Caravanning Camping Touring
Let me share some of our stories with you. I'll try to keep it fun and interesting, with heaps of photos, hints, tips and reviews all relating to life on the road.
Wilpena Pound is one of the locations on Peter’s wish list. I’d never even heard of it, but before we had even arrived, we were in awe of the scenery we passed. Low rolling hills bordered with high rocky escarpments. Just beautiful.
Still within the Flinders Ranges National Park, Wilpena Pound (Ikara) is an extraordinary land formation. When seen from the air, you could be forgiven for thinking it was an ancient volcano, or it could be the sight of a meteor strike. But its formation is not as dramatic as that. Simply geological and extreme climate change over an inexhaustible period of time.
My summary of the formation is this: Around 800 million years ago the entire area was covered by a sea. This sea dried up and returned many times and over a period of about 300 million years eventually filled with layers upon layers of sediment up to ten to fifteen kilometres thick. After the sea had disappeared, the weight of all this sediment caused the centre of the pound to collapse under its own weight, and then geological pressure caused the layers of sediment (now turned to stone) to buckle like big waves. Wind, rain, floods and even glaciers did the rest. All this change is still happening to this day, so the pound is still changing. In fact it is getting higher.
The result, strikingly beautiful landscapes.
We didn’t have the opportunity to do a flyover, but if we had, this is what we would have seen. A natural amphitheatre, seventeen kilometres long, eight kilometres wide, the crowning glory of the Flinders Ranges.
There are many walks that allow you to enjoy the Pound, as well as 4×4 tours and of course flights over the area. We only had three days here, still not quite match fit, but we did manage to do the Wangara Lookout walk via Hills Homestead. This walk took us inside the Pound and though it wasn’t that far, under eight kilometres return, it had plenty of uphill, making it a good stretch of the legs. 😊
Wilpena Pound was a fantastic place to visit, and is super popular with all ages. And for good reason. Take into account the views, the facilities, an IGA, bottle shop and fuel. The resort, restaurant, and swimming pool, not to mention a family of emus wandering through camp, we’d highly recommend it. Even the tricky caravan parking due to poorly marked sites and a multitude of trees didn’t dampen our enjoyment of this visit.
INSERT IMAGES CAMP AND EMUS
Oh, and if you were wondering where the name came from, wonder no more. The Adnyamathanha people know the area of Wilpena Pound as Ikara, meaning meeting place. The word Wilpena is also Aboriginal, meaning ‘Place of bent fingers’ and Pound is taken from an old English term for an animal enclosure, usually made of stone. In 1851, the pound was leased and used to breed horses. They were simply confined within the Pound and left there to do what comes naturally.
Of course, with all of this stunning scenery around we had to try to find the perfect sunset spot. It wasn’t really that hard. But as always, we had fun on the drive and enjoyed the show.
See you out there somewhere
On tow and on the go!
I’ll start this post with an emotional, “You have got to be kidding me!”
And this is why: Peter has come down with a case of the flu, and I, with my stupid one-up-manship, just had to catch Covid. Now for those of you out there who would say,
“Maybe this is a sign love. Maybe it’s time for you to come home.” (You know who I’m talking about mammy).
This, I will say to you…NO! Never. We have a dream, a deep desire, nay… a desperate drive to continue our explorations of this great land. Besides…there are people in our house so we’ve got nowhere else to go. 😉 Anyway, we are having way too much fun to quit now.
When we left Port Augusta we were feeling pretty ordinary. We hadn’t driven very far when we found a lovely spot to spend the night in the shadow of the Flinders Ranges, so decided to call it for the day.
The next day we were determined to get back into the swing of exploring, we haven’t really been able to do that since last November so when we saw a sign to Kanyaka Homestead we thought, why not? So pleased we did, we spent a lovely hour exploring the extensive ruins of this once impressive station established in 1826. However, it was deserted in 1852 after a series of tragedies, drought and the expansion of wheat farming.
Later that day I was feeling quite unwell, and Peter wasn’t much better. So, when we stopped in the little town of Parachilna, we both took a RAT test. Mine came back positive, Peter’s, negative. We had just booked to stay at Mt Little Homestead, which sounded lovely, but self-isolation was to be our new destination.
Who can complain about self isolation when it’s in country like this? The Flinders Ranges almost defy description – Stunning, spectacular, beautiful. It really is quite unlike any country we’ve travelled through to date. Extraordinary and endless.
Parachilna is a blip on the map at a two-way junction. We turned off the main drag, the Outback Hwy, onto Parachilna Gorge Road heading toward the little town of Blinman, in the hope of finding somewhere half decent to stay for a few days. What is it they say about the roads less travelled? That right. DO IT! The scenery was stunning as the gorge rose around us, as for camping spots, we were spoiled for choice.
There is a section of the Parachilna Gorge which has been well used for bush camping. There are heaps of spots to choose from, and the scenery…Wow! That’s all I’ve got to say about that (sadly, you all know that’s not true). Peter chose our spot and got us settled in for our stay while I went to bed.
I spent the first couple of days here in bed, while Peter took care of me, checking my temperature, making sure I drank enough water, and saying things like, “You’ll be ok in a couple of days.” Sometimes he didn’t sound so sure, so when I saw him walking past the window with his big shovel, I began to get worried, but no need, he was just clearing out some of the old ash from the fire pit. Whew! Peter made a few modifications and I think it’s safe to say we have the best fire pit in the Parachilna Gorge.
Ten days later, we’re ready to move on. We’re both feeling better, but as seems to be the case with Covid, it is taking a while to get my energy back Don’t ask me how Peter managed to dodge it, but we are both pleased that he did.
I’ll finish on a super cute topic. Just have a look at these lovely wallabies. I haven’t seen these ones before, and I haven’t been unable to identify them (I sent an email to bushheritage.org to see if they can help) but they are the cutest things ever. They are so different from the Pretty Faced Wallabies we are used to seeing around home. The next evening, we spent a very pleasant couple of hours “hunting” them to give you these photos.
I just received an email from bushheritage.org and what we saw are not actually wallabies. They are a Wallaroo, a Common Wallaroo to be exact. New to me too! Apparently, the main difference between wallabies and wallaroos is size. Wallaroos are smaller than kangaroos, larger than wallabies. Also, they have a squarer snout, almost canine, and their fur is quite shaggy. FYI the name ‘Wallaroo’ comes from the Aboriginal Dharug language ‘Walaru’, (thank you Wikipedia) and not a combination of the name’s wallaby and kangaroo. You learn something new every day.
After seeing these for the very first time it got me to thinking. How many different types of Kangaroos and Wallabies and Wallaroos are there? I don’t know. But, when we get into an area where we have internet connection, Peter has a new task. He is going to make us a Kangaroo and Wallaby Wallaroo Spotting Check List, (KWWSCL) so that we can check off each type we encounter. Hey, if it’s good enough for the Twitchers…
See you out there somewhere
On tow and on the go!
Port Augusta is not a pretty town, it is rocky, arid, and finding a patch of green grass anywhere is near impossible. It is heavily industrial and though it’s no longer a shipping port, it is a key hub for rail transport and a major player in renewable energy. But don’t let that stop you from coming to visit.
The country here is unlike any I’ve seen so far. Scrubby ground growth, the majestic Flinders Ranges, just begging to be explored, and salt pans from the edge of Spencer Gulf, nestled in the very heart of Port Augusta. As we drove past these, I had to convince myself that I wasn’t looking at an icy lake.
Before you explore the Ranges, there’s plenty to do in town. In the centre of town you can find the Wadlata Outback Centre. This is well worth a visit and is one of the best presented information centres we’ve visited. Even Hugo enjoyed it.
A ten minute drive from the Wadlata Center is the Australian Arid Botanical Gardens. I was surprised at the variety of plants that grow, flourish and provide food for the wildlife in this harsh environment. I would love to see it in spring!
From there it’s a good stretch of the legs, or a short drive to the Redcliffe Lookout. This gives wide views of Spencer Gulf and back towards Port Augusta.
But I think that the thing we enjoyed the most was our ride on the Pichi Richi railway up to Quorn (pronounced corn) on a beautifully maintained steam train. Not many of you know this, but when I was a little girl, I wanted to be a steam train driver. Just like Casey Jones! Although I didn’t get to drive it, I did get to go into the locomotive, let me tell you, there’s some heat coming off that furnace!
It took us two and a half hours to get to Quorn, a few days later we drove there, and it took us thirty minutes. Well, there were a lot of hills for the little train that could. 😊
We only had an hour and a half to find somewhere to have lunch along with the other passengers (it was a packed train) and then explore Quorn, but that was more than enough time. Quorn is a lovely little town with super wide streets and a lot of old buildings. There have been seven Australian films made there, including the Shiralee, Gallipoli and the Water Diviner.
It was a great day out and if you only had time to do one thing while in Port Augusta, it would have to be the Pichi Richi Railway and not just because its fun to say, ‘Pichi Richi Railway!
Now we are off to explore the Flinders Ranges. No, we haven’t forgotten about Lake Eyre, but I’ve been told that there is more water coming from the north so we’re just giving it a bit of time to get there.
See you out there somewhere
On tow and on the go!
Can you believe it? I’m not sure I can, but we are in South Australia. Nine months overdue and a little worse for wear, but we made it.
It really was quite exciting crossing the boarder from NSW to SA. I mean the roads didn’t look that much different, but they did feel different. Maybe it was the beer we had at the Coburn pub just meters past the border. Hey…we had to celebrate!
We spent that night on a gravel pit on the side of the road. Yes, it is as exotic as it sounds. For those who don’t know, a gravel pit is a section of flattened ground, often quite big, covered with, yup you guessed it…gravel, well off the main road. The council use these areas to store gravel for road works and caravanners have adopted them for no fuss no muss overnight stays. They are level, free from red dirt, brown dirt, any colour dirt really, and are very convenient. You simply pull up at a gravel pit, lock the car, walk into your home and open a bottle of wine. As I said, no muss no fuss. And for those of you who say, “Ugh, how dreary.” These gravel pits often offer something other than comfort.
Wide open spaces!
We picked up quite a large stone chip on the driver’s side windscreen within an hour of crossing into SA. It seems the southern state doesn’t like us either. When we got in the car the following morning, that chip had grown into a ten inch crack. I guess the 0-degree overnight temp had something to do with that.
We had an uneventful drive through some lovely scenery, passed the fruit and vegie quarantine inspection with flying colours, and made it to Port Augusta by four pm. Once there we made ourselves at home at the Shoreline Caravan Park, or as I’ve taken to calling it, the Shoreline Caravan Penitentiary. We are surrounded by two metre high metal/colourbond fence, topped with another meter or so of wire fencing which is capped with barbed wire. I’m not sure if it is to keep them out, or us in. 😊
Jokes aside, it is a good park and Port Augusta seems like a lovely place. We’ve been to the info center and gotten some good intel on the roads/conditions up to Lake Eyre, and some things to see and do while we are here.
This is going to be fun!
No SA birds yet, but this cheeky little Rufus Whistler was the last I photographed in NSW.
See you out there somewhere
On tow and on the go!
Are you ready to find out how we ended up in Bourke, NSW?
Well, this is how it went down.
If you recall, I had taken over the driving at Eulo and we had just turned onto the first of a long stretch of dirt roads, heading for Hungerford. After driving a couple of hours, I pulled over as Peter needed a comfort break. I got out of the car for a bit of a stretch while Peter did what needed to be done. I could hear a heavy stream of water and thought, He’s been holding that in waaay to long. Then I noticed water spilling out from Chunky Bum’s door.
I voiced a few expletives as I ran to get the key, then a few more when I opened the door and was greeted by a torrent of water. By this time Peter had heard my distress calls, and when he realised what had happened, add a few expletives of his own.
Somewhere along the corrugated road our kitchen tap had “bounced” open, and while we drove merrily along, it had emptied our entire supply of water, some one hundred and eighty litres, into the sink. Shouldn’t be too much of a problem, except…we were carrying our coffee machine in the sink and had used tea towels as packing. This, of course, was a very effective method of blocking the sink hole. Once the sink was full…well you can guess the rest. One hundred and eighty litres.
We were lucky, if you can call it that, that we had stopped near the entrance of the Currawinya National Park. There was a large area with an information board and a turnaround point, which allowed us to get fully off the road.
Grabbing every towel we could get our hands on we started mopping. Once the thick was up we took a break, surveyed the damage, and made our plan of attack. The plan was simple, while I prepared the tables and floor mat, (remember we were in red dirt territory) Peter started to pass out everything that was wet. As it turned out, that was everything. Well… almost everything.
The water had gotten into all the floor level cupboards, as well as the cupboard and six drawers under the sink. It had also drenched everything stored under the bed and my electric piano, which lives at the foot of the bed.
While we were working, we had a visit from a Ranger who thought we were planning to camp there for the night (I mean who camps like this?) we eventually convinced him were not going to stay and he wished us luck and went on his way.
Four and a half hours after our arrival we had put away everything that was dry, scattered the ‘still damp stuff’ around the van, and put the ‘still wet stuff’ in the back of the canopy. We made a cheese sandwich and washed it down with an ice-cold beer, then congratulated ourselves on our lovely clean caravan, before getting back on the road to Hungerford.
About an hour later, we pulled over so I could take photos of a family of Brolgas. Things were looking up. Not! That was when we noticed that the ceiling hatch over our bed that Peter had closed, hadn’t.
Interesting fact from Peter: As you drive, the pressure on the outside of the van is considerably higher than the slight vacuum created on the inside of the van, so any dust will be sucked into the vacuum – it’s just physics! What this means, in short, is that dust gets into places where you don’t even know you have places! Oh Joy.
All I can say is it’s a good thing Peter likes cleaning 😊.
You know how I always look for a silver lining? Well, I was struggling that day, but… I did find one. We thought that all our water had been pumped onto the floor of the van. Not so. The pump doesn’t reach all the way to the bottom of the tank, so there was some water left for emergencies.
However, we didn’t realise this until after we arrived at Hungerford. In a case of deja vu, I noticed that there was water leaking from the bottom of the tank. Yep, somewhere between the “Big Flood”, the “Dust Debacle” and the dirt road to Hungerford, a stone had hit and snapped a connection off the bottom of the front water tank and leaked out the very last of our precious water!
So not only did we not have any water at all, but we also couldn’t refill the tank ‘cause it had a bloody great hole in it. Not that it would have made any difference. You see there was no drinking water available for travellers at Hungerford. Could it get any worse?
Apparently so. Big Ears (car) had a falling out with Chunky Bum (caravan). Big Ears decided he didn’t want to share his battery with the dead weight he had been dragging behind him for the past year and a half, so he simply cut off supply. So poor old Chunky Bum had to rely on solar energy alone.
In Peter-speak – The isolator had an intermittent fault and inhibited the 12 volt supply from the car to the Anderson plug, so the caravan batteries would slowly discharge as we used more power than the solar panels could provide. This needed to be fixed.
Talking of things to be fixed, we’re don’t yet know if we burnt out the water pump. We’ll have to wait until Peter fixes the tank, so we can fill it, and test the pump. Fingers crossed.
And that my friends, is why we are now in Bourke. No caravan charging from the car, no water, no water tank, no Strzelecki Track.
Oh, and we’re thinking of trading the van in for a boat.
See you out there somewhere
On tow and on the go!
After what seems like an eternity (well, November 2021 is a long time ago) of hanging around, doctors’ visits, tests, hospitals etc, we are finally free to travel.
We left Darlington Park as planned; well almost. Peter had to say goodbye to everyone we’d met, then a couple of likely lads came around to check out his rig, so a ten am departure turned into an eleven thirty departure, an hour and a half later than planned, but leave we did, eager to get to Lake Eyre.
Our first overnight should have been Goondiwindi. We didn’t make it. We would have, had we had another hour and a half of daylight (funny that). Instead we pulled over in a rest area, had leftover lamb shoulder and brown rice for dinner, (it was even nicer the next day Rae), watched a couple of episodes of Big Bang, and had an early night.
The next day we passed a lot of cotton farms as we drove west. This always seems a strange choice of crop for such a drought plagued area, but the cotton fields sure are pretty.
We spent the night at the oval in Talwood. What a great spot, with the oval on one side and scrub land on the other, and well away from the road. Very clean amenities, dump point water and rubbish bins. What more could you ask for?
The next night we revisited Wallum creek in Bollon. Our last stay here lasted seven days, this one would be much shorter but just as nice.
We couldn’t help but notice the large number of travellers heading west. And Bollon was no exception, travellers swarmed in late in the afternoon and swarmed out early the next morning. After a call to Peter’s sister, we realised why. The Big Red Bash was on, (https://www.bigredbash.com.au/home) and it was a sell-out. 10,000 tickets had been sold all around the country. That got us to thinking, narrow dirt roads, a gazillion cars, trailers, and caravans, all travelling the same roads as us… Hmm, maybe it was time to go to Plan B.
Plan B would still get us to Lake Eyre in about the same time, but we would avoid the Big Bash traffic, including a two kilometre line up for fuel from the one outlet in town. Seriously, that’s what happened at the last Bash. Saying that, you get your fuel from the pub so you could have a beer while you wait, providing they don’t sell out. Again, that happened. But I digress, back to plan B.
Plan B means that instead of doing the Birdsville Track, we’d do the Strzelecki Track. The Strzelecki is a bit more challenging, (and I’m not just talking about trying to pronounce it). But I believe they have started to seal it, so if we want to do it while it is still a “track” now is the time.
We were excited to be leaving Bollon after our three-night stay. Peter got us up and out of bed by 5:30am eager to follow Plan B, our next overnight stop, Hungerford in NSW. We stopped in Cunnamulla briefly to empty the toilet cassette, top up our fuel, (at $2.49 per litre I might add) and fill up our water tanks. You can’t be driving through the desert without plenty of water.
Later that day, we pulled over in a little town called Eulo so that I could take over driving for a while. Three kilometres out of Eulo we turned left onto dirt road. Ahead of us was four hundred and eighty-five kilometres of dirt which would take us to Tibooburra which is our jump-off point to join the Strzelecki Track via Cameron Corner. From Tibooburra to Marree is a further 680 kilometres of dirt track. This is the start of our Lake Eyre adventure. Bring it on!
So, the question I’ll leave you all with is this: How the hell did we end up in Bourke?
See you out there somewhere
On tow and on the go!
