spriggs, who, amongst many geological and conservationist achievements, were
the first people to cross the Simpson Dessert in a vehicle (4WD – it was a
Nissan Patrol as apparently they wanted a challenge thinking a landcruiser
would be too easy) They had their 2 young children with them, Doug and Marg. To
our delight Doug and Marg still run and work at the sanctuary and have
continued on where their parents left off. It was a real thrill to receive
information about the park from Marg and Doug. Their passion for the area is
quite infectious and it had us itching to see it. After setting up, yet again
late in the afternoon we were met by the most beautiful moonrise over the
hills.
Moonrise
Our campsite
The park has powered sites, pit fires and
you can collect wood anywhere on the property. The only rarity is water so we
used bore water where possible to conserve the tanks. We decided to go on a 7km
walk through Barraranna Gorge. It was beautiful and we found it challenging in
parts. Not so much physically, but trusting the mud map we were given was tough
as you at times seemed to follow a very loose direction. At one stage we
actually second guessed ourselves and in true Burke and Wills fashion, had we
just continued on over the hill we would have saved 30 minutes of backtracking,
head scratching and dirty looks. We did see an Echidna on the trail (no
serious!), which was a thrill. Barraranna Gorge itself was quite eerie as it
was deathly quiet with only our voices echoing off the walls of 750 million
year old upside down inland seabeds. Made you feel a little insignificant.
After an uphill hike out we headed home a little puffed and ready for a hot
shower and roast lamb dinner. It was a full moon that night and so bright you’d
almost be forgiven for thinking they had floodlights allover the campground.
Gracie discovering...
Barraranna Gorge
You can't see me
The next day dawned a little overcast and
instead of doing the famous Echo Camp Backtrack 4WD track we decided on Marg’s
advice to head out to Lake Frome, a salt lake about 50km from Arkaroola back in
the Gammon Ranges NP. Apparently NASA satellites and spaceships use Lake Frome
to calibrate the colour white. It is perfect white from space, very cool. The
drive out took 1.5hrs through all dirt track which was quite fun in patches and
we had a few emus and kangaroos to avoid as well. We were the only people out
there and you really felt isolated. We walked out onto the crunchy, salty lake
surface viewing the shimmery whiteness in the distance. We then stumbled upon
lots of emu tracks so we decided to follow one in particular back to a low
range of sand dunes. At this point the flies were becoming an issue so we
started to head back to the car. If this was a ‘smaller’ salt lake then we
couldn’t wait to see Lake Eyre.
Lake Frome
we're hunting emu!
The hitchhikers were a little rude
That evening we attended an observatory
tour with the resident astronomer Phil. We attended a 6pm powerpoint
presentation which was really informative and fun. Things like, what is a star,
a lightyear or a galaxy, were covered in simple terms which we all benefited
from later on. Arkaroola has 3 fully functional observatories so at 8pm we
headed up to one overlooking the main centre. Unfortunately it was about the
worst night for stargazing due to the brightness of the moon. Still, from what
we saw on the worst night I guess a new moon night would be mind blowing. We
saw Saturn with its rings and 6 of its moons. We joked that it just looked like
Phil put a sticker on the end of the lens it was so lifelike. Alpha centauri
was very bright and is actually 2 stars in orbit around each other. We also saw
Eta Carina which is a star in the final stages of dying. It is 120 times the
size of our sun which has scientists worried as usually they only get up to 75
times so they don’t know quite what will happen when it explodes, which it
already has, but given it is thousands of lightyears away, we are looking at it
thousands of years in the past. Such are the vast distances of space, it’s
quite a challenging concept to get your head around.
What a great night. The next morning as we
were leaving we mentioned to the lady at the desk to make sure and thank Phil
again. This lady happened to be Phil’s wife and she said he came home raving
about how attentive, interested and well behaved the kids were so that was
nice.
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