How will I ever make sense of all these stars out here? Feeling so tiny yet a part of it all, standing bleary-eyed on a Flinders Ranges red-dirt slope. And what about the dark spaces between the stars?
These were my unanswered questions at the Rawnsley Park campground in the witching hour. I guess it’s OK not to know the full picture. Dan and I smashed the sameness of our working lives with a five day trip to the Flinders Ranges in April and a July weekend getaway to Saunders Gorge Sanctuary. The little Outdoorsy Odyssey gets an airing on regular weekend days, on the crags of Morialta for me, and endless mountain bike single track goodness of the Adelaide Hills for Dan. Despite it being one of the wettest Adelaide winters in recent memory, we had some blue skies too. But going away is very different from the half-dayers.
One pleasant afternoon in April we pitched our new glam tent (you can stand up in it!) at Melrose. My guy took to his wheels while I hiked to view the quartzite Cathedral Rock, nestled high in a dark gully on the slopes of Mount Remarkable. Frustratingly the trail stops before you can get close to the rock, so I stepped through a fence and moved a little closer for a marginally better view of the tantalising rock. Ah Melrose, if only you could build a good-quality hiking track up to Cathedral Rock to complement your classy network of international-standard mountain bike trails. The town attracts both hikers and riders, which is a lovely dynamic – Over the Edge bike shop sells bikes, accessories, t-shirts and great coffee and cakes, plus a row of clocks set to the times of other MTB precincts of the world. Melrose is a place where Dan and I can be on holidays and be satisfied with our respective taking to the trails.
I could either give someone real feedback about Cathedral Rock, or tell myself that taking it in from a distance at sunset keeps the mystery strong. Also I had to get off the hillside before last light because I couldn’t remember the rest of the 5km loop. I was treated to beautiful dusk purple colours and made it back to camp OK.
Dusk at Melrose
The next day I went up Mount Remarkable in glorious weather. This well-loved hill climb was 12.5km return of sidling along and gently up, with what must be the biggest amount of scree of all the South Australian hikes. After my Lakes District Great Gable scree incident I could only smile at this scree – the path generously gives flatness cut into the hillside and no need to skate down steep ground. There was a bare-bones wreck of a light aircraft which crashed in 1980, downhill of the track on its scree resting place. A local said to me the wreckage travels down the slope a little every year, behaving like a glacier.
Scree & the Willochra Plain
While hiking the hillside in open woodland there were massive views of the Willochra Plain, but at the Mount Remarkable summit the yaccas and trees obscured things. When I stopped there to snack on my scroggin with chocolate I heard a constant buzzing, to then see this bug suspended in the space about a foot above my head. I much preferred its company to the bull ants (those who know me well are aware I have an ant thing). On a brief part of the descent I had a dragon lizard for company, plenty of time for lunch, then finally near the trailhead Dan magically appeared on his bike, “There you are!!” and when he rode away he carved up some dirt slopes, busting some fancy moves – look at us both in our happy places.
Mount Remarkable - with photobomb yacca on the right
Autumn sun
Monday northbound
Aah the Flinders Ranges, where the beauty
always outweighs the cluster of mozzie bites and a persistent sore throat. We relocated to Rawnsley Park on my
birthday. On the one-year anniversary of
being on Kala Pattar, looking at Everest, I stood on the ridge of the gentle
Ulowdna Range and looked at Rawnsley Bluff.
The late afternoon light settled easily onto its orange rocks and
greenery of pines, eucalypts and spinifex.
At this point the Flinders Ranges are semi-arid with a palpable sense of
remoteness. The Clem’s Corner trail sidled
the south side of the range, and at a steep drop-away we both delighted in the
airy feeling. It was like we were in the
amphitheatre before vast flat lands, then the Elder Range and the Chace Range
were the stage, all in that golden light as the day grew old. I made out the stripes effect running across
the ranges. Dan had the buzz of
discovering a hiking trail that was very rideable, backtracking to see what I
was up to. Everything came together – a
personal reward for getting past the tricky times this past year or more.
Clem's Corner trail behind Rawnsley Park - ideal for both modes of transport
Don’t you love it when you have to leave your sleeping bag in the middle of the night to pee in the wilds, but then receive the joy of millions of stars and constellations you don’t usually see this time of year? While I tried to make order of the skies at Rawnsley, three shooting stars happened in quick succession! What does it mean? While the kangaroos shuffled around me in the darkness. Awesome.
I don’t know what it means, but Yoshifumi Miyazaki from Chiba University believes our bodies relax in pleasant, natural settings because they evolved there.*
On the last whole day before returning home
I hiked up Rawnsley Bluff, Wilpena Pound.
Dan powered ahead of me on foot in case he wanted to trail-run. I took in more orangey rocks and other riots
of colour at my pace, and found the ascent to be cruisier than expected. The views were spectacular as I made my way
up the steepness, and at the summit cairn.
It’s good to know whether steepness means risky vertiginous (where’s my
climbing gear?) or just nice-steep, and fortunately Rawnsley is the
latter. Once on the ridge of the Pound, there’s
a detour of about 1.5 km return to check out Wilpena Pound and perhaps sprawl
out on an idyllic flat rock in the sun.
View from Rawnsley Bluff
Wilpena Pound
There be dwagons
I loved the simplicity of noting the time and the kilometres for when to take little breaks. Other than that just follow the trail, look at the flora, rocks, birds, insects and the vistas. Say hello to fellow hikers although it was pretty quiet.
Later that day back at camp I chilled out,
read with a cup of tea and a biscuit, and did stretches. Dan came back from his afternoon ride with a
report on what he saw. We watched the
skies turn to mauve at dusk and then the stars returned in their finery. “This is the life,” I said.
Rawnsley Bluff
Saunders Gorge Sanctuary
This private conservation property is between Mount Pleasant and Mannum, to the east of the Adelaide Hills, and was a great opportunity for Dan and me to get away for a weekend in winter. This place had a beautiful gorge of its namesake, and wide open grassland hills – something for hikers, 4WD’ers and mountain bikers. Well, not the single track but Dan enjoyed the 4WD ways and some grassy cross-country sections. The Nature Lodges were solar powered, and came with pot-belly fireplaces and decking with your own special view of native shrubs going downhill to meet the Saunders Creek and its line of stately gums. The owners Brenton and Nadine did an amazing job maintaining this property, and they fought a bushfire that came close to the buildings a couple of years ago.
Saunders Gorge
I did a three-hour loop along the gorge, hoofing it up the hill to Shepherds Lookout, then zig-zagged down a slope to find the next creekline along, to the north. There were trail markers in the Gorge, a small section of the Lavender Federation trail in line with the lookout, then occasional markers in the other creek. But mostly it was about following the topo map Brenton gave me, so this added a bit of calling upon the ol’ skills which was good!
I was advised the creek crossings in the
Gorge might be a wet-boot experience, but I scouted enough rocks and narrow
sections to jump across. The Gorge was
pretty with all the water babbling through, and rockiness almost like (you
guessed it) the Flinders Ranges. The
bare hills in a green time of year reminded me of the Lakes District for about
a minute, until I saw the familiar gums and kangaroos again. The view of Collar Rock was striking and almost
creepy, with purple-blue-grey clouds behind it. It was a round rock formation on
the opposite ridge in the shape of a mannequin’s headless neck. Down at the creek I walked inside a burnt out
tree trunk, spooky, black and smelling of smoke. Near there, I joined a rough vehicular track
and returned with what seemed like the same galahs for company in the branches.
Collar Rock
Burnt out tree trunk
Kangaroos on slopes
I could relate to the article where
Miyazaki makes that comment about relaxing in natural settings. Sometimes I let out a sigh of relief when I’m
hiking. I paused on a hillside and
watched with wonder at the kangaroos hopping along an improbably steep slope. Later I leaned over a rock on higher ground
and tilted my shoulders forward, towards the grassy downward slope and
creekline below – spinny. At the lookout
a 4WD’er said to me, “You’re keen and eager!”
I replied with “something like that.” I might have thought the same of them when I
saw the ridiculously steep ‘rough option’ on their path.
The weekend also came with more cups of tea and pre-dinner beers and awesome cheese at the Nature Lodge. This was followed by pub dinner in Mannum’s Pretoria Hotel and stepping down to the Murray’s edge, the water reflecting the night lights of the houseboats.
Perhaps the feels are so great because of our evolution in nature. Therefore I suggest Mondays are highly unnatural, although they do pay for the petrol, the new hiking boots and all that. I don’t suppose beer and awesome cheese were in our evolution too?
*National Geographic, ‘This is your brain
on nature’, January 2016
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