Sunday 27th & Monday 28th April, 2014: Clare Valley, SA

Today we say goodbye to the Flinders Ranges (for now) - we are certain that this place will draw us back again in our future visits to SA.

The last of my Flinders Ranges photos - taken during the last few days at Rawnsley Park Station.

These were taken one afternoon when I took a walk up to point called Alison's Saddle.

From this point I looked back to Rawnsley Bluff over where the Eco Villas are hidden away at the station.

The view from this point is pretty much a sweep of 360 degrees.

Here I am looking back over the campground

And we say goodbye to Rawnsley as we look out to the bluff from our camp site

This morning (Sunday) we head off back through Hawker and down southwards to the Clare Valley. 

We arrive in the little township of Clare at about 1.30pm and head straight for a little family owned vineyard, Stone Bridge,  that I have read about in a magazine. 

At weekends they do wood fired pizza and it's apparently a popular little spot with the locals.

Well what a lovely find this was. Very friendly owners who run the place themselves - he cooks, she waitresses and the the teenage daughters waitress as well.

It's quite a small concern and small area outside where you eat in the garden - the pizzas are cooked in the outdoor wood fired pizza oven -  and they were superb!!

After this late lunch we head back into Clare and find ourselves at the local caravan park full of Red River Gums.

It's the usual scenario - end up chatting with some other campers and then happy hour - then dinner and bed.

We hitch up and head out in the morning (Monday) to explore Clare --

-- and some of the Clare Valley vineyards and quaint towns. 

We checked out a few cellar doors and I by some wines at the Knappstein cellar door. I wonder if any of it will make it home to Brissie!

The Clare a valley vineyards are all quite close together and you could visit many of them in a day without travelling very far at all.

We move on to visit Mintaro in the heart of the Clare Valley. This little hamlet was established in1849 and the entire town is now heritage listed.

It is a very picturesque little village set amongst wheat fields and vineyards and surrounded by a broad band of rolling hills. Unfortunately on this week day most of the town seemed to be shut. Nothing was open. I guess they do all their trade at the weekends. But we could walk around the town to see the lovely old buildings.

The Magpie and Stump hotel

The old Flour Mill

Just out of the town is Martindale Hall - a magnificent Georgian style mansion built in 1879. 

This I the old coach house at Martindale Hall

This building was open for viewing - but we unfortunately elected not to do the tour wanted to move on to see Burra before heading on to get to Broken Hill for tonight.

We loved what we have seen of the Clare valley and we plan to try and come back for a 4 day weekend when we can get some cheap flights to Adelaide. It's only 90 minute drive and we could see the Clare and the Barossa Valleys easily in 4 days.

Our next stop is the town of Burra - just east of the Clare Valley.  What a lovely little gem of a place this is!!!

We have lunch at a cute little cafe - I have the fantastic pumpkin soup.

Burra is an old copper mining town and was once South Australia's copper central. Miners and townspeople migrated to Burra primarily from Cornwall, Wales, Scotland and Germany.

It is one of the best preserved towns of the Victorian era and is declared a State Heritage area.

The town is also now publicly claimed to be the "Merino capital of the world"

After leaving Burra we start the remainder of our journey back to Broken Hill where we plan to stay for for the next couple of nights.

And say goodbye to South Australia for now!!

Wednesday 22nd April, 2014 - Photos of our drive down the Strezlecki Track

I can't believe I forgot to include these photos take. On our drive down the Strezlecki.

We came across a huge group of wedge tail eagles feasting on a carcass (of what we do not know).

We managed to get some good photos of a couple of them that just would not leave the carcass - the other dozen or so flew off to sit in the paddock nearby - waiting for us to leave the scene.

This picture is pretty indicative of the landscape along the Strezlecki track

And then we made it to the the end of the track when we arrived at Lyndhurst

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.

Tuesday 22nd April, 2014: A night at the Innamincka Hotel

When we got back into Innamincka this afternoon we went to have a look around this tiny historic township 

-  and of course we had to have a drink at the Innamincka Hotel.

During the course of the afternoon we decided it would be nice to stay at the pub tonight and that would mean we could all get started on our journey a lot earlier in the morning.

So we checked into the pub and enjoyed an afternoon of charging all our appliances and having a reality nice shower.

We met for drinks at the pub about 6pm and then had dinner in the restaurant.

The food was fantastic - they have a great chef here at the moment!!

It was a nice evening and a great way to end our couple of weeks with Cindy and Russ - as they had to start heading back to Newcastle the following morning.

Thanx for another great time travelling with you guys!!

Mon 21st & Tues 22nd April, 2014: Coongie Lakes National Park

This morning the group spilt up as some of the crew needed to get back to Rawnsley a park and collect their vans to go home, others wanted to go to Arkaroola on the way back to Rawnsley and we wanted to go out to Coongie Lakes National Park with Cindy and Russ before they headed back to Newcastle.

We drove the 100 odd km out to Coongie Lakes and found a great spot on the lakeside admist the sand dunes. 

Here are some of the locals we encountered along the drive out to Coongie a Lakes -  

We set up camp and spent the afternoon just languishing beside the lake watching the birdlife and relaxing in this remote and beautiful location. 

We had our happy hour watching the changing light of the sun setting over the lake

And some of us took "selfies" - with the sunset background!!!

The next morning we awoke to the most beautiful sunrise of our trip so far. It is just stunning!! It just blew us away!!!

We were up early so we headed off for a walk around to the other side of the lake that we had been looking over to the previous afternoon.

It was a lovely relaxing walk and we were able to check out all the other campsites further round the shoreline.

The lakes are still filling from water further up the river system - we could actually stand and watch the rivulets of waters snaking there way across this dry section of the lake. It was fascinating to be able to watch this event in micro - as this is what happens I. The channel,country when they get big rains up north.

We were able to get a better look at the large nest in the tree that we had been looking at from the other side of the lake yesterday evening - it seems deserted at the moment - bit it was fascinating to check out the actual composition of the nest.

We could now look back over to the the side of the lake at our campsite

Once we came back from our walk we languished a bit more in this relaxing landscape and then decided to pack up in the late morning and head back into Innamincka. We would have liked to stay another night here - but going back to Innamincka meant that for both us and Cindy & Russ our journey tomorrow would be that 110 km shorter.