Wednesday 23rd April, 2014: Down the Strezlecki Track - back to Rawnsley Station

Today we were up early saying our goodbyes to Cindy and Russ and heading off ourselves back to Rawnsley Park Station.

We were on the road by 7am and headed out on the Old Strezlecki Track down to Moomba gas fields. 

From there we were onto the newer Strezlecki Track. The Track was way better than I expected as a large proportion of the early part of our driving was on sections of the track now used for the gas fields - so they keep the track in pretty good condition.

We did strike quite a lot of corrugations in the latter part of our journey on this track - but we made good time an reached Lyndhurst around 1pm - we then went on to Copley for a pie at the bakery there. We had been told this was a pretty good little bakery.

As we were sitting in the little cafe having our pies the coal train to Leigh Creek Coal fields passed by on the railway line just across the road. We were staggered at how long this train was and I gave up counting the amount of coal carriages that were being drawn by the 3x Diesel engines at the head of this beast.

The lady at the bakery told us that this was one of the longest trains that comes through - with generally 161 coal carriages in tow. 

You wouldn't want to get caught at the local level crossing when this lot comes through!! 

We shopped at Leigh Creek and then pressed on with the intent of reaching Rawnsley Park today.

We made it into Rawnsley at about 5 pm - hitched up the tvan (it was stored behind the managers residence) and picked our unpowered site for the next few days.

We are very grateful to Rawnsley park for letting us leave the vans there for free.

We stay ended up staying another 4 nights - as we just lived it here. 

The morning after arriving back we spent washing the Hilux inside and out - we thought it would never come clean - but in no time it was looking the same shiny silver that it should be. We did pick up a few more surface scratches on the trip but you have to expect that and we had no other issues.

Over the next couple of days we relaxed and also did a walk at Wilpena Pound - to Wongara Lookout

And another couple of walks at Rawnsley.

We enjoyed having fires at night and cooked another camp oven.

The other guys coming back to get their vans turned up the day after us and we spent a bit of time with them before they headed off on their further adventures.

We lived being in the Flinders Ranges again and were sad to leave when we headed off on Sunday 27th. but we were also excited about our next stop - the Clare Valley.