Rough map of our intended route. The red line is pretty much what we’re doing and the blue sections are unknown. One is the Gibb River Road which is subject to road/weather conditions and may well be impassable for us. Our van is not really an ‘off-road’ van but driven sensibly I think it should be OK. I will not be subjecting it or the car to anything I am unsure it can handle and certainly no more than 500mm deep river crossings, maybe 500-1,000 but I’ll assess that when we come to it. 

Currently we are at the base of the Flinders Ranges in Burra and will be heading into Wilpena Pound tomorrow, we’re booked in for just 2 nights. Only a short drive of about 280 Kms so we’ll leave late and still arrive around lunchtime. We’ll have to make some plans from there though as we’re not sure which way we’re going from there, West obviously, maybe to Whyalla or Cowell, past Adelaide at least.

DAY 8-9 (I think). It’s Thursday 15th May.

Wilpena Pound.

It was a good trip up here from Burra. We went through Peterborough which is a surprisingly large township in the middle of nowhere. It grew as a railway stop for ore from BHP at Broken Hill in the 1800s. Still large but a lot of the shops are either abandoned or only open from say, 10:00 - 2:00 on Thursdays and Fridays. So they’re not too busy here. Nice town though but you can smell poverty, there was a free food bank delivery there that was well attended.

Yesterday we went for a drive to Bunyeroo Gorge to fill in the afternoon. I let Jackie drive as I had had enough and felt like having a beer or 2. I’m not going to criticise Jackie’s driving but let’s just say it took me a few minutes to remove my fingers from the holes I had dug into the upholstery of the car. We didn’t hit anything that can’t be polished out of the duco but still…

We stopped next to a tourist bus with a couple of guides and about a dozen guests. This was at a lookout over the gorge. The view is impressive but not spectacular. It was reasonably breezy and when I suggested to the tour bus guides that they should install some wind farms along the ridge they looked at me in horror, and said that they would ruin the view, so after I screamed at them that they should be ‘SAVING THE PLANET’ they shuffled everyone into the bus, shut the doors and left in a hurry. Bloody eco-terrorists!

That was yesterday and Jack and I are still talking to each other. We had some fish that I caught a while ago for dinner last night, gummy shark, yummy. Yummy gummy. 

Today we’re going on one of the walks here. We’ve picked one that is advertised as ‘moderately hard’ so we’ll see how that goes.

Lots of dead and alive roos here, mostly smallish wallabies, but apart from them we haven’t seen much in the way of interesting wildlife, Oh except for a stack of emus running about.

This is a tree near Wilpena Pound, I thought it looked nice.

The cottages and creek at Burra.

This an aerial view of the old copper mine at Burra. This used to be a major copper producer a few years ago.

Lost of emus on the way in to Wilpena.

Wilpena Pound wallaby blending in with his background. Most of his mates are blended in with the highway. 

There are also quite a few wallaroos around, these are also termed ‘euros’ and are mainly an arid region wallaroo.

Whew! We’re back from our walk this morning to see the Wilpena Pound. There is a lot of hype around this place, they have a resort, campground, visitor’s centre, constant helicopters and planes conducting fly-overs of it. So you’d expect it to be a magnificent sight with breath-taking views, right? Well think again.

The area is nice, lots of geological formations and good old Aussie bush, plenty of wildlife, both dead and alive but if you’re looking for spectacular views you’d be much better off going to the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, The Great Barrier Reef or Ayer’s Rock, they are all spectacular and well worth the journey. 

Wilpena Pound is a depression that on first glance looks like a meteor crater and that’s how I’d like to think of it, but it isn’t. It a geological depressed valley with one entrance, how boring, I much prefer to imagine a massive meteor screaming at thousands of kilometres/hour, blazing in a fireball and smashing into the ground killing all living things over half of the globe. Unfortunately it isn’t.

Can you see where I reckon it looks like a crater?

This arvo we went into Blinman as we were so shagged out after the 8 Km ‘moderate’ walk that if I had sat down for more than 10 minutes I would have gone into a coma. Blinman is a crappy little ex-mining town with a population of 22. There were a few nice old mining shacks there to take photos of, I think they were uninhabited but thinking back now I’m not sure. I hope I didn’t offend anyone by tramping all over their front yard.

I didn’t get to sample the Big Pub Pie but I was tempted. Instead I had a beer and then we drove back before I fell asleep, I was tired from the trek into Wilpena Pound. The pound with not dogs, you’d expect to see some stray dogs there for sale but nope! No dogs allowed in the National Park. Goats and dingos run free though.

This next one is a historic (isn’t everything?) farming shack from inside the Pound. Apparently some aboriginal sheilah farmed it there. It looked pretty recent to me and there were red and yellow bins out the back. I wondered which days were recycling days and how bloody far the garbo had to come to pick the bins up. I was exhausted just walking there.

Home made pea and ham soup for dinner tonight. Did I tell you that amongst my many talents that I’m an expert in pea and ham soup? Not in making it, just eating it. Jackie however, IS an expert in making it and as a matter of fact I had it written into our wedding vows that she continue to make it ‘ON Demand’, I think it was part of the Love, Honour and OBEY part of the vows. Anyway, we are both bloody good at our particular Pea & Ham commitments. 

Jack didn’t make this one though, I bought it frozen from a late night take away in Burra. It was good but Jackie’s crown as the best maker is still intact. 

Having finished our Flinders Ranges part of our trip it’s time to make tracks further west to Western Australia. Despite wishing to take this trip fairly slowly we need to get a move on. This is a long part of the journey and we don’t really want to spend too much time re-visiting already-explored sections of South Australia. That said it will take us about 4-5 days to get to Kalgoorlie/Boulder where I can once again put my feet up for a few days, marvelling at the MASSIVE mining trucks. I love this place.

Decided to stop in at a service station at Iron Knob for lunch, maybe we’ll skip the fuel though.

Overnight at Kimba South Australia.

Until the next blog,,, see ya!