Day 16. 25/9/11: Wilpena Pound to Wilpena Pound
 |
| At the saddle. Hooray! |
After he managed to massage the crap out of it last night, getting his knuckles in and the gristle out, Tim's foot was feeling better, so we agreed that a good tramp in the bush was in order. By 8am we'd signed out from the camp with a plan to walk about 23km. Including morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, second lunch and toilet stops we guessed it'd take about 8 hours.
Wilpena Pound sits within the Flinders Ranges in central South Australia. Imagine a massive crater several kilometres wide - that's what the pound looks like from the air (and from some of today's vantage points). It's actually a natural rock formation that's been eroded over millions of years. The walls of the 'crater', or escarpments, are pretty high and steep. We entered the pound via St Mary Peak Outside Loop. The Peak is the highest in the Flinders Ranges at 1171 metres above sea level. It's an important part of the local Aboriginal people's (the Adnyamathanha's) creation story and the summit of the Peak itself is therefore off limits.
 |
| Being French. |
We climbed as far as Tanderra Saddle, which involved some scrambling up big rocks and getting a little dizzy when the options were reduced to a sheer drop or clinging on to a rock face for dear life (ok, that may be a slight exaggeration, but it was steep!) We got to the top, ate an orange and a few muesli bars, yelled at each other in pseudo-French and carried on towards Edeowie Gorge and Malloga Falls.
It was a lovely walk, just one or two eek moments when we heard a snake hissing at us, and another when we startled two kangaroos lying in the sun. Not sure who had the bigger heart attack there... the kangaroos jumped out of their skin, it was rather amusing.
 |
| Laughing. St Mary's Peak peaking in the background. |
For this particular trail, the guidebooks warn that hikers need to discuss the route with the Visitor Centre to make sure they know what they're doing and where they're going. But we spoke to a woman there and she looked totally perplexed by this. 'Well, I'm sure you know where you're going', she said... And it was pretty much signposted the whole way, anyway. There was only one 'umm, is that a cairn?' moment where we got a metre off track and wandered through some bushes.
We eventually entered Edeowie Gorge and not long after that, reached Malloga Falls. There was one pool of deep dark dirty water between two 127 Hours-type cliffs (with a small wedged-in rock for good measure). But it's so dry up here, the falls weren't doing much in the way of falling. We had lunch sitting on a nice big flat rock surrounded by the steep quartzite cliffs of the gorge. Tim went off for a bit of a wander and left Lily to sit and soak up what sun was making it through.
It was one of those lovely sits where watching a spider spinning its web can keep you occupied for ages! Tim came back (yay!) and we set off back up out of the gorge to finish the loop back to Wilpena campground. We passed a guy walking into the gorge with nothing but a small satchel on his back. He looked rather unprepared for an 8 hour hike in the sun! And barely a grunt was given in return for my cheery 'Hello'!
 |
| The view. Good hat. |
A little further on and we got a great view of the pound. We were on the edge of the 'crater' looking down into the pound and could see the cliffs sweeping away from us on either side. Tried to get a good photo, but it was pretty hard to capture. A couple of kilometres before we reached the camp site we stopped at an old homestead and ate our second lunch with a magpie circling our feet, angling for scraps. No such luck from two hungry hikers!
The homestead was a lovely well-built sandstone house which had been home to the Hills family who moved in to the Pound thinking it was great pastoral land. They cleared a lot of land, built a road and this amazing house. But it's not really great pastoral land. The water in the creek isn't reliable and it gets very dry, then it floods and the access road they've spent years building to get their wheat out gets washed away. We've come across so many examples of this kind of optimism during our travels, where people bring their families to the middle of the Australian desert (and it is desert!), build a home and invest in the land. Just incredible to think how isolated it must have been. And so hard to live in a place with unreliable water, dust, snakes, unable to grow decent crops. One of the histories spoke of the little girl living in the homestead spending her nights listening to dingos crunching bones outside her window! Yikes!
 |
| Tree, meet rock. Rock, meet tree. |
 |
| Serious lunchmaking going on. |
So we finished our walk via Sliding Rock (a big rock that can't possibly stay where it is for too much longer, it really does look as though it's about to slip off its perch). We heard a loud rustling in the bushes and saw a massive goanna, around a metre long. Some feral goats. Some more emus. Some more kangaroos. And back to the shop for an icecream - done by 4pm! A shower to wash off the fake tan/red dust, a quick snooze in the hammock, followed by a great pasta for dinner, preceded by DIY bruschetta!
 |
| The walk home, feeling like we're in the very centre of The Pound. |
Ride
Time (hr:min:sec):
Speed (kph):
Distance (km):
Run
Time (hr:min:sec): 7:55
Speed (kph):
Distance (km): 24.30
No comments:
Post a Comment