2006/06 Australia trip - Mount Remarkable |
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We left as soon as we had defrosted ourselves. Clearly we needed to move on and get north to the warmer weather. We rejoined the main road to Adelaide and made good time through mostly flat, farming country. We crossed into South Australia and instead of the traditional “Welcome” rest area we have on entry to many American states, we found a quarantine sign insisting that we dump all veggies and fruit before entering the state. We were only passing through so we decided not to cooperate, and we were lucky that the enforcement station just up the road was unmanned.
The cold morning had turned into a gorgeous sunny day. We didn’t want to waste it driving through the city, so we turned off before Adelaide and took a bypass route through the hills to its east. We enjoyed the scenery and avoided the city traffic, but the back roads were narrow and winding and full of little villages, so it probably took us longer, especially as we took a few dubious turns. We came out north of Adelaide on the Great North Road, and took advantage of the flat straight highway to make up some time. The road runs parallel with the Spencers Gulf, but we only had a few glimpses of the distant ocean.
We arrived at Mount Remarkable national park an hour after dark. Luckily we’d stopped there on our 2002 trip so we had no trouble finding the campground and occupying the same site as last time. Back then we’d had to leave too soon in order to get back to collect Karen and Stewart from the airport and drive up to Shepparton for Carolyn and Jason’s wedding. We’d done the 600 miles from the park to Melbourne in one long day. We’d resolved then to come back on a subsequent trip and stay a little longer.
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Mount Remarkable (10.36) |
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The park looked unchanged: birds everywhere, wallabies all over the road, and great convoluted gum trees, straight out of Lord of the Rings. The trees have wide trunks split by fire so many look to be standing on three legs, ready to take off and walk when you aren’t looking. 
It seemed to be a bit warmer than the Little Desert had been in the evening so maybe we were into a warmer zone. We called Edna, and found that John had had the operation and it was a success, but he was still groggy,with little to say.
Thursday June 8th
We had no ice on the windows in the morning, so we were getting warmer. We awoke to the laughter of an asylum ofkookaburras right overhead and the screaming of galahs, with wallabies browsing a few feet away. Definitely in Australia! Shortly afterwards a trio of emus wandered through our campsite, looking for anything we may have left unattended.
We wanted to visit Alligator Gorge, one of the park’s major attractions, but we weren’t up to the ten hour hike to 
get there andback in a day, so we drove a long way around the Flinders Mountains to Wilmington and came in from the east. It was worth the effort. Alligator Gorge is a great gash in the mountains, worn by a tiny creek on the odd occasions when ithas water. The cliffs and rocks are red, and look like sandstone, but they are actually a very hard, red quartzite, polished smooth where hikers have touched them, almost as pretty as jasper. The trail follows the creek through “the narrows”, where the cliff walls almost touch.
The colour of the rock was so intense that the light in the gorge was pink, reflected off the walls. There were large trees growing
out of the creek bed, sometimes so close to the walls that they had grown into them, merging wood with rock.
We had a long climb out of the gorge on what was now a warm sunny afternoon, and then a hurried drive around the other side of the mountains to get back to the campground before dark. This took us through the Port Germein Gorge, a pretty spot, but rather spoiled by the road going through the floor of the gorge. We just had time for a short walk under the weird convoluted gum trees before the sun set and we lost all of our light.
We called Edna again and found that she had good news. John was recovering fast, up and about, eating, and talking.