Wilpena Pound

We figured the Easter rush would be gone from Wilpena Pound, so we headed there because this was the locals favourite camping area, and normally had hundreds of people. But, in general, we found the area to be very quiet, and although we may have missed the masses checking out, the camping area had scarce few when we arrived at 10:30. We think that the dry conditions made people to choose another location for their holidays.

We walked the geological trail, which was an 8km return walk.  It was very well narrated with detailed descriptions of the rock formations, but I think we are just dumb, because we couldn’t see most of the things the info was telling us.  To make it worse, we started the walk around midday, and dry river beds are a very hot place. But the worst were all those annoying flies. Lidia was growling from the 2km mark – she said it was a camel noise, but I assumed it was pure enjoyment, so we pushed on to the end...  The end was very unspectacular, and actually was just a fence, without any “Congratulations” sign or anything.  The return leg was unpleasant, mainly because of the camel noises.
 

Dry Creek bed

 

We got back to the car, cranked the air-conditioning, and decided to do the rest of the day like Americans...  If we can’t drive there, we are not going.

 

 

We drove another geological drive, which was good, but very bumpy and slow.  Most of the track was through dry river beds, with very rough roads.  The 20km drive takes you through around 100 million years of rock formations, due to the arrangements here.  As fantastic as it sounds, it just looks like the same stuff, with different colors. As American tourists, we got bored with the lack of Starbucks and Macdonalds (and it was pasted beer o’clock) so we headed back.

On the way back,  I felt there was something wrong with one of the rear tyres, because the car was sliding a bit around the tight corners.  Didn’t feel flat, just a bit low so I pushed on so I could change the tyre with a beer in hand.

When we got back to camp, the tyre was completely flat.  Couldn’t believe it. Travelling at 100km/h with a flat tyre, cornering reasonable and not really noticeable on power or noise.  I’m just pleased that these tyres were getting scrapped soon.  Gave me a chance to try my dodgy brothers repair, which was a tyre plug and some of the sealant goo.. I have the spare on now, and store the "repaired" tyre.  Seems to work, but will check it again in a few days.

 

2/4/2013

We decided to do a walk, and most were too long (22kms was the longest). We did the Ohlssen-Bagge walk that took us to the top of a nearly mountain.  6.4km walk, starting at 500m above sea level, finishing at 928m.  There were more camel noises coming from Lidia..
 

 

On this walk we saw some caterpilla chains.  They were trailing each other, to look like one big creature.  This on in the photo was around 3m in length.  I picked one out of the chain to see what would happen, and the whole train stopped.  I put the little guy back, but he went in circles while the others waited.  Dont know how it turned out, because we got bored watching them, but they were gone when we came back so I guess it got sorted out.

 

 

We had some lunch then took a drive to Sacred Canyon. Which was pretty nice  and had some more Aboriginal markings there.

 

 

 

 

On the way back we stopped at Cazneaux tree.  There was a photo taken in 1937 on display.  The amazing thing was that this tree had not changed at all, other than for some new lower branches growing.