Monday 14th April, 2014: The Adventure Really Begins !!

We all focused on getting our vehicles packed up the afternoon before for the Simpson Desert loop.

Early the next morning we packed up the vans and our tvan and hItched up moving them all to the back of the managers residence where they are allowing us to leave them whilst we head off on our adventure to cross the Simpson Desert.

We set off on our planned adventure with the route for the day taking the whole group through Buneyroo and Brachina Gorge. 

We were again treated to the magnificent scenery of these gorges and also lucky enough to be able to show the others in our group the spot where we found the Yellow Footed Wallabies - they were there again today for everyone to see. 

The kids loved this treat for today!!

We came out of the gorges and hit the highway and stopped for a quick morning tea at the Prairie Hotel at Parachilna. A lovely old bush pub with lots of local handicraft and artworks for sale.

We all had our air compressors out and pumped our tyres back upto highway pressure and headed off up the tar for a big day of driving and sightseeing on the way to our overnight stop at the back of the Marree Hotel (at the tiny township of Marree at the start of the Oodnadatta track)

We got to the mining town of Leigh Creek (which services the massive Leigh Creek Coalfields) for lunch - and also for the important last quick run around the supermarket to stock up on food, and water supplies for the next 4-6 days.

This is our last real chance for those of us purchasing water for the journey ahead of us. In our car we now have 60 litres of drinking water - all sitting in 10 litre boxes on the floor behind the front seats of the ute.

Over the next couple of days we will head on further up the Oodnadatta Track on our way to Mt Dare Hotel on the edge of the Simpson desert.

This track for the most part follows the old Ghan railway and their are many remnants and ruins of times past along the way - as many if these, then thriving townships, did not survive after the Ghan track was relocated and no longer passing through them.

Some like Marree and Lyndhurst and Oodnadatta have barely survived - and these surviving towns are really no more than pub and maybe a general store servicing the tourists and local pastoralists.

 Except where they have a resident indigenous population and then there will possibly be a community medical service as well.

Passing through Lyndhurst - we dropped in to see the eccentric old fella known as 'Talc Alf' but he was not about at the time. We still had a quick look around his outdoor gallery of sculptures fashioned from Talc.

For other townships - like Farina - all that remains are the ruins of what was once a thriving town.

Here are just a few photos of the Farina ruins. It amazes me how these old stone buildings really stand the test of time. The interpretive walk around this old township tells the story of life here in days gone by.

A group wanting to preserve this history comes here for a couple of months each year (June / July) and have restored the unique underground bakery building to a working operation again. They bake and sell bread to tourists for this 2 mths of the year and this helps with funding of the upkeep of the.

Tonight we camp out back of the Marree Hotel - which is pretty much all there is left in Marree.

It was a lovely sight at sunset!

It is a free camp here - with just $2.00 per person for a good hot shower. 

This was the first of many nights of erecting our little tent city (and taking it all down again each morning). We were all did well having the tents up in in reasonably quick time.

A lot of the group patronised the pub after dinner - kids included. 

It is a Nice old pub with lots of memorabilia to the outback postman Tom Kruse.

This is tom's old truck - that he used to do the mail run from the railhead at Marree through the desert to Birdsville - delivery mail (and lots of other gear) to many properties along the way.

The first thing we noticed as we begin this journey is the hotter days and the FLIES, FLIES and more FLIES!!!

It is now that the fly nets become our constant friends in coping with the number of flies we are encountering each time we leave the protection of our vehicles.

It is not easy eating with a fly net on - but way better than trying to do anything without them.

They are a stunning part of our daily apparel - not exactly particularly attractive nor fashionable though!!

Sunday 13th April, 2014: Bunyeroo and Brachina Gorge!!

Today we took off on our own for a drive to Bunyeroo and Brachina Gorges. We have been through both of these gorges on a previous commercial holiday tour through this area. 

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.

Saturday 12th April, 2014: The Walk to Rawnsley Bluff!!!

This morning everyone in the group was up early to head off on our planned walk. The big walk upto Rawnsley Bluff.

This is a 12km return walk and involves. Some very steep sections with rocks to climb up along the way to the top of Rawnsley Bluff. The promise for this effort was some spectacular scenery and the challenge to just complete this difficult walk.

We all managed to get to the top - some had more of a struggle than others and all the kids coped excellently-  especially little Haley.  Not a word of complaint I heard the whole trip from any the kids - except "Mum I'm hungry".

Here we all are on the way up!!

And now we have reached the top -- yippee!!   There were a lot of sore legs from the climb up!! 

BUT we were all blown away with the vista before us and realising how hight we are up on this bluff!!

We took turns climbing out onto this big rock and having our photos taken - what a bunch of posers we are!!!!

The kids all enjoyed themselves and Connor found this little lizard under a rock on the way up - he found a few others as well. He sure is pretty good at looking in the right places and spotting them.

Of course after all the photo taking and snacks - we had to start heading back down the track we had just climbed up. It was going to be just as hard - if not harder in the steeper rocky sections - going down as is was coming up.

We took a detour on the way down onto a track to the Wilpena Pound lookout. Seems like -"why not?"- we have come all this way we can do this track as well - it's only another 1.2 km!

But it was all worth it and this also was another spectacular vista looking down into Wilpena Pound.

Unfortunately my photos do not do it justice - it's just very difficult to take a scene of such grandeur and cramp it into a small photo view.

I think we all found the going down the steeper sections pretty tough on the knees - oh except Haley and Connor and Lachlan. These little whipper snappers just ate it up!!

We were all glad we had done the walk though - even though at the end we we pretty well knackered and looking forward to getting back to camp for a shower and a rest up.

One amusing sight was Moores - deciding to shave her legs this afternoon back at camp

After some resting up we starting functioning again and got ourselves organised on the rise behind our campsites to watch the sunset on Rawnsley Bluff and the surrounding ranges.

I also had some fun mucking about with this new camera of mine 

- taking a black and white photo

And one in sepia tones

Dinner tonight was another fantastic camp oven prepared by Lisa - a Moroccan Lamb dish - oops she had bought beef - not lamb. But this did not matter and it turned out a very tasty much enjoyed meal around the campfire.