Blogs from Quorn, South Australia, Australia, Oceania

It's holiday time again and we're off to see more of Australia. We start our adventure by flying to Adelaide where we picked up a tank. (Compared to my little Getz the Mitsubishi ASX feels like I'm driving a tank) I hardly recognised Adelaide airport, its been a few years since I've travelled to Adelaide for the cricket. After making a quick stop at Costco for supplies we headed off for Quorn. Quorn is located 335 kms north of Adelaide and is 293 meters above the sea level at the southern end of the Flinders Ranges and will be our home for 3 nights. The drive up was very picturesque. Coming across the biggest wind farm we'd seen in Australia. We detoured into the township of Snowtown, we didn't see the infamous bank but spotted our ... read more

This is something I should have done several years ago. Then again, a lot of things are things I should have done several years ago. The weather is gloomy. It's overcast, cold and there is rain. It's a good thing the train is still running! I could provide plenty of information about the Pichi Richi Railway but it would be much simpler to advise people to Google them because all the information is there. This was a wonderful way for me to spend my morning and now I am going back to Melbourne.... read more

Monday 14th – a Public Holiday in South Australia to celebrate ‘Labour Day’. We said a rather reluctant farewell to Burra and headed towards the Port Augusta area. Since leaving Adelaide we’ve encountered more and more grasshopper type insects as we drive along and today we drove through several large swarms. Graham was advised some time ago to fix some mesh to the front of PIE to avoid these things accumulating in the engine and this has worked very well. Sadly, apart from catching the grasshoppers, it also captures some splendid looking butterflies but given the numbers we see it’s inevitable. Our intended destination today was a place called Wilmington – not for any other reason than it was a suitable distance along our route towards the Eyre Peninsula and would also put us within touching ... read more

The day started out cold but clear and we went up to Quorn to get on the Hertitage Steam Train. This runs for 15 Km down the valley on what was the old Ghan narrow gauge railway line. Quorn was once the crossroads of Australia between railway lines to the North, South, East and West. The new Ghan rail lines are of a wider gauge and take a different route. This steam railway is kept operational by a bunch of enthusiasts who love the steam era. We met some helpful travellers on the train who gave us some tips about roads near Alice Springs - they had just come from there. After the rail trip we drove up towards Wilpena Pound to our accommodation at Rawnsley Park Station. Here we had the usual problems of lighting ... read more

Introduction One of the key missions of our Quorn adventure was to get some tadpoles (well at least that was Cian and Natalie had in mind). This took us to the very beautiful Warren Gorge, about 20 minutes north of Quorn on the Arden Vale road. This is a camping area with scattered long-drop toilets and little else other than serenity, a flowing creek with tadpoles and a rocks in which to hide yellow-footed rock wallabies (Mum and Dad - you must put this on your to-do list). We didn't do much of a walk, just climbed up one of the rises to get some exercise, mostly choosing to focus on getting the taddies. Dan says... Hello readers, Beautiful, absolutely beautiful. The first thing we did was tadpoling. Some thought that there were no tadpoles, Dad ... read more