Mount Remarkable Forest
Yesterday we took a short trip through the Flinders Range near Port Augusta South Australia. This is my second visit to Port Augusta where our daughter Naomi is working as a vet. Port Augusta is the crossroads of Australia sitting on the road north to Alice Springs and Darwin and east to Sydney and west to Perth.
Quorn
Port Augusta is also the staging point for Road Trains. These are huge trucks with a second full truck load attached behind it. They are so long that they cannot manouvre any tight corners and start from here on their long journeys north to Darwin or west to Perth.
Just the front 1/4 of train
The railroad freight trains are also amazing and can be over a kilometer long. They run north to Alice Springs and Darwin and need at least a mile to slow down and stop.
We were here year and the temperature was way over 40 degrees and hard to walk much outside. This year it Australia has had a much cooler summer with an unusual amount of rain even in the arid areas. As a consequence the arid landscape around Port Augusta has become a lot greener. The wet summer is said to be due to the strong La Nina effect and a cause of the devastating floods this year in Queensland.
The Flinders Range is a beautiful area of bush and forest to the east. You take the road to Quorn which resembles a western town with old wooden shops and bars, and has been the scene for several films. From Quorn we headed for Wilmington for lunch in the only bar there. Lunch had to be their home made spicy kangaroo sausage roll – which was really good. Just past Wilmington you can take a road up to a national park called Mount Remarkable where there is a deep gorge called Alligator Gorge which is well worth it.
Alligator Gorge
A small river has gouged out this red sandstone gorge over millions of years – probably when there was more rainfall than now. From there you can take some walks into the gorge and to some lookout positions. The whole area was just about deserted with only 2 other cars parked there. You can drive down roads here for 30 minutes and never see another car.
Alligator Gorge
After Alligator Gorge we took a long dirt road over some pretty rocky terrain to reach Hancock’s Lookout which provides a panoramic view over the Flinders, the estuary and the Eyre peninsula. Again we were the only car and I had to take it very slowly over some of the worst bits of the road as this was a Toyota Camry and not a Landcruiser! The lookout was named after a Mr. Hancock who discovered it about 60 years ago and then took the mayor to be of Port Augusta when she was a young girl. Years later she found it again when she got her first car and she since named it after the Hancocks who had left years ago. Similarly Alligator Gorge got its name probably from an aboriginal guide called Ali who looked after some sheep in the Flinders, rather than the gorge being full of alligators ! On the way back we saw an Emu strolling through a field.
Paid a visit to Arid Lands centre in Port Augusta which presents the full range of wild shrubs and trees that grow in the dry arid conditions in central Australia. There are also snakes in the parks so probably best to keep to the tracks. You also get some great views over the estuary towards the Flinders. Then back to look after George the dog and take him for a walk.
