For a week when we has to dodge showers and dress for winter, we did an amazing amount. The forecast had been for rain and unseasonable cold, and this didn't tell the half of it ... snow fell in South Australia on Friday, -- it was lucky we'd done our day trip into the Flinders Ranges on Thursday, because the storm which brought the snow was coming in just as we drove south! We might have been lucky once or twice ... in retrospect, if the heavy weather had arrived even 12 hours earlier, we could have been caught out in the wilderness when the "floodways" started to run, unable to get back to civilization! I guess Dave's guardian angel was looking out for us, because we didn't get caught, and we did have a fantastic time...
I wouldn't have believed you could do this in a day ... Flinders Ranges, out and back, between 6:00am and 9:30pm, including a storm?! It had to be a joke. But no -- it turned out to be perfectly doable, and this was Thursday! Previously, we'd stayed in our own neck of the woods, getting as far afield as the Laratinga Wetlands on the other side of Mount Barker, and Mannum (it rained), via Mount Pleasant (so cold, I had to drink hot chocolate to get back to life); and on Saturday -- I traded Dave for Friday: he did his bike ride a day early, and we hit the road again on Saturday instead -- we headed south and stumbled over the Ferries McDonald Conservation Park, where the wildflowers and orchids are in full bloom. That was a tremendous pleasure, but I'll post those photos -- also the Fairy Wren pictures from Laratinga -- another time.
So ... Flinders Ranges in a day! Breakfast at Locheal, with its pink lake, north of Port Wakefield, and then lunch at Quorn, followed by three hours of tarryhooting on wilderness roads where the views are beyond amazing, before we turned for home at 4:00, with a four-and-a-half-hour drive ahead of us, returning by a different rout ... Willmington, Gladstone, Laura, Clare, Gawler, at which point you connect with the northern expressway and you'll be home in less than an hour.
The trip had one last amazement in store for us:
As I mentioned before, the weather was due to change, big time, though we hadn't realized quite how violently it would change. In fact, in about twelve hours this storm front would be dumping snow on the Flinders Ranges! We drove right into it, at a time when it was all about torrential trail. The kind of rain where your wipers can barely keep pace. Spectacular -- also a wake-up call, to be a little more careful and plan a bit more assiduously next time! Because we'll definitely be going back; the only questions are when and how!
