Thursday, Oct 27 - To Arkaroola, sort of...

We got up as planned at 5:30. Arkaroola, in the North Flinders Range is three hours away, so we figured we’d leave at six, get there by nine and be able to explore and bird in the cooler, more active, bird and animal hours.

Well, we got out to our car to find a flat on the rear right-hand side! Usually this would not be a big deal, but on our car, El Pajero, it was quite a project. Fortunately the car came with the owner’s manual so we could figure out how to release the fancy, but pointless, spare cover, and put together the powerful, but not obvious, jack. Bob crawled under the car trying to find the exact spot to place the jack and got it the second time. The jack requires about a hundred pumps to move this huge car. The tyres (in Australian) were very heavy and it took some maneuvering to get the new one on, but finally we did and set off pretty dusty and grimy!

We headed north to the town of Leigh Creek, the prosperous town from which the coal train comes by our hotel every evening. We turned into town to find it was exactly like a nice little neighborhood in Tucson: all the houses the same color, very trim and a big shopping center, but with nothing practical like a garage! We continued on to little, humble Copley which consists of a café and a garage! They fixed our tire for $40, and we lowered the pressure in all the tires from 50#s to 35...no wonder we had had a flat!

We drove about 80 miles of dirt road across a vast plain of salt bush and other plants, resembling our sage brush, and finally got into canyon lands , through aboriginal reserves, Gammon Ranges National Park, and just before noon, into the private Arkaroola Wildlife Sanctuary. It was once a sheep station, but is now a nature tourist destination. They offer jeep tours, helicopter tours, bush walks and even have an astronomical observatory! It would have been a great place to stay for a while, but, at least, we got to see it! We had some beers and design-your-own sandwiches, avoiding the classic Aussie hamburger with beef patty, onion, tomato, bacon, egg, beetroot, pineapple, cheese and lettuce!! I was tempted to order one just to see how they could stack all that food on one bun!   (pic: Corella Parrots cracking open Cypress Pine cones)

We took one short walk to the Ochre Wall which was a colorful dry river wash with amazingly colored rock! Part of the wonderful Aussie movie, “The Tracker”, was filmed near there.
Bob was trying to see the Red Throat, a small rare bird with a orangey throat, but while we managed to ID a Chestnut-rumped Thornbill, the Red Throat eluded us.

We started back at three; I drove the monster for a while, and we returned to the Prairie at 5:30, and washed the morning’s grime off and went into dinner.

The bar scene was noisy and cheerful as we settled into our usual seats in the dining room and admired once again the aboriginal paintings and Peter Coad’s. Bob had creamy chicken curry and I had the lemon-myrtle scented goat curry with a bottle of Wicks Sauvignon Blanc 2011 from the Adelaide Hills - really excellent. For dessert we split a marvelous chocolate-muntries pudding with port; muntries are tiny local desert apples.