Tuesday, Oct 25 - Into the Southern Flinders Ranges

(pic: Zebra Finches)

The day started overcast and got thicker through the morning. We split some ham and cheese croissants, checked out and drove a short ways to the Australian Arid Lands Botanic Garden, a wonderful unspoiled area of original scrub landscape with plantings of drought-resistant plants from all over Australia. It was really well done with well-designed buildings and gardens. They also have good café where we should have had breakfast, but managed to fit in a snack. The weather was cool and blustery, so it was nice to get out of the wind. Bob had hot chocolate and I had a lemon-myrtle pancake with quandong sauce and ice cream - quandong is a fruit the aborigines use, and very good.

We filled our monster car with plenty of diesel and headed up into the Flinders Ranges. The land flattened and was covered with sage brush-like plants, and the mountains rose along the horizon. We stopped to explore some old ruins of pioneers’ houses. This area was first settled in the mid 1800s and resembles California of the same period. It must have been very difficult for the first pioneers to survive with the huge distances and constant threat of drought.

After passing through the town of Hawker we entered the Flinders Ranges National Park…much of the road indicated on our maps as dirt is now paved, making our behemoth vehicle even more useless! We finally managed to find some slightly rough road through Brachina Gorge and slowed down to see several families of emus with chicks and kangaroos along side the road. The hillsides are beautiful red rock which will be really gorgeous if it gets sunny!

                               (pic:  Black-tailed Native Hen)
We worked our way up to the town of Parachilna (pop. 7) and the Prairie Hotel. A couple of bearded geezers were drinking beer out front; I went into the tiny bar and checked in. we drove around back and found Room 5 in a new section attached to the original hotel building. Our room is partly underground, fairly plain, but quite comfortable. I got some beers from the bar and we settled in. We’re going to be here for three nights so we unpacked most of our stuff. I bought a 5-hour card from the bar, so we’ll have internet which is great.

At 6:30 we went into the dining area next to the bar and saw the walls were covered by great aboriginal art and paintings by Peter Coad! What a coincidence…we needn’t have struggled so hard to get to his gallery if we’d only known!! And the food we out here in the outback, was fabulous! I had a chicken curry and Bob had goat. We drank a very respectable bottle of local Southern Flinders wine: Bundaleer Shiraz 2009. And had a delicious quandong crumble with ice cream for dessert. During dinner almost everyone left their seats and rushed outside for the big event of the day: the passing of the coal train from Leigh Creek! Said to be the longest front-pulled train in the southern hemisphere!