Artesian Jacuzzi
Trip Start
Sep 25, 2003
1
20
59
Trip End
Apr 23, 2005
Flinders and Gammon Ranges and Birdsville Track,
Australia
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Abstract;
Finally cut the umbilical & left Adelaide travelling north to the Flinders & then the Gammon Ranges where we walked our socks off, before taking a scenic flight from Marree over Lake Eyre and starting the Birdsville Track north to Birdsville, our first trip into Queensland and taking advantange of the great artesian basin en route by indulging in a jacuzzi in the middle of nowhere. Spent a day in Birdsville psyching ourselves up for our crossing of the Simpson Desert & hiring a satellite phone
Nitty Gritty;
Leaving Adelaide was hard as we'd been there for 3 weeks and Dave was making it too easy for us to stay - he should have been more mean
Yellow footed rock wallaby
! We finally left town about 3pm not accepting any excuses that it was too late in the day to go and that it would be better to leave tomorrow. By now it was the Thursday before Easter and the roads were busy with people hot footing it out of town. To say that we hot footed it would be an exageration as it was difficult to hot foot it anywhere in a Landcruiser carrying 170L of fuel & 75L of water and we trundled along at 85km/h.That first night was spent at Telowie Gorge where we knew there was a great little free campsite as we'd been there before, it being the first place that we had seen the rare and totally wonderful yellow footed rock wallabies. On our way there we saw a really cool landcruiser driving down railway tracks on special wheels. It was a maintenance vehicle and we thought it would be a great way to get around and beat the traffic as it was speeding along; wonder whether they get speeding tickets..........
From here we drove to the Fliders Ranges in sweltering heat to find it stuffed full of holiday makers, so we avoided all and sundry by bush camping in a creekbed which was great as our 'camp' was close to a 'roo superhighway and during the night you could hear thump, thump, thump in the distance getting loader as they approached and then getting quieter again as they passed by and it made us giggle
Gorge walking in Arkaroola, Gammon Ranges, SA
.We loved the Flinders when we were here before.....The scenery is mainly undualting hills / mountains with gum trees growing along dried up creeks inbetween and the hills vegetated with spiney spinifex grass and it's very dry and hot and wonderful. The hills are disected by red rock gorges every so often which are great places to walk (clamber along) and provide habitat for 'roos and yellow footed rock wallabies (YFRWs).
From our camp we did some alfresco walking up the surrounding hills which was great for sunset and saw some rare mulga parrots on the way down - Oh god, we've become twitchers!!
Did a circular walk from camp too starting at 7am as it was too hot to walk during the middle of the day. The only down point were the bush flies which were everywhere and spent ages trying to get into your eyes, ears and up your nose. We had to go eveywhere with our heads covered in a flynet, even when we were eating which was a challenge as you had to stick your sandwich up under your net to avoid eating fly sandwich.
Decided to climb something so climbed Mt Olsen Bagge one of the mountains surrounding Wilpena Pound which is a huge flat plain surrounded entirely by a mountain range and is an awesome sight
View of Gammons ... sorry about the sound
. The ascent nearly finished Rach off as it was really hot. The view from the top was well worth it though.Snuck into the campsite afterwards to have a shower..shhhhhh don't tell anyone!Next stop Chambers gorge on the way to the Gammon Ranges which is part of a huge cattle station, so there is not much wildlife around except for ferel goats but the gorge was superb and huge. It must have been about 5km long with huge cliffs along much of it and our before breakfast walk became a bit of an epic. We slept outside under the stars here as it was really hot and the stars were amazing. There definitely seem to be more stars in the sky in the southern hemisphere and with no light polution you feel as thought you can pluck them from the sky as they are so bright.
The Gammon Ranges are north of the Flinders and more remote and wilder with hardly any trees and lots of dry scrub. Camped at the mouth of a gorge where we managed to see some YFRWs the following morning when we started a 19km walk at 6.30am to avoid the midday heat. They were as gorgeous as we remembered with golden feet and striped tails and boy are they agile, bouncing effortlessly over boulders. The creek contained a spring and further up the gorge was like an oasis with pools and reeds and herons, red rumped parotts and 'roos and goats drinking
Water in Lake Eyre, from the air...
. It was very tranquill. The rest of the walk was wild, desolate and hot, but fab.At Nooldoo Nooldoona waterhole in Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctary (Part of the Gammon Ranges) we saw a YFRW in the late afternoon, who actually came down to the water to drink, whilst we hid behind a huge rock. It was wonderful to see them so close, and you could hear him slurping up water. We were lucky enough to see some more on another walk in Arkaroola. We had spent some time clambering up a gorge scanning the walls and had given up hope when we wandered back along the route of our walk, rounded a corner and there they were, 4 adults on a scree slope. They let us get fairly close and we spent nearly 2 hours watching them feeding and bouncing around. It was sooooo cooool! On our way to the gorge, we saw 2 huge wedge tailed eagles who had caught a rabbit for their breakfast and took off right in front of the car.
Having decided not to do any of the 4WD tracks that had sprung up in the Fliders Ranges as we thought Larry would be doing quite enough off roading during the next few months, we inadvertently found ourselves on one in Arkaroola as we took a wrong turn and the track was one way so we had to continue. This seemed OK initially as it took us to a waterhole where we climbed up to a ridge and had a good walk in the morning
Yellow footed rock wallaby coming down for drink
. The road soon got pretty full on and rocky as anything and if I said that some of the descents were so steep that at the crest of a hill, we both had to stand up in our seats to see where the track was going! We were so glad to have done our 4WD course and Larry did great,especially his slow controlled speed on steep descents.Although we'd rather not have done it, it gave us a lot of confidence in Larry and ourselves.Arkaroola has an observatory which we didn't visit last time we were there so this time we had a visit and it was great. We looked at stars that looked like a single star with the naked eye and turned out to be 4 stars when looked through a telescope, a star surrounded by a hydrogen cloud, saturn which looked like a charactature & Jupiter.
It was now time to head north as the Simpson Desert awaited so we headed for Marree at the start of the Birdsville Track and from where we took a scenic flight over Lake Eyre & The Marree Man (a huge aboriginal man carved out in the desert and whom no one knows who drew it). We had a female pilot who was great and the plane was really small and zipped along. The landscape was so huge from the air and every now and then you could see a bore hole surrounded by small specks which were sheep as the area comprises huge stations.
Lake Eyre is a huge salt lake which actually had some water in the northern part which is very rare & is full of birds that unfortuanatley we couldn't see from where we were. All in all we were airbourne for 1hr 20 mins and it was spectacular.
The Birdsville Track is about 500km long and we travelled it in 2 days. There wasn't much to see on the way except that the whole area sits on top of the artesian basin and we came to a campsite where there was your very own artesian jacuzzi. It was a huge plastic tub with 4 jets that shot water in to it and an outlet for draining it. It took about 30mins to fill it and it was backing hot which wasn't really refreshing as it was pretty hot outside, but it had to be done!
Our overnight stop was a typical outback roadhouse that announced itself via signs on the track - thirsty?, cold beer, panadol etc. and when you approached there was a set of solar powered traffic lights on red and out the front there were parking meters although we were in the middle of know where!
There had been a lot of rain in Queensland and as we appoached Birdsville several waterholes had filled and we finally managed to see pelicans in the middle of the desert which was quite a sight.
At Birdsville, famous for its annual horse races and the finish / start of the Simpson Desert crossings, we started to get worked up about what we were about to do, that is until we spoke to a lovely aboriginal ranger who put our minds at rest rather than working us up by saying that we shouldn't be going alone as the campsite staff had. We also hired a satellite phone from the Police station which put our minds at rest.
We spent a day prepaing Larry by getting fuel and water and preparing ourselves mentally about what we were going to do.
We had met a couple, Steve and Jackie at Chambers Gorge and they were crossing the Simpson from west to east as a tag along tour and we met them at Birdsville and spent the night before our departure hearing their tales of their crossing which also helped to psych us up.
