FLINDERS RANGES August 2017 - Part 1
- Scott
- Aug 5, 2017
- 13 min read
For the third year in a row we'd decided our major holiday would be travelling through somewhere in outback Australia, after having very much enjoyed our previous trips to Cape York and the Red Centre. But this time we would be travelling solo and it would also be the maiden voyage of the good ship Scorpion, our new Rhinomax hybrid caravan that replaces the camper trailer.
The main idea was to spend a decent amount of time in the Flinders Ranges in outback South Australia and include a visit to Coongie Lakes on the way. Time available was limited to three weeks for this one, our shortest "long" trip to date.
Neither of us had even heard of the Flinders prior to the last couple of years, when it started to crop up during research for places to go in the outback. It seemed to be an excellent destination, with a great diversity of terrain and wildlife and plenty of great camping and hiking opportunities. It is also a place where self-drive day tours in your 4WD have become a major attraction, something which I was interested to experience. It was also felt we'd missed an opportunity last year when passing through Innamincka so quickly, so both camping on the Cooper at Innamincka and visiting Coongie Lake to the north on the fringes of the Simpson Desert were added to the agenda.
Here's a basic map for the trip route. We travelled in an anti-clockwise direction. Note the missing section of the route in this map is the Flinders Ranges proper where we spent the majority of the trip, which will be captured in more detail later in another couple of roughly cobbled together maps that I have done with Google Maps. Please excuse the not-quite-right scaling and lining up, it's hard to get it perfect. I need to find something better for putting together maps like this but it should give the reader an approximate idea.
Highlights of the route are as follows:
Brisbane > Innamincka via Goondiwindi, Cunnamulla & overnighting in Bollon
Innamincka > Coongie Lake
Coongie Lake > Mt Hopeless via the Old Strzelecki Track
Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary for 4 nights
Gammon Ranges National Park
Warraweena Conservation Park
Flinders Ranges National Park
Wilpena Pound for 4 nights
Wilpena > Cunnamulla via White Cliffs and Currawinya National Park
Stanthorpe
Total km: 5,298 km Days: 22 Fuel: ~15-16L/100km (99% towing the van)
Day 1 - 660km to Bollon via Warwick & Goondiwindi Day 2 - 735km to Innamincka via Cunnamulla & Thargomindah
Two fairly long driving days to kick things off, which makes you realise how big Australia really is. We enjoy driving via Warwick and Goondiwindi, although I don't think it's the quickest way. Bollon was the final night of last year's trip and we quite like it's free camp along a waterhole. Plus it's an easy way to get into travelling mode again and our first proper night away with the new van.
Over the course of day two, heading west through progressively smaller towns and drier countryside, you start to feel that you're really in the outback, whatever that really means. Nothing of particular note happened but I still enjoy something about driving out there.
We fueled up in both Thargomindah and Cunnamulla. Lunch was potato gems and croquets from the Thargomindah roadhouse. Classic road trip food but most importantly, quick and easy.
We made it to Innamincka at around 4pm, assisted by the 30 minute timezone difference and headed straight to the Ski Beach camp ground. There is camping quite close to town known as Town Common that looked pretty good but relatively busy. Each camp site is off the main track down by the Cooper Creek and I think there are four main areas. The Ski Beach area has 4 or 5 designated sites these days thanks to the introduction of a clunky on-line booking system (the regional reserve is controlled by National Parks). We had booked #2, which has a nice outlook over the Cooper and is reasonably handy to the drop toilet without being too close. Unfortunately somebody was already in our site so that wasn't a good start to proceedings. They were however a very nice couple who were innocent of malicious intent, having purchased a Parks Pass in Broken Hill and assumed that it covered camping. So you sell someone a pass and don't explain that camping is extra? Anyway no harm because our little adjacent spot was really good.
We were able to get setup and still enjoy the sunset and birdlife, particularly the large flock of pelicans patrolling up and down. This seemed like the proper "first day" of the trip.
Subtle pinks and oranges.
Day 3 - 145km to Coongie Lake
On the Cooper would be a relaxing place to spend a couple of days. However we were on a schedule and headed off in the morning to Coongie Lake but not before a quick detour to the site of Wills last resting place. This felt like the right thing to do as a counterpoint to last year's overnight stay at Burke's grave. There's something sad about the Wills site, almost nothing there except a modern sign and a slightly older marker pole. I've started reading a really good book about their expedition called "The Dig Tree". We fueled up and had a shower in Innamincka and then headed off.
The track to Coongie Lake is around 100 km and about half of that was corrugated, some of which were quite bad but never for excessively long distances. It still took around 2 hours with only a couple of very brief pit stops. The sandy sections tended to be the worst for corrugations and the further north you went the worse it got.
We had been told that the lakeside camp sites were over a dune and the track was well signed. Once over the dune the lake opens out before you into the far distance. There was already a couple of sites occupied so we decided to head around the lake to see if we could find somewhere away from others. You can see our fairly open site in the foreground of this panorama and the initial entry lake edge in the distance. We didn't worry about shade because it was only one night and not very hot anyway.
The afternoon was spent walking around the spit of land jutting out into the lake and then up onto the dune to watch the sunset. The majority of the lake was actually behind us and this part was really just an inlet. The water level had clearly been higher for significant periods of time judging by the water marks on the trees. It was remarkable to see how some of the tress had survived and virtually come back from the dead to be doing quite well.
The spit seemed to attract quite a lot of the many birds that congregate at the lake; pelicans, ducks, swans, spoon bills and others. Google it if you need to know proper names because I've got no idea.
There was a track that seemed to continue further around the lake so there's probably a bit to explore if you had a longer stay but we enjoyed spending a few hours just quietly walking around close to where we'd camped.
At one point I changed the direction we faced to try and block the strong wind to help with cooking later that evening but then once the sun went down the wind virtually stopped. We were very conscious of wind thanks to the experience my sister and father had when out here a few years ago. A thunderstorm came out of nowhere very quickly and my sister ended up hanging on to the van awning in mid air, Mary Poppins style, before dad could get the thing retracted.
The little dune that formed the spit of land we were camped on was an excellent vantage point to have a look around and watch the sunset.
Not sure what made this track.
The colours of the sunset were amazing. No clouds but just the quality of light and the texture of the air were enough to make you feel a little awe struck. Bit too much for the iPhone to take in.
Spoonbills doing their thing.
Day 4 - 375km Coongie Lake to Mt Hopeless via Old Strzelecki Track
Headed back in to Innamincka and then south. Here's a comparison of the weir over the Cooper at Innamincka, this year at the top and last year below.
Last year we had driven the main Strzelecki Track south from Merty Merty having come through Cameron Corner and found it to be mostly like a highway thanks to the gas field traffic to Moomba. But I'd noticed a section of track called Old Strzelecki that went from Innamincka to Merty Merty and wondered if that might be more like one of the original famous "outback" tracks that fire the imagination when thinking about travelling in remote places.
Well it's not particularly difficult but is certainly a far nicer way to head south. It winds its way through fairly open country generally running parallel to low sand dunes that can only be glimpsed to either side. There was almost no traffic and we enjoyed the drive.
Towards the southern end you start to see a few oil wells but our interest was taken by a huge mob of emus that were on both sides of the track. We watched them for quite awhile and then inched forward at crawling pace thanks to their completely unpredictable behaviour that seems to be a strange mix of curiosity and fear .... "oh what's this thing let's have a closer look ..... run away run away"
This photo shows only a small section of the group that was milling about. They give new meaning to the word random.
We had lunch by the road side at Merty Merty and then made our way out to the main track to head further south. On the Hema map it looks like the old track continues south but the station had put up signs saying no public access. This is a shame because the Strez is fairly boring from Merty down to Blanchewater, although there is some nice sand dune scenery to look at as you drive along at 100.
We called in at Montecollina Bore around 3pm with thoughts of camping there for the night but found it very uninspiring and decided to push further and find somewhere to free camp. The Mt Hopeless road is signposted for Arkaroola and we went about 25km down the road before pulling over beside the dry bed of Yerila Creek on an easily accessible patch of flat ground.
The photos can't do justice to the scale of the vast open landscape. Plains of gibber rock and no vegetation followed by sections covered with low bushes. There's really not much there but it's quite beautiful in the golden afternoon light. The creek line is the only place where there's any trees and one of the few places where it's easy to get off the road.
There's is something hard to explain about a free camp in the middle of nowhere. There was zero traffic from 4pm all through the night and well into the next day once we were on the road again.
I'm not sure if free camping is frowned upon along here but we certainly did no harm and left no trace other than footprints.
Day 5 - 170km Mt Hopeless to Arkaroola Village
It turned out to be a very good decision to stop at 4pm and get off the road yesterday. The numbers of roos, emus and cattle along the road that morning was absolutely amazing and would have been scary in the evening. It was excellent driving conditions on the hard-packed red surface but there was evidence everywhere of what it's like when wet and why the road is closed after only a few drops of rain. But it seems to be regularly graded and we enjoyed the drive, first passing the Mt Hopeless range and then approaching the Gammon Ranges later in the day.
The road got rougher and rockier closer to Wooltana Station as it traversed low hills on the edge of the open plain. We had a quick morning tea at 2 Mile Creek and continued on past the Beverley Uranium Mine. Managed to get a photo of this big guy. They are very hard to catch on film but are an impressive sight on the wing.
Not too much further and you're into the Gammon Ranges National Park but we headed north up to Arkaroola Village, which was on the other side of the range of hills we'd been following for the last hour or so. Here's our first sighting of baby emus by the roadside about 3km from Arkaroola. This was to become a theme for the trip and we saw them many more times but never grew tired of watching them grazing under the protection of dad. That's right, the father incubates the eggs and then looks after the young. Fair enough, I'm sure it's pretty traumatic pushing out up to a dozen emu eggs.
We checked in and headed down to their bush camping area, which runs along a creek bed for more than 3km. There's plenty of really good camping spots that are well spaced so that you don't even realise there's anyone else there. We set up near to the toilet block but out of sight of it. The shower block and laundry are at the caravan park section which was about 1km from where we camped and we went up there after getting settled in to make good use of both. The little shop up at reception had frozen bread and a few fresh items like tomatoes and ham.
This view of our camp site is from a small hill just behind the creek line. The main village/resort is to the left out of the photo and the camping options continue along the creek to the right. We found the camping experience the best of both worlds, a quiet bush camp but with facilities nearby when you wanted.
That afternoon we did a short hike along the Sprigina Walk up to a hill with an excellent view and two small private dome observatories and were lucky enough to spot two yellow footed rock wallabies along the way. We were unsure how hard it would be to catch sight of them so it was awesome to see a couple like that. Also spotted quite a few more common wallabies and roos.
As we were walking back down the trail we saw a green Defender driving up to the caravan park and said to each other "imagine if that was Jon and Maya" but decided that was improbable knowing that they'd been to Arkaroola before. Slightly later as we were almost at the car the Defender came in to sight again and it was them! Anyway it was good to catch up over a couple of wines but we had already booked the observatory tour for that night so it was a short one. They were staying at the cabins which seemed to have an excellent view of the surrounding hills, although it was already dark so we couldn't appreciate it fully.
As things turned out it was fairly poor conditions for celestial observations, with an almost full moon and wispy clouds everywhere. However, we still manged to see Jupiter, Saturn and a close-up view of one of the heavily cratered parts of the moon. We also trained the telescope on a couple of what Doug assured us were deep space objects not visible to the naked eye and pretty amazing. You'd have to take his word for the amazingness factor because in truth you couldn't see much.
Day 6 - 77km Echo Camp Back Track and Mt Jacob Back Track
Today was the first of three of 4WD self-drive day trips we did within the Flinders area. This is a tourism activity that has been enthusiastically embraced by land owners right across the region and curiously lacking from other places considering how popular it has become. We combined two loop drives into a full day excursion from about 8:30am to 4pm. The map below gives an idea of the loop we did and also the loop drive in the Gammon Ranges National Park we drove two days later. The road off to the north east is the road we came down from Mt Hopeless and Wooltana Station.
First up, managed to spot a couple more rock wallabies early in the day before getting to the Echo Camp track.
The Echo Camp track starts out as a pretty easy drive through the hilly terrain near Arkaroola and gets progressively steeper and with a few more slightly technical sections but nothing particularly difficult. It also has a lot of close and very scratchy bushes that I hadn't expected. I normally apply Paint Shield when anticipating that sort of stuff but had no idea in this case, leading to a whole weekend of cleaning and polishing when we got home. Yes I know bush pin stripes are blah blah blah and white doesn't show them blah blah blah but white is boring & I like my vehicle to looks its best in the city.
This is a stone marker placed by the guy who first came out this way to set up a pastoral run.
The next few images hopefully give you an idea of what the terrain and scenery is like. It is quite spectacular country.
We took the 1km each way side track to Bararranna Gorge which had some slightly steeper, looser sections and I put it in low range mainly just to make things a bit smoother not because it was really needed. There was one little section where I managed to get a wheel off the ground.
The water level was very low and looked to be significantly lower than typical, although what's typical is very hard to judge in such harsh country. Apparently they haven't had heavy floods in many years. These floods tend to clear out the gravel and sand from all the gorges and waterholes, making them deeper and able to retain more water in subsequent years that may have lower rainfall.
It looked like there had been long periods where the water would have been above my head.
We didn't bother with the apparently long and very slow track north to Paralana Hot Spring. It doesn't look much but is a very rare radioactive spring so does attract some interest from geology nerds. We did take the optional side track down to Arkaroola Spring but didn't find anything more than a stagnant pond. The gorge it was in was however very pretty and we stopped there for lunch and didn't see or hear another soul.
The track continues on through a twisty gully and climbs over Claude's Pass to continue on to Stubbs Waterhole, which was a nice spot but also pretty dry. That section of the drive was probably the most enjoyable of the loop.
Not too far before the end of the Echo Camp loop track we took the track known as Mt Jacobs Back Track that heads further south through the range before joining back to the main road into Arkaroola. This was a slow drive mainly due to numerous erosion gullies across the track but was well worth the time thanks to some spectacular views from a couple of lookouts. The track was generally narrower and seemed less used compared to Echo Camp.
Saw one large mob of goats, so their efforts at feral pest control are obviously a never ending battle. Apparently the whole place was overrun 20 years ago so the huge efforts are paying off.
I love seeing the track winding out into the far distance.
Back to camp for another beautiful evening in the bush.
Day 7 - Acacia Ridge Walk
Arkaroola has laid out a number of walks and hikes and one of the most popular is the Acacia Ridge Walk, which is a 5.6km one way hike. You get dropped off at the far end and walk back to the resort. It starts out with an easy ascent up to a ridge line and then follows the ridge until a descent back down to road level quite close to the resort. The other walks are mostly loops and longer for which we didn't have time.
Once up on the ridge there are excellent views over the Gammon Ranges.
We had lunch at the resort restaurant and spent the afternoon reading or watching the emus strolling around camp. Finding the balance between relaxing at camp and doing or seeing "stuff" is always a bit tricky but we did need some down time after a week on the go.
Go to Part 2 for the next installment of this trip report.
Comments