We have always wanted to see this amazingly scenic area again and Ruth is very eager to catch sight of that "Yellow-Footed Rock Wallaby" known to live in these gorges.
The rest of the crew were going out to drive a 4wd track - which was to be a very scenic and fun day - but we elected to do our own thing and go and check out these gorges on our last day here.
We headed north and firstly went off the main drag into Bunyeroo Gorge
- where you are driving through narrow gorges of sheer cliffs and basically driving in the old dried up river bed amongst the stately old red River Gums.
We did see this interesting notice as we entered the road to the gorge!!
Wow that's a long marathon!!
Firstly we were treated to the most magnificent of lookouts in this part of the Flinders Ranges Razorback Lookout.
We did not spot any of the rock wallabies in this gorge - even though I walked slowly through a section of the gorge and scoured the rocky cliff sides with the binoculars.
Before we headed Into Brachina gorge we took a side trip to view the Aroona Homestead ruins.
The Aroona valley is where the famous SA artist Hans Heysen spent a lot of time painting in the Flinders Ranges.
Anyone who loves the Australian bush, and particularly the Flinders Ranges, and Red River gums needs to see this wonderful artists work. It was amazing being in this valley as the scenery that surrounded us was just so stunningly beautiful and did remind us so much of the Hans Heysen exhibition we had the good fortune to see a couple of years ago in Brisbane.
This is an interesting piece of history for this area!! Some had good fortune in eeking out a life on the land in this valley.
We now moved on into Brachina Gorge - another fantastically scenic drive.
Here we were in luck - as there is a colony of the Yellow footed rock wallabies in a section of the gorge conveniently near a car park. I am assuming they put a car park here, and the signage, about the wallabies because this colony lives in this section permanently.
It was very exciting to finally see them in the wild - and they all looked in good shape - nice and healthy plump figures. There were also babies scampering around the rocks. In all we saw 6x of them.
They are so very cute!!
We dragged ourselves away from wallabies to compete our drive through the Brachina Gorge.
It was then a quick trip out onto the tar and down the highway to the turn off of the Moralana Scenic Drive.
This drive was highly recommend to us by the staff at Rawnsley Park and also cuts off a significant distance as in getting back to Rawnsley Park.
Well it was just a gorgeous drive and we stopped for a sausage sandwich picnic lunch along the route.
Back at Rawnsley by early afternoon we embarked straight into getting packed up and sorted with what we need to take in the hilux for our trip across the Simpson Desert.
We will be sleeping in a small tent on self inflating mattresses for this part of our holiday and leaving the tvan at Rawnsley Park.
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