Tuesday 26th August

Tuesday 26^th of August.

Another lovely day greeted me as I got up. There was a very cold breeze blowing though. Because of the rocks and large pebbles around, my running fitness is going down the pan fast. Unless you want to turn an ankle or stuff a knee its best to walking pace – unless you have to run like to get that good photo up a skinny road you can’t risk towing the van up or something like that. So no early morning run for me again.

Anyway, it was cold, I found a beanie (haven’t needed these in a week) and my bogan camping jacket ($15 from Rivers in Bathurst at Easter) that is really warm and went to hang the washing out. I had done a load of washing the night before. Plan was to do it in the van but then my little machine takes a bit of water since it’s a top loader and I had about 3 loads to do and got the guilts as water is so hard to come by up here. Then I gave the washing machine a go and realized that it wouldn’t work as the water pressure is dreadful. Gave up and used the one in the laundry – which was a bargain price at $3 per load. I got all our dusty clothes done almost down to the days undies. I just took the washing back into the van ready for an early morning hang out so I didn’t have to wait for a machine in the morning.

Clothes hung out and fingers almost frozen off I returned to the van to make a cuppa tea and decided that since it was going to be a really nice day with a good breeze it would be a great opportunity to wash the sheets off the bed which have not been washed since we left home. They didn’t stink as I have designed a way to not have the van stink up of people smells. Glen 20 spray. Just a very quick spray with the bedclothes pulled back – not so as to asphyxiate the whole van, leave it for 10 minutes and then make the bed. Stops the sheets stinking, they smell fresh and you can’t tell you have not washed your sheets for 2 weeks in spite of having missed a few showers. Clever me.

Anyway I thought it was high time even though sheets weren’t pongy to wash them anyway – so as soon as Greg was out of bed the sheet were on their way to the laundry, helped enormously by Deborah who could change a $2 coin into 2 x $1 coins and saved me having to drive to the kiosk. God bless her. (the kiosk/pub/booking area etc is miles away from the camp ground)

We had showers and Greg busied himself downloading the photos from our memory cards out of our cameras to his computer and then my photos on to mine. This takes a while as we are shooting in 2 modes, raw and Jpeg. Jpegs are great for sticking in blogs and in emails as they are smaller but if we want to sell any of our images or enlarge them they have to be raw which simply means all of the information in the resolution is stored and they are large files. Jpegs are much condensed. Both serve a purpose. However it takes a while for all this to download, back up and save.

So with sheets and washing flapping about in the wonderful National Park breeze, photos a downloaded and saved and backed up, people cleaned and tidy we were ready to check out this area. We went to the reception/multi function area for some information.

Greg had met the most lovely woman on the desk the night before when we booked in and I hoped she was there today but another helpful person was. We told her that we did not want to spend all day in the car as that’s what we had done for the past 2 weeks. We had decided to stay an extra night as there was so much to do around here and getting closer to the Flinders Ranges there are tracks and walks galore.

She suggested we do the short 11km loop that took in the pinnacles, the old mine  and 2 waterholes. The track was for 2WD vehicles so we thought that it would be a nice, easy drive.

Yes, well all I can say is they must have some amazing 2 wheel drives around these parts as we needed our 4WD in 4WD mode for over 50% of it!

driving through creek beds again!

Saw the pinnacles first and that wasn’t too bad but the further we got the worse the road and the 11km took us about 3 hours with stops for photos. We crawled along at 5km/hr at best. There were creek beds full of rocks and stones, narrow tracks with washout drops that Lady Cruiser had to walk down ever so carefully so as not to puncture a tyre, steep rocky uphills you can only go up so slowly because of the tyres. It was full on four wheel driving. Greg drove up and I drove back. I must say although I enjoyed the challenge of another 4WD track, after negotiating the roads to get here crap road negotiation is coming more naturally. Would have preferred an easier road. People in real 2 WD cars must just have to turn back. Never mind.

The old copper smelter and the ruins were worth it and the last waterhole which was called Nooldoonooldoona (no joke) was quite good and we got a nice bush walk to get to it. The water hole was green and not fit for swimming but there was a sign saying no swimming – you’d mad if you did! With the right light it looked ok in a photo. Greg commented that we should have left this until later on so we could get more shadows to make our photos more dramatic, which he was right  - but I wasn’t coming back along these roads today.

The Pinacles - Arkaroola

We got home to the van and we were both tired. I heated up some leftover pasta from the night before last for lunch, got the washing off the line including our lovely fresh sheets and Greg finished his photos and made the bed. Then went for a rest, he was looking quite stuffed again and we still have a lot of travel and exploring to do.

Decided to do Pizza on our campfire tonight. I have been carting around a capsicum which is almost past its best and 2 frozen pizza bases to fit the choofer, for several trips but never used them and they had remained frozen. I am dying to see how they turn out being cooked over an open fire.

Our camp has the most spectacular view of the hills and its 

The smelter

The top of the smelter

sparkly rocks full of quartz

The waterhole

 
just a joy to sit and enjoy the view without having to drive anywhere for the minute. There are so many 4WD tracks, walks and things to do here that you could spend a week. You can also do a 4WD ridge top tour with a bloke that takes you in his car and is supposed to be amazing ( the views that is but no doubt the man is nice too) – but that would be 4 hours in a car and even though that would be great to see the views and see how he drives the trails the fact its sitting in a car does not entice my Gregory and I. I did say I would rather pay $90 for a 10 minute helicopter ride that goes over the ridge. Much more exciting and much less time consuming – although expensive. Still I am happy just looking at the mountains and enjoying the sounds of the birds and the start of the sun about to set – might get a wine now.  4.49pm EST Its almost 5 0’clock where I live – these folk are half an hour behind. Wonder if that matters?

The massive hill behind the camp

Camp Arkaroola. The rock in the foreground (left) will cause
an argument tomorrow.