Flinders Ranges

The Magical Whisky Tour rolls on and here I am in the Flinders Ranges. How can I best describe them? They're like the Power Rangers only with less Lycra and dressed in natural colours. I need to thank DB for his excellent advice otherwise I would never have come here. The scenery, in particular the scope of the scenery, is just breath taking. From now on DB you will be known as "The Guru of Glenelg". The skies have been cloudless and the breadth of your vision is literally not big enough to take in the mighty vistas. Impressive stuff.

I left Burra and all it had to offer at about 9.00am on Monday morning and headed for the ranges. I took a slightly longer route that took me along a bit of the coast. There was no real benefit to this. I just passed through a number of sleepy towns and skirted around Port Pirie and Port Augusta. I stopped for lunch at a place called Quorn (pronounced Corn like the vegetable). At one point in the trip I was only 320 kms from Broken Hill, you don't realise how big NSW is until you try to avoid it. Quorn was the last place you could get reasonably priced petrol (to give you an example it is $1.70 a litre here) so I topped up and had some lunch after wandering around the town.

Quorn itself had once been a big railway town where the original "Afghan" or more commonly known as the "Ghan" railway passed through. During WWII it serviced 43 trains a day with troops criss crossing the country. It still has a railway but it is run by volunteers and only works on weekends for the tourist market, running down to Port Augusta and back. I had lunch at the delightful Emily's Bistro, where I was served an excellent roast pork and a flat white for $15.00. How do they do it for the price? It was housed in an old department store that still had the name "The Great Northern Emporium". It was liking a working museum. The business was lined with solid timber counters and glass display cases. It still had the old pulley system used to send sales overhead to the central cashier. Much of the furniture, crockery and cutlery was period as well. All fabulous stuff. They had an old piano in the corner that still had its original double sconce for holding the candles. I was tempted to sit down and have a play but I held myself back.

From Quorn it was on through Hawker and then Wilpena Pound Resort where I checked in for two nights. I managed to land a half price deal through wotif including breakfast which came in quite handy. Its an eco lodge apparently which probably means I shouldn't be using the air conditioner buts its cold and I am. I love these places, it has a sign asking you to reuse your towel for environmental purposes then gives you only enough space to hang up one. The room I'm in sleeps 4. The staff here are great and have been fabulous with maps and places to see. 

Went and saw some real Aboriginal rock art which was a bit special. You can't take your eyes off the view around here it is just all encompassing. But you cant take your eyes off the road either as the stock and the wildlife use it with almost gay abandon. In my two days driving here I have had wallabies, rock wallabies, sheep, rabbits, kangaroos and emus all jump blithely in front of the car, hell bent on committing suicide. Its lucky I am such a caring, sharing sensitive new age guy. 

Its real 4 wheel drive (and Vectra country), the poor old thing has been getting quite a beating on this trip. I got caught up in the bar with a tour group last night who were somewhat pretentious and giving everyone a hard time. I don't know how those tour leaders do it. I think I would be telling them to do the "in and word off" a lot. I found out what time they are eating tonight and am getting there an hour later. Hopefully I will miss them. 

I went to a place called Spokes Hill to watch this magnificent sunset earlier this evening. It would a really romantic place to take a date, fortunately I didn't have to worry as there were 7 4WD loads of tourists all having a wank about the size of their vehicles. I almost couldn't see the view for the tripods and the massive lenses on their camera. I was getting serious lens envy. I mean the last time I was involved in anything that long was one of the lunches I had in the 80's. Anyway the sunset was magic. I'm off to dinner now so I can torment some more tour groups. You have to make your fun wherever you can.