Blogs from South Australia, Australia, Oceania - page 263

It was too windy and wet for walking today (October 23 - Happy birthday Polly!!) so we are publishing one of our earlier walks in the Flinder's Ranges that we hadn't got around to telling you about. Now what trip to the Flinders wouldn't be complete with a visit to Wilpena Pound? The weather was windy and wet, but we were lucky enough to get some walking in before the more persistent showers in the afternoon arrived. The Pound is popular, particularly on the October long weekend, so we saw plenty of walkers and campers as we showed Dan the Pound. Wilpena Pound is an amazing geological structure that is best seen from the air. It has a cup shape, and there is one creek that flows out of the cup, (at Sliding rock) which is ... read more

A personal highlight of the trip for me was to walk (however briefly) the first part of the Heysen trail at the Parachilna Gorga. Since turning 40 I have had a plan in the back of my mind - to do as much walking of the Heysen trail (1200 km long!) where and when I can. This long range trail goes from Parachilna Gorge in the Flinders Ranges to Cape Jervis in the South. More information .... We had a break in the 'all day grazing' at the Parachila Pub, renowned for its feral animal menu, before heading east into the Ranges. When we arrived at the Parachilna Gorge and the start of the trail, the weather was still bad - very windy - Peter and Dan didn't even get out of the car! No matter, ... read more

Dan, Poppa and I headed out to Mt Bryan East to clean the drinking troughs for the sheep and to help unblock a pipe that went under the road. Dan says .... I was in the shed with Dad, getting the sheep ready to be shorn, when Poppa called me to come with him on a drive. So I climbed into the ute with Mum. The ute was loaded up with tools for the job - but I didn't know what they were for. The drive was bumpy, because we were in the country (heh that rhymes!). I tried to take a photo of Mount Bryan - but Mum told me that it wasn't - I was aiming at the Razorback, a rocky outcrop near Mount Bryan. When I saw the old Quinn homestead at Mount ... read more

Welcome readers, It has been ages since we had been walking, with other engagements and foul weather making it impossible to get out. Full of anticipation - with a glorious day before us - we ended up doing a walk that was quite close to home (40 minutes) - the Black Hill Conservation Park. We had visited the Black Hill Park before and had done a 4.5 hour walk - we trimmed it to 2 hours for our late start today - by doing the George Driscoll walk (50 real bushwalks around Adelaide) rather than that recommended track in '20 Nature walks in Mount Lofty Ranges'. The park was in full flower today - and the clear weather afforded excellent views of Adelaide all the way to the coast. There were plenty of lizards (sunnin... read more

On Saturday we left our campsite for the drive into Adelaide. We stopped on the way to climb to see some Aborginal rock art at the Yourambulla caves and passed through the towns of Quorn, Laura (for lunch and Aussie football throwing) and Clare. In the Clare Valley wine region we stopped at Taylor's Winery for a competition to see who could get the most value out of their 3 dollar wine-tasting charge. That evening in Adelaide we met up in the Raglan pub for a group farewell. We spent three days in the fair city of Adelaide where the outback temperatures we had gotten used to completely dropped away and we resorted to digging out hats and gloves. We saw some of the sights in the city - the Oval, St. Peter's Cathedral, Light vision ... read more