Day 20 Pt Augusta to home

The weather was pretty bad overnight and we were glad that we had opted for the cabin option again. Our little cabin had been very quiet and cosy.

Since the weather was still rainy and grey, we decided to have a day of scenic driving around the local area, and aimed to be at Pt Pirie in the mid to late afternoon to catch up with Peter, Belinda and the kids. 

As we headed out onwards the lower Flinders Ranges via Horricks Pass the clouds were sitting low over the heads of the ranges and we wondered how much we would see. 

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Our first diversion was a detour up to Hancock's Lookout, where we admired the view all the way over to Port Bonython across the gulf and Trevor found a cache. The road was a bit hairy in the wet, with quite a bit of slippery mud.

We had never been to Alligator Gorge, and had decided the night before that we would do this, so had paid our online registration for park entry from Pt Augusta. Stupidly they have moved to this system where you can't pay any other way but online. It means that spur of the moment camping or visiting is very difficult, and we think it will discourage visitors to the parks.

The road in had some very steep gradients, but was bitumen all the way to the parking spot at the top. From here we were able to take two short walks (of 15 minutes and 20  minutes) to lookouts. The gorge is very impressive and it would be amazing to walk along down the bottom beneath the towering cliff walls of jagged rock and arrive at Mambray Creek 20km later. Sadly it was either raining or threatening to do so for the entire time that we were here, but at least we didn't get too hot on our walks. 

You can see the other lookout in this picture if you look hard.

This was a wonderful background of the many Emus and roos that we saw. Many of the roo type creatures we think were Euros, with the stocker body and short front legs, and they seemed to have a more dappled, thicker coat.


We travelled on through Melrose (Mt Remarkable had his head in the clouds), Murraytown and Wirrabara to Stone Hut, where we made the difficult decision between the marvellous pie and pasty offerings at the Stone Hut bakery(this is where you can find crocodile, venison, buffalo, wild boar, emus,  seafood,  curry chicken and more normal flavours)  they had and sat down to yummy lunch, coffee and tea and also a delicious Vanilla Slice. Trev even sampled the latest in the line of Golden North Giant Twins (toffee and hazelnut flavoured) icecream which is made nearby.

We decided to track back through the Wirrabara forest and stopped to visit the aptly named King Tree. 

Sadly , we had a small altercation with a tree in the car park here, which rather took the enjoyment out of the day, as well as the windscreen out of the back of the Prado.  We headed onwards though the mostly burnt forest (there was a major fire here just over 2 years ago) and felt sad at the loss of so many magnificent trees. The eucalypt are recovering in their usual way, but the pines will not recover and are being harvested. Great rows (or piles) of blackened timber abound.The stand of young burnt pines shown below was sad to see. 

We drove through to Port Germain via the Germain Gorge (rebuilt since the massive fires and the resulting floods which took out great sections of the road)  and then to Port Pirie, stopping in to see our wonderful friends for a quick catch up and some assistance with a more windproof repair job for the trip home.
As we drove towards Pirie we saw a magnificent rainbow so thick and bright that all of the colours could be well identified. It became still thicker and brighter with both ends clearly showing and moving towards us on either side of the road ahead. A second, fainter rainbow flanked this extra bright one. It seemed that we would pass through the rainbow arch, and could have reached out on either side of the car to pick up our gold. As the moment of passing through arrived, suddenly the rainbow evaporated into thin air. This amazing experience of a close quarters rainbow experience moved me to tears. It was truly an extraordinary thing to see.

The start of our rainbow experience

We finally pulled in to our own driveway with pizza in hand at about 8.45 pm after a wonderful 20 days of adventure and 7417 km. Today is a day for cleaning up, repacking and replanning.  We will put Joc on the plane back to Perth tonight after 4 nights of life in a swag (thanks Janette), 3 nights in a bed, and lots of adventures. It was been wonderful to hear her stories as we drove, and to share our lives in a more relaxed fashion, with time just to be together. It was great to have time to see so many places that we have heard of, and some that we just found by accident. Of course we need to go back to many again and spend more time.