The drive to Wilpena was beautiful with some really rugged countryside following the road along with many ruins of early farmhouses, disintegrating and returning to the earth. The Wilpena campsite was equally beautiful and natural with trees, birds and kangaroos everywhere. The campsite wasn’t very busy so it was nice and quiet. We set up for four nights.
On the first day we simply hung out and sussed out the place after our long drive the day before. The kids acquainted themselves with a family of Apostle Birds that came around looking for food, trying to feed them by hand and spying on them through the gauze of the fold out beds.
We went for a 6km return walk to the old Wilpena Pound homestead in the afternoon. The walk was fun and when we reached our destination, we read the various signs around the place explaining the immense hardships faced by the early pastoralists that took up here in the mid 1800’s. We walked an extra 1km up to the lookout nearby, Rich and Ari venturing a little further to the higher lookout from where you could see the whole of the Pound circling around.
The next day we hopped in the car and drove out to an Aboriginal site where we hunted around for some circular and spiral carvings. From there we took off along a 40km 4wd track through the Flinders Ranges National Park that threaded its way through spectacularly rugged countryside and past/through gorges with rocks that were 500-600 million years old.
We then headed out to the tiny old semi-ghost town of Blinman where we had lunch with creative local ingredients at a lovely gallery/cafe and then went on a great tour of an old Copper mine – very personalised with just us in the group. We all really enjoyed this tour, the volunteer tour guide had a great affinity with the kids and the mine itself was really ‘raw’. The story of the town and mine tour was interesting too. The town is in an unincorporated area of the state so has no Council. The mine tour was set up and is staffed and managed by townsfolk. They also manage services like waste disposal, water etc collectively. The town itself is looks gorgeous and definitely has an air of optimism about it.
Our next stop was 50km or so up the road at Parachilna, a one house town where the Hotel there serves up roadkill (for real).
We checked out the hotel, full of beautiful old timber, and the gallery before settling in for a beer, some ice cream and some lemonades. Kel tried to strike up a conversation with the personality deficient hotel owner and eventually found out that apparently this place and its associated station was used to host many movies, soaps and commercials. We checked out some marine fossils from a site on the station, used in a David Attenborough doco. We were assured by the host that she was unimpressed by fame and treated everyone the same and we believed her!! We took another 4wd shortcut back through the ranges and headed back to the campsite as the sun was setting, passing many skeletons of old farmhouses along the way.
Rich got up early the next day and took off at 6:30am for the 6 hour, 14km return hike to St Mary’s Peak, the highest peak in the Flinders Ranges.
The 5km walk to the foot of the mountain was relatively flat and meandered its way through the bush. From there the walk started heading up hill and quickly became very steep in sections, requiring hands and feet to scramble up the track. By the time Rich reached the ‘saddle’, the section of the range connecting St Mary’s Peak to the rest of the range, Rich had worked up quite a sweat and stopped for a snack.
It was time to push on to the peak, another 1.5km further along and up the track. At some point Rich accidentally left the modern track and followed some old markings up the steeper outside face of the peak. At many points along this pretty dangerous track, Rich thought “hmmm – this can’t be right”, but pressed on anyway – consciously trying to keep his vertigo in check. The old markings took him to a section that Rich was going to have to use his rock-climbing skills to scale a 5 metre vertical wall recessed into the surrounding cliff. Sure that this surely couldn’t be the way, but with no obvious alternative, Rich left behind his bag of water and phone due to the narrowness of the recess, and climbed the wall with just his camera.
See if you can see the blue marks Rich followed. They're there.
Another 200m or so of climbing over rocks and trying to not lose the ‘track’, Rich finally reached the top of St Mary’s Peak.
He spent 20 minutes or so catching his breath, taking in the view and taking a few photos of the view. The kids had dared him to take a nude photo on top of the mountain using his undies as a flag – so Rich disrobed and spent some time trying to get the right shot.
After getting dressed and exploring the peak a little, Rich found the modern track and followed this much easier track back around the inside of the peak and down to the saddle trying to figure out where he had previously left the track. Rich was now 1km or so below the spot where he had left his bag and then spent the next hour climbing back up the peak to find where he had left his bag in the now 32 degree heat. After much exploring and many double backs, he located the bag, and climbed back up to the peak a second time (this time with the bag), taking some photos of some resident lizards and goats near the top. Rich was pretty buggered, and then walked, climbed and stumbled back down the mountain and along the track back to camp arriving at around 3:30pm and meeting Kel and the kids at the pool. Despite all the adventure, Rich really enjoyed this intense day and felt that although he had been truly tested, he persevered and won – even if it did take a lot longer due to the extra distance covered.
Next morning, we again watched the family of resident Apostle Birds come around for a feed, before packing up, a sneaky swim, and then heading off in the direction of Adelaide.
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