Adventure in the Flinders Ranges - May 30-31, 2012

Early the next morning, Sue and Bryce woke up to strange bird calls.  After I told them that it was the Laughing Kookaburra they could hear, they both eagerly went out with their cameras to see the iconic bird while Ryan and I continued our much needed sleep recovery from work.  Disaster struck not long after when I was trying to cook breakfast and I started a small stove fire and set off the smoke alarm repeatedly, but nothing I couldn't handle! 

We were on the road by 9am for a beautiful drive north.  After a few missed turns, we ended up detouring through the Clare Valley (another main wine region of South Australia) which was gorgeous at this time of year.  I never expected Australia to have fall colours like we do in Canada, but some trees here do change colours and the wine vines definitely change.  After lunch in Peterborough, Sue took over the driving for a few hours before our arrival in Wilpena at 3:30pm.  Wilpena is the "town" in the Flinders Ranges National Park, but it's basically just a resort and an amazing campground.  After gathering information from the visitor centre, we drove to our campsite which was full of emus.  Their poop is really disgusting, but actually quite hilarious!

Eager to walk around a bit, we went for a nice walk until dark.  We didn't get very far, but we had fun playing around with cameras and watching out for birds and kangaroos.

The walk back went something like this:

Bryce: Did you hear that?  It sounded like a chicken.

Steph: Hmm, I heard it too...sounds like a goat.

Ryan or Bryce: Yeah! Let's go look!

Steph (sarcastically): Right, like there will be goats in the Outback.

One of us:  Look, there's a goat!

Sure enough, there were goats on the cliffs nearby.  Proved me wrong!

That evening for dinner we had a delicious grilled kangaroo salad with shiraz sauce, pears, and walnuts - so yummy!  We also finally got around to cracking open some wine and board games, and spent the evening as it was meant to be spent.

After much debate the night before, we decided to do the Mount Ohlssen Bagge hike.  It was meant to be a 4 hour, 6km, mountain trail, and it didn't disappoint.  For the length of the hike, we got some beautiful views of Wilpena Pound and a good amount of exercise.  We sort of had a photo contest going on, so I'm going to try and pick what I thought were everyone's best shots of the day (while still showing a variety of subjects).

Bryce - Part of the walk was victim to a forest fire, so the burnt branches and new undergrowth were beautiful.

Ryan - Damn him and his wonderful polarizer lens!  We walked to the top of these cliffs.

Sue  - Just before the bad weather came in, we had this beautiful view from half way up.

Steph - I loved the colours and the interesting plants on the path.

Overall the hike was super fun and an excellent way to see the area, though we didn't see any of the birds or lizards that we were hoping for.  Our timing was great because just as we got to the bottom it started to rain.

After the hike we spent a little while just relaxing.  Sue and I did some watercolour painting, while Bryce and Ryan did their own thing.  We played a round of SmallWorlds with wine before cooking mouth-watering lamb meatballs with zucchini "pasta" and mint pesto, followed by more games, wine, and chocolate.