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Published: October 20th 2014
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Flinders Ranges at Sunset
The rock face glowed with the sun's colours. Magical. It’s still too windy for the trip to Roxby Downs and Andamooka and doesn’t look like changing for the next few days so we’ll have to try and do it next year on the way back up north. I just hope we don’t encounter the same problem then!
We’ve decided to head down to Port Augusta, which will be a strong tail wind, just what we need. Along the route we saw Island Lagoon, where some of the fossils were found that were in the Heritage Museum. It is a conical island that sticks up out of a dry lake so is now a clay pan, with a salt pan beyond it.
The landscape keeps changing, sometimes having quite large hills, then undulating plains, often with sheep on them, and with mesas appearing from nowhere on them. Next we crossed a dry sand and clay pan lake on a mesa which then dropped down to red sand full of trees and then back to plains, including gibber plains full of tiny stones.
Soon we could see the Flinders Ranges to our left across Lake Torrens, and lots of sheep. Then into another area of trees covered in buds
Island Lagoon, Woomera
This was the site of some fossil finds in the museum. You can see the clay pan at the foreground and the salt pan further back in this dry lagoon. It does get water when the rains come. – it’s colder down here so plants that were in full bloom up in Central Australia have a week or so to go before flowering.
One of the best views of the Flinders Ranges was from the Ranges View Rest Area, where we stopped for a break and a drink. We could also clearly see Wilpena Pound in the distance, which is a roughly circular depression in the range with high sides for about 80% of its rim that looks a bit like a large bowl. There were some information boards about the Arid Area along a short walk, too. I’ve been very impressed by all the well-presented information we’ve seen at these Rest Areas in Northern and Central Australia. They all add to our appreciation of what we are experiencing.
We arrived in Port Augusta around 12.30pm and parked the van on the outskirts then walked into the centre of town to find a chemist for my asthma and cough meds - $72 worth! This cough is costing me a fortune!! We also found a bakery selling amazingly cheap food – we got two chicken rolls (jam-packed with chicken) two cream cakes and two slices (for tomorrow)
Spencer Gulf
Looking across Spencer Gulf towards the Flinders Ranges you can see one of the very long freight trains that go along the Trans Australian Railway Line. all for $15! They weren’t the best we’d ever tasted but were not too bad. We took them back to the van to eat and have a drink. It was rather warm inside but better than being in the sun.
We then walked to the Visitor Information Centre, where they were very helpful and rang up the Shoreline Caravan Park to book us in as well as giving us lots of enthusiastic information about what we shouldn’t miss while in town. One thing was the “Outback Experience” which was at the centre. It cost $15.50 each but that gave you a pass that was valid for a year, so we could still use it if we are coming this way early next year.
We went back and got the van, took it to the Shoreline CP and set up and then came back to do the “Experience”. You start off walking through the mouth of a large dinosaur, "Max the Megalania" who was a seven metre long meat eating goanna, the largest goanna ever known. Then you pass through a “thick forest” of artificial plants that hang down around you. This leads to some boards about Aboriginal life
The Giant Snake Azurra
The Creation story tells of Azurra moving across the countryside of the Flinders Ranges and creating some of the features during encounters with other beings. This is one of the exhibits in the Outback Experience. in the area and a video of outback living, which was very good. All through the next part of the exhibits we saw large murals, artefacts and mannequins which gave the history of the famous features, like the Flinders Ranges, from both the Aboriginal dreaming/Creation stories (often with an audio tape with an elder telling the story to you) and the scientific explanations of how they were formed. For example, the story for Wilpena Pound is about two giant snakes that ate all the people at a special corroboree and finally curled up and went to sleep, one on each side of a circle, which formed the sides of the Pound. The scientific explanation is more mundane - the geological forces warped and wrinkled the earth's crust to form the Flinders Ranges. Wilpena Pound is the remains of one of those wrinkles after thousands of years of weathering. It's called a pound because the naturally formed basin looks like an animal enclosure or pound.
They also explained how fire and flood changed the landscape. The fire display had full-sized “trees” against a screen on which was back projected a fierce bush fire complete with the noise of burning. It
Flinders Ranges
This is the view of Flinders Ranges from outside our "Shoreline Caravan Park". was very effective.
The next section showed some of the explorers of the area in dioramas with mannequins dressed and posed as each of the famous men, e.g. Eyre, Sturt, Stuart and Edward Giles, who crossed from East to West and back across Australia, starting from Beltana in the Flinders Ranges, using camels. There was an audio presentation of their deeds, with lights shining on the person being presented so you focussed on him.
We had to stop at that point as they were about to close but we will come back tomorrow.
We did the shopping in Coles and then headed straight back to pack it all away. As soon as we opened the van door there was a strong smell of chemicals and it was very stuffy. We went in and discovered that I’d left the gas burner on and it had been burning for almost two hours! We’d had the fridge on gas while we were away the first time and when we’d had lunch Barry had asked me to test the burner to check that it was still operating as we were expecting the gas bottle to run out any time and we
Northern Gateway, Port Augusta
This had been a brewery once upon a time but is now a shopping complex. didn’t want to leave the fridge without cooling while we were away in the terrible heat. I’d got distracted after lighting it and forgotten to turn it back off.
All the cupboards above and around the cooker were really hot inside and a blue flexible chopping board I keep under the grill pan to reduce the rattling while we travel had started to melt and was stuck to the bottom of the grill pan. Fortunately, it came away with the pan when I removed it and didn’t stick to the bottom of the grill compartment. I peeled the remains of the board off the pan and threw it out then had a wonderful time trying to scrub the residue off the base. It took ages and a lot of elbow grease but I finally got it clean. We also left all the cupboard doors and drawers open to let them cool. We were so lucky that we returned when we did or the plastic could have caught fire and we’d have lost everything. I won’t be doing that again!!
Once it was fixed, we went for a much-needed relaxing walk along the beach of the Spencer Gulf, directly behind the caravan park (hence “Shoreline”). The tide was low but was coming in. Along the water’s edge we could see gas bubbling up from the sand and causing rings to form on the surface. There were also lots of small mangrove trees growing at the edge of the shore but they had straight trunks and no aerial roots, as the Queensland ones do (they always look as if they could get up and walk off) but they did have hundreds of the air roots that stick out of the mud and allow the plant to breathe. Above the mud the beach consisted of crushed shells and conglomerate rocks with shells throughout.
We watched the sun set over the water and the Flinders Ranges but there wasn’t much colour. While we were there the wind suddenly changed to a cold southerly which was very strong and chilling and signalled the time to go in for dinner.
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