Week 2 - Menindee Lakes to Port Augusta via the Flinders Ranges

We regretfully left Broken Hill and went a short distance (135km) to a beautiful park at Copi Hollow on the Menindee Lakes. The caravan park is owned by the Broken Hill Ski Club and they use the money from the travellers to make their park better. They have a private lake for skiing - not bad! The lake gets filled up each August with water from the Darling. We had a perfect spot right next to the lake and were entertained by a spectacular sunset. We also drove to the other lakes down some awful, corrugated tracks. We visited the site of Burke and Wills' expedition encampment next to the Darling River.

Lake Pamamaroo

That's us in the bottom right hand corner of the photo!

Happy Hour!

The next day we headed for the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. When we crossed the border we met another River Diamantina caravan - would you believe it, they came from East Corrimal! The weather has turned and it was very windy and cold. The wind was straight into us as we travelled for miles making the fuel consumption skyrocket!

We had a free camp along the way at Nackara along the plains. It was a good bush camp and we were the only ones there!

The next day we set off for Hawker in the Flinders Ranges. We stopped for morning tea at Peterborough which was once the railroad crossroad of Australia with the busiest rail yard due to the mining booms around the country and the fact it was the main junction for interstate trains.

Pa got to drive the train in the main street.

When we arrived at Hawker we set up camp then headed into the hills for a bushwalk. We walked a long way to the Castle Lookout. The lookout looks like a castle when viewed from the town but is just a pile of rocks up close.

Hawker is the centre of the Flinders Ranges and we drove up to Wilpena Pound the next day. Wilpena Pound looks like a huge extinct volcano or even a meteorite crater but is actually a large syncline of folded sedimenary rock. It is like a huge dimple on the face of the Earth with high cliffs forming the boundary but dimpled in the middle.

We walked 12km into the Pound between the cliffs. It was a beautiful day, cool but sunny. Along the way Nanna crossed a few creeks:

We walked all the way in to an old farmhouse which was the remains from the first farmers who tried to raise cattle and grow wheat in the Pound. There is only one way in and they built a road in by hand in the 1800s. Unfortunately a huge flood washed their road away and they abandoned the farm.

We made it to the lookout inside the Pound. It was a fantastic view.

We then drove 28km along the worst, corrugated dirt road across 2 stations to get to another lookout (lucky we didn't have the van - or false teeth - they would've fallen out!).

The views across the range was fantastic, the photos don't do it justice.

We left Hawker the next day and headed down the valley to Port Augusta. As we went through a pretty little country village called Quorn, a steam train followed us along the road. So we stopped the car and walked onto the tracks to take a few photos.

Port Augusta is a nice town. It is in an important location where the main roads from Perth, Darwin, Melbourne and Sydney meet. The rail line is very busy with huge trains carrying goods from west to east and vice versa. We counted one train with four engines and 70 carriages! We reckon it must be at least 3 kilometres long.

In this photo we are standing at the same spot that Matthew Flinders stood on in 1806 when he sailed up the Spencer Gulf and named the mountains in this area.

Nanna went for a long walk around the Arid Desert Botanical Gardens while Pa went to the hardware store. Nanna loved it and brought back a range of nuts and seed pods. She particularly liked the Sturt's Desert Pea.