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| 2023 |
2024 |
2025
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1. January
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2.
Summer in Castlemaine
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We have just returned from our latest
Auswalk supported walk, booked ~ 6 months
ago, to the Flinders Ranges.
And we saw it as we've never seen it
before! Green, bright green, with water
(some of it even flowing!) in some of the
creeks. We've read about it being like this
- how the early English / Scottish explorers
found it, and decided it was a great place
to run sheep.
(That was before the frequent droughts
there changed their minds; and it explains
the homestead ruins which are dotted all
over the place there.)
 We
saw it in Derwent Green - the green of
England and Scotland - not the dusky green
we see at home in Victoria. At times walking
there was similar to strolling across a golf
course (without the distraction of having to
hit a ball into a hole.)
We are very lucky that we booked it,
because with the effects of the American /
Israeli / Iran war, if it hadn't been
booked and paid for, we wouldn't have gone.
The motorhome (which runs on diesel) has a
range of 1,000km - not quite enough to get
from Castlemaine to the Flinders Ranges. But
we set off anyway, and found that filling up
was not really a problem. Just more
expensive than it used to be.
We took a not quite direct route
there, going across to Horsham (visiting the
Cellarbrations store there, which has the
best range of spirits I've ever seen), on to
Murray Bridge and then up through the
Barossa Valley to Clare; over to the coast
at Port Germain before going back inland
again. We were vaguely thinking of spending
 a
night in Mt. Remarkable National Park, but
we couldn't come at the prices they wanted
to charge. We are both such skinflints!
We got to Rawnsley Park Station, at
the southern end of the ranges, left the van
there, and were picked up and taken via
Blinman to Angorichina for the night. In the
morning, we started out on the Heysen Trail
from Parachina Gorge.
 We
walked ~ 20km / day, for 6 days. Pick-ups
and drop-offs worked perfectly; despite some
of them being long drives (of an hour or so)
no-one batted an eyelid at the cost or the
shortage of fuel. 2 nights in Angorichina,
the we stayed in Wilpena and back at
Rawnsley Park. The weather was kind to us;
the flies weren't. We spent a lot of time
wearing fly nets; the interesting thing was
that at lunchtime, the flies showed no
interest at all in our food - only in us.
When we finished up, we drove more
directly back to Castlemaine - via Burra and
 Mildura.
A 3-day trip, with more driving than we like
but not too far every day.
Simon's
Journal
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