Taking full advantage of our two month SA National Parks Holiday Pass (with camping option!), we are spending our third night in a row in SA’s fantastic National Parks. Our two nights in Coffin Bay NP were pleasant enough, except for the wind. September Beach in the National Park just outside Port Lincoln, is just glorious. The wind has dropped and the sun has been out most of the day.
The camp sites here are enormous and ours has its own direct beach access. The National Park camping areas have only basic facilities. That means a few picnic tables and ‘drop toilets’. No power, no rubbish bins and no lighting. Sometimes there is water, but we usually only trust it for washing. You need to be fairly self- contained. They are, however, usually in the most fantastic locations.
We did a little fishing this afternoon - without success, but it was great to get out in the sun. We now understand why so many South Australians and Victorians head north for the winter. It’s not all that cold this late in the winter, 8-16 or 17 Celsius. While the often overcast skies are a bit of a downer, the wind is the real killer. With the wind chill factor, it must be in the very low teens during the day over most of southern Australia for most of the winter months. The up side for us is that, firstly, we are fairly used to travelling in cold climates and secondly, there are very few people about. This afternoon, we had the whole beach to ourselves and there were not even footprints in the sand!
!7 August - Bush Camp near Wilpena Pound, Flinders Ranges
Stone buildings are far more prominent in South Australia than in most other states. Older towns like Port Augusta and Port Lincoln are blessed with well preserved and restored public buildings, many dating from the 1880s. In rural areas, ruined stone farm houses and homesteads are a common sight along the highway. Many small towns are real gems. Quorn, 50 kms north of Port Augusta, is a case in point. Quorn was a major railway junction on the old Ghan Railway. During the war years, more than 40 troop trains a day passed through the town, heading north with US and Australian troops. Those days are long gone. Today, tourists ride the Pichi Richi Steam Railway from Port Augusta to Quorn, through the green foothills of the Flinders Ranges. The town boasts four old stone pubs and numerous 19th century shop fronts.
Further north, heading towards the Flinders Rangers, we hoped to camp at the ruins of the once-grand Kanyaka Station. Sadly, camping is no longer allowed at the site, but the diversion to the ruins was rewarding. Unrestored ruins like these are our favourites. With nobody about we were able to wander freely about and imagine what the homestead would have been like in its heyday.
Tonight, we are camped in the carpark for the Arkapena Rock walk. Our Camps 4 book tells us this is a Rest Area suitable for overnight camping. However, the (faded) sign at the entrance asks us not to camp. Whoops! Tonight, three baby-boomer couples missed the no-camping sign and spent a pleasant hour or so chatting about our travels before retiring to our respective “homes“ for the night.
18 August - Trezona Campground - Flinders Ranges National Park
A sunny morning greeted us after a night of constant rain. We knocked over the 2 hr walk to the Aboriginal Art site at Arkaroo Rock in well under an hour. The walk took us through a series of jaw-dropping view points of the ranges. Later in the morning, we realised that this was just the taster! The rugged mountains that ring Wilpena Pound, the major feature of this National Park, had our cameras clicking all day.
We left the van at the camping grounds and took to the back roads for a fantastic drive through some of the best scenery we have seen to date on our trip. The rain last night had made the roads a little difficult for us, we had to turn back a couple of times, but eventually we found a track through rolling hills, backed by sawtooth ranges and the sheer cliffs of the Flinders Ranges and the external walls of Wilpena Pound.
19 August - Mt Remarkable National Park
We are getting excellent value from our SA National Park Holiday Pass. This is our fifth night of camping and our fourth entry into a fee charging National Park and we’ll probably have at least another three nights and a couple more National Parks before we hit Victoria. And all for $46 (Senior Concession!) Fantastic value!
Our last morning at Wilpena Pound was spent completing an 8 km hike to a lookout on the edge of the crater. The view inside the Pound was amazing and the walk took us through some wonderful stands of river red gums. The external views of the mountains that ring the Pound, however, are far more spectacular.
Just before the last, incredibly steep, climb to the lookout, lie the ruins of the old Hall Homestead. Settled in the 1880s, the station once ran 200,000 sheep in the natural compound of the Wilpena crater. As you might imagine, overgrazing soon had its effect on the land and several bad seasons saw the end of grazing in the late 1920’s. Feral goats took their opportunity once grazing stopped and by the mid 1970s there were more than 100,000 goats in what is now the Flinders Ranges National Park. Significant culling of goats has allowed native animals to move back into the area and they certainly are plentiful! Emus, kangaroos and numerous birds can be seen all over the park. In this good season, they all look the picture of health.
Facilities in these parks are basic - bins, tank water and drop toilets - but it is all clean and well-maintained. Of special note are the toilets. (We always seem to get down to toilets at some point in our travel blogs.) For those who have never seen one, a ‘drop toilet’ is just a big hole with a toilet seat on top, enclosed in a fairly airy cubicle. The airiness of the cubicle is one of the most valued features of such a loo. They never seem to smell and, with regular maintenance, they are always clean. Another feature is that they always have plenty of paper. This is something of which, as a nation, we should be justifiably proud. In our many travels, it is only here at home that one can wander off to a loo in the centre of a city, country town or in a park hundreds of kilometres from nowhere and find FREE toilets with toilet paper. Even the much lauded Scandinavian countries can not make this bold claim.
20 August - Mt Remarkable National Park
Spent most of the day bushwalking today, involving some fairly serious climbs. In all, we tramped about 15 kms, most of it up hill, so we are a little stiff tonight. Sadly, the views were far from remarkable, but the journey is often more important than the destination. Our walk to Sugargum Lookout this morning ended in disappointment when we found that trees had totally blocked the view. You can never get your hands on a chain-saw when you need one! All was not lost though. Much of the walk was along Mambrey Creek, lined with towering Red River Gums. We were fascinated by the way the old burnt out trunks of older trees were over-grown by new gums. Young trees weld themselves to the dead trunks for support, eventually totally entombing the old trunk. Some of the natural sculptures created by this process are just incredible.
In the afternoon we thought we would do a short easy walk to another lookout. Now you would think that after all the walking we have done over the years we would have figured out that lookouts are high places. Yet it never occurred to us that this 4km round trip walk was straight up a 1500 ft (480 m) mountain! Sadly, after clambering over the last rocks to reach the summit, we discovered that most of the view was again obscured by trees. Seriously, sometimes this passion National Parks has for preservation gets a bit out of hand. Clearing a few new growth pines would not accelerate global warming. All was not lost, however, for just as we began cursing the start of a rain shower, we saw the full arch of a sharply defined rainbow form in the valley. We could almost have reached out and touched it.
On our way back to camp, we seemed to be providing entertainment for the Yellow Foot Wallabies. They are so at ease with people that they just give you a quizzical look and get about their business.
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