Flinders Ranges Part 2

Wildlife

The area is full of kangaroos, wallabies and emus. On the main bitumen road between Hawker and Blinman there are so many roos and emus, and an unbelievable amount of road kill roos. But we all love seeing them and apart from the occasional roo or emu that ran across the road in front of us on the Bunyeroo Gorge Road, it was all good. You just need to keep a close eye on both sides of the road and slow down if you see them as they are pretty easily spooked. It's funny, at Halls Gap the roos would eat out of your hand if you let them and the emus just wandered where ever they wanted. The roos and emus at Flinders Ranges are easily startled and ran away much of the time. We saw Red Kangaroos (definitely saw this), Western Grey Kangaroos (I think – we definitely saw grey kangaroos of some sort, unless they were large grey wallabies of some sort), Red Necked Wallaby (I think), Yellow Footed Rock Wallaby (definitely), emus, some type of parrot which we think is a type of Ringneck, although it could also be a yellow bellied parrot (as I never got a really good look at it), a wedge tail eagle or three a Red Capped Robin and a bunch of little finch like birds that flittered and flew too fast to get a good view of. It's times like this I think doing the flora and fauna strand of my degree, rather than soil and hydrology, may have been more useful.

Wilpena Pound

I hate to say it, but I found Wilpena Pound underwhelming. You see so many postcards of dramatic, steep, red rock walls with beautiful coloured skies behind them or the sun shining on them, making the red so vivid. I think that set us up in part to feel let down, because that is not what we saw. I am almost 100% sure that St Mary Peak (the highest peak) was hidden by cloud pretty much the whole time we were there. I think part my disappointment is simply that the day was grey and drizzly and cold, so it wasn't very enjoyable. But I think the main reason is, you can't see how majestic and huge and stunning Wilpena Pound is from the floor of it. You can see the occasional glimpse of the red rock in among the trees, both at ground level and on the ridge sides, but it wasn't very prominent. To be able to see it, I think you need a sunny day and to be able to hike up to the top of the ridges and look outs. We just couldn't do it with our two kids. At times like this I wish our kids were older so we could enjoy the full experience, but if we wait until Rory is old enough then Tilda would be too far along in high school to make this journey possible. So, we do the best we can and enjoy what we can do, and I try not to feel disappointed at the things I miss out on.

 The walk in to Wilpena Pound is pretty

 Morning tea at the Wilpena Homestead

 The (not so) good views of the red walls of Wilpena Pound

Brachina Gorge

I thoroughly recommend the drive through the Brachina Gorge Geological Trail. Geologically this region is just amazing (hence all the rock pictures below). It covers a geological range of 630 – 590 million years ago There are all sorts of different types of rock, from quartzite to sandstone, shale, limestone and a whole bunch of others. These have all been laid down at different ages and layers (not all together, although some are on top of each other). The views of the mountains are beautiful and the Gorge drive is stunning as well. The kids got a bit bored but Greg and I really enjoyed it. Tilda's quick (and young) eyes saw a rock wallaby which was wonderful.

He insisted I take his photo (but he's so darn cute anyway!)

Halls Gap, The Grampians

We had dreadful weather at Halls Gap, so we really didn't get to enjoy the place very much. It rained, drizzled and poured most of the time we were there and there were horrendously strong winds for much of it too. After the tree branch fell on Rory's head at Omeo we are very careful not to be out among trees in the wind, and in all honesty, sometimes the wind was almost terrifying, it was gusting that strongly. While the weather was disappointing for us, it is so very good that the area was experiencing so much rain, as farmers just out of the mountains (at Stawell and Ararat) have been selling off their livestock due to drought.

 The rock formations are amazing - so rugged and different. We were camped at the bottom of one section and the view was breathtaking.

We drove up to Mackenzie Falls as it really got talked up as a great waterfall, but I am guessing the serious lack of rain the area has been experiencing for years has affected it, as it was not overwhelmingly impressive. We had hoped to do a couple of bushwalks but weren't able to because of the wind and rain. We did a 100m walk to the Grand Canyon at the start of the walk to The Pinnacle, but couldn't go any further because of the steep climb and the shocking weather. Still, we did see a very pretty creek which was flowing very well thanks to all of the rain.

 Mackenzie Falls (from the lookout so it doesn't look that big. It would probably look much more impressive from the bottom, but the weather was too horrible to do that walk)

Locking back towards Halls Gap (this is what most of our time there looked like!)

 The water is very stained with tannin

 Rock hopping across a creek in the rain

I fell on my butt to get this photo so it had to be included :)

We drove to Stawell on the only sunny afternoon we had, primarily so Greg could check out a creek for gold, but with all of the recent rain it was flowing too fast to be able to pan. We found a working underground gold mine at Stawell, which everyone found very interesting... even Rory as he could watch the diggers loading the rock into the crusher and Tilda really did enjoy reading and learning about the underground mining operation.

Tilda and Rory standing on the 1 million ounce gold bullion replica

 (to give some indicator of just how much gold had been mined)

Our caravan park was full of roos, sulphur crested cockatoos, long beaked corellas and emus ranged just outside the camping area. This was fun for the kids. One afternoon there was a large kangaroo just outside our van. He looked cold, wet and very bedraggled and I felt sorry for him, so I decided to give him some food. What I didn't realise was just how tame they are! He came right up to the door and took the food from my hand, before I could even step out of the van! It would have been OK except I thought he looked like he would come inside for more... and he was a BIG boy, bigger than Tilda, so a bit over 4 foot high. We spend the next 15-20 minutes trapped in our van as he wasn't leaving and Rory insisted on locking the door so he couldn't come in!

The "standover" guy in the background, after he'd moved away a bit