For the big kids: Flinders Ranges

Flinders Ranges

We left Peterborough and headed for Hawker on the RM Williams Way and Outback Highway. After picking up a few supplies in Hawker we headed for Rawnlsey Station caravan park, situated 20km from the Wilpena Pound (tourist centre for the Flinders Ranges). The scenery was very impressive. The mountain formations were stunning, pre-historic, red and layered. Temperature was about 41c.

A funny moment occurred at Fiona’s expense. The caravan park is 4km off the highway on dirt road. As we went out to look at Wilpena Pound, on the dirt road out to the highway we saw an Emu with half a dozen chicks . Fiona, in a lather of excitement, stopped the car and said this was something we may never see again and commanded us to take photos immediately of this “once in a lifetime moment”. We obeyed. 200 metres down the dirt road, guess what, another Emu family. Guess what, another 100 metres down the road another family. By the time we got to the highway, we saw about 30-40 of them. Over the next 48 hours after we had nearly run one over, chasing one down the highway for 100 metres and generally seen about 1000 of them, Fiona’s attitude changed to “will you silly birds get out of the way”. When someone said "Emu" it barely raised a look. Of course the once in a lifetime Emu account has now entered family folklore.

The stars were pretty impressive that night.

The next day I went for a dawn run that was memorable. Magnificent mountain scenery where I felt like the only person in the world such was the quiet. Then I would realise there were roos all around me when they moved, they blended in so effectively to the scrub. It would be great to wake up to that early morning run each day. We headed out at 36c to enter the national park and established our first bush camp. After setting up as the only people in the camp (except for the roo in the toilets taking cover from the heat), we spent the day driving through all the recommended gorges and tourist drives etc. We then settled back in camp all alone, which was a bit creepy. It was a long hot day but what we saw was impressive.

The next day we headed back to Wilpena Pound and did some bushwalking to various lookouts. Again impressive but the weather was mixed. Fortunately we finished the walks because the weather really closed in. It teemed and the wind howled all afternoon so we bunkered in at our camp. Late in the day another caravan came into our campsite. This made us all happy.

We were advised to visit Stokes Hill for an excellent sunset. Fortunately the weather cleared and we were treated to a magnificent view. It was a great way to finish at Flinders. Coming home (really all day in the national park) there were hundreds of roos and emus. You could not drive fast at all. We had a number of close shaves. I was quite nervous driving. Roos must be the most stupid of animals. Even when they see you, you do not know which way they will go, they will dart left , right , on the road or off the road. Anyway apart from roos and emus, we seem to run into lots of Germans. In fact one guy who took our picture on top of the Wangara lookout (a major walk we did) he said they were going to see the sunset at Stokes Hill as well. We did not see them but when we got back at dusk, we discovered it was him who had driven into our campsite. So we chatted like long lost friends.