A Trip to South Australia 4 / Flinders Ranges to Victor Harbor

Driving south down Highway 1 the 400km (250 mi) towards Adelaide through rich green grazing and crop land, we stopped at Port Pirie for lunch. This town has the largest lead and zinc smelter in the southern hemisphere and is possibly not the most attractive place in the country to hang about in. The rumoured camel, buffalo and goat abattoir planned to take commercial advantage of the feral animal cull in the outback is also not an incentive to visit.

Negotiating the busy streets of Adelaide, I dropped the co driver off at another quilt shop on the list and went on to buy some wine making equipment.
On the way back I happened to pass the historic Penfolds Magill Estate, the original home of Penfolds wines and the famous Grange Shiraz. Once in the countryside, this 5ha vineyard is now completely surrounded by suburbia. I thought about stopping for a quick visit but the very pleasant day has started to turn a bit nasty and we needed to get out of town into the Adelaide Hills before peak hour.
Sure enough, in about thirty minutes, we were hit with torrential rain and howling winds just as we reached Hahndorf and our accommodation. It was in a beautiful setting despite the weather and within walking distance of a couple of wineries including the award winning Smith and Shaw.

Hahndorf is Australia's oldest surviving German settlement. Its early pioneer settlers were refugees from religious persecution in the Silesian area of Prussia (north-eastern Germany). In December 1838, thirty-eight Lutheran families arrived at Port Adelaide aboard the 'Zebra', captained by Dane, Dirk Hahn after whom the town was named. It's very touristy now and tends to be a little pseudo Deutsch but there are some nice preserved buildings here as well as some good restaurants and expensive craft shops. We chose Bistro 25 a very tiny place who despite being booked out welcomed us in from the stormy night and made room. The scallops, pate', char grilled filet were delicious. So was the complimentary glass of Nepenthe Sauvignon Blanc.

Next morning, after a wild weather night and despite no let up, we soldiered on with our exploration of quilt shops and wineries.
The Adelaide Hills are part of the Mount Lofty Ranges that lie just outside the capital. In the late 1800's wealthy residents of the city discovered that the hills provided the perfect cool retreat from the hot suburban summers. Many fine houses were built and are still occupied today. There are 30,000 residents living (and many commuting) in the area today. It is also a wine region being one of South Australia's largest as well as the oldest. The first vines were planted in the Hills in 1839, three years after South Australia was declared a state. The lowest vineyards in the region lie at an altitude of around 400m and the annual rainfall can vary between 700 and 1250mm per annum.
This cool climate is ideal for Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc and crisp Chardonnay. Other grape varieties grown in the region include Merlot, Shiraz, Semillon and Cabernet Sauvignon. Vignerons are also experimenting with some of the rarer varieties in Australia eg. Trollinger and Lemberger grapes from Germany, and the Italian varieties Arneis, Sangiovese and Nebbiolo. We found the Spanish Tempranillo as well. I picked up some of that as well as a few bottles of Sauvignon Blanc from Bird in Hand winery. And they had great olives too.
The co driver had taken a liking to the typical South Australian countryside typified by dry creek beds bordered by tall river gums. She thought we should try to buy a painting or a photograph for one of our walls.

Just by chance, Hahndorf was the home of the famous German born landscape artist the late Hans Heysen and his studio, which is preserved by the National Trust, was only a few minutes from us.
We took our time wandering around and eventually ended up buying a lovely print from the NT shop there.

Two quilt shops were also on the agenda one of which turned out to be ‘the shop of the tour’. They even had a ‘waiting husbands’ chair......outside. Very considerate, I must say! And very much needed.
We also found a chocolate shop to die for. I will make no other comment. Enter the web site at your own risk!
The following morning we headed south and into the Fleurieu Peninsula with the first stop at McLaren Vale.
Only a half hour’s drive south of Adelaide, this is one of Australia's oldest wine making regions. The region consistently produces fine wines from a number of varieties, most importantly Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay

The topography of the region is undulating and therefore contains a variety of terroirs. In the East the land rises as high as 320m but the flats mostly lie between 50-100m elevation. The different soil types include terra rossa, light loam over clay, rendzina, soldolic, and Bay of Biscay. The soil type is generally quite poor with much of it sandy with a clay base. Irrigation helps when nature is lacking, although about 20% of the region’s fruit is retained as "dry-grown" to encourage intense flavours. Warm sunny days with sea breezes from the nearby Gulf of St Vincent help temper high summer heat. Its proximity to the Mount Lofty Ranges sees cool gully winds fall down from the hills in the late evening and early morning, chilling the grapes to retain crisp acidity and structure. Good winter rainfall of 580-700mm and low relative humidity ensure consistency of ripening and premium quality fruit. We even came across a block of very old bush vines as opposed to the normal trellised ones.

It was the weekend and most tasting rooms were very busy and the staff very sales rather than information orientated. I was searching for Tempranillo and managed to find two outstanding ones at d’Arenberg and Samuel's Gorge.
Then it was onto Victor Harbor and our accommodation just the other side of Encounter Bay. I had been warned that it was in a remote area. And it was! That's it right on the point.

What an amazing spot.

The weekend’s gales were still blowing and the Southern Ocean was in full flight.
Check out the view from our front window.

And the welcoming committee.

Next morning had somewhat improved weather wise so we went to see what Victor Harbor (no, not a sudden case of American spelling but a mistake by an early Surveyor General of South Australia) had to offer.
Encounter Bay on which Victor Harbor sits was discovered and named by Matthew Flinders in the HMS Investigator in April of 1802 although there is evidence that American whalers were in the area in the 1790's. Flinders was surveying the then unknown southern Australian coast from the West and encountered Frenchman Nicolas Baudinin of the Le Geographe near the Murray River mouth several kilometers to the east. Baudin was surveying the coast from the East for Napoleonic France. The ships returned to the bay and sheltered while the captains, who were probably unaware their countries were at war, compared notes. It subsequently became a whaling station.
It gained importance as a port when goods coming down the Murray River to Goolwa couldn't be exported through the dangerous Murray mouth and were transported up the coast by Australia's first railway albeit horse drawn.

Granite Island which protects the harbour is connected to the mainland by a long causeway.

There are two ways of getting over, walking or by horse drawn tram.

We needed the exercise and as well did a complete circuit of the island for a good work out plus some lovely scenery.

Granite island is home to a large colony of Fairy Penguins and are a popular attraction on the island. The penguins shelter on the island during the night, departing in the morning to hunt for fish before returning at sunset. We didn't see any.

Next stop was Goolwa. This used to be the final port of call for the paddle steamers coming down the Murray River. The river completes its 2375km (1485 mi) journey at Lake Alexandrina which then empties through a chain of low sand islands into the Southern Ocean. The largest island , directly facing the mouth, is Hindmarsh and it is from here you get a distant view of it. We could just make out a group of seals lying on the beach where the river raced out to sea.

A series of barrages join the islands, separating the salt water from the fresh water of the lakes and river. These barrages can be however opened during high river flow. The mouth is between two sandhill peninsulas. Sir Richard Peninsula on the northwest separates the Goolwa channel (the main river channel) from the ocean. The much longer Younghusband Peninsula separates the Coorong from the ocean on the southeast of the mouth.

Due to the poor water flows mention in a previous blog the mouth needs to be kept open by continual dredging. A silted up mouth would stop inflow from the sea and into the Coorong's 467 km² (180 sq. mi) lagoon system which would then warm up, stagnate and die. The Coorong is an important sanctuary for many species of birds, animals and fish as well as attracting many migratory bird species.

Lunch at Goolwa was the local specialty, battered Coorong mullet and chips. Then it was back to our coastal retreat via another listed quilt shop to prepare for the next leg of our journey.

A Trip to South Australia 3 / The Flinders Ranges

Two hours north east of Port Augusta, through the sleepy towns of Quorn and Hawker we came to Wilpena in the Flinders Ranges. This is the largest mountain range in South Australia and stretches for over 430km (270 mi).

It is an ancient landscape moulded by hundreds of millions of years of geological activity.
Scientists believe that the Flinders Ranges began to form about 800 million years ago when a great depression, known as the Adelaide Geosyncline, developed as the earth's crust stretched and thinned. The sea flooded in and, for 300 million years, huge amounts of rock debris, stripped from the land was deposited in the deepening depression to thicknesses of many kilometres.
About 500 million years ago the rock layers were squeezed and folded into a long mountain chain, much higher than today's ranges. The great bulk of the ancestral Flinders Ranges was then eroded over millions of years. Resistant quartzite now forms the highest peaks and ridges of the Flinders Ranges while the softer mudstone, siltstone and shale have been worn away to form valleys and gorges. Occasional earth tremors today indicate that the mountains continue to be uplifted. In fact a day after we left an earthquake of magnitude 4.3 shook Quorn. This plus the fact that some unknown local had won $17 million in the lottery was probably the most excitement this three pub town had experienced for years.

Most evident on the way up were the remnants of old stone homesteads, most in ruin, evidence of failed agricultural enterprises over the past 150 years caused by European farming practices, usually overstocking and over cultivation, and the inevitable long term droughts so common to the area. They also ignored Goyder’s Line which in 1865 indicated potential agricultural disaster for anything other than light grazing north of it.

We stayed at Rawnsley Park. This is a 12000ha (30000 acre) working sheep station that produces meat and wool from 2000 animals. In 1968 they started to diversify into tourism with a caravan park and camping ground and have since extended this to holiday units and eco-villas. We chose the latter. These sit on a low ridge among the native pines and look out onto the southern wall of Wilpena Pound, predominantly Rawnsley Bluff, on one side and the Chase Range on the other.

And what a view from the wrap around verandahs.

And that evening we experienced some pretty spectacular sunset affects on the mountains surrounding us.

The range’s most famous landmark is Wilpena Pound, a large, sickle-shaped, natural amphitheatre covering nearly 80sq km (31 sq.mi) and containing the highest point, St Mary Peak rising to 1170m (3860 ft).
It is impossible to get a total picture of this other than from the air and as our budget didn’t extend to joy flights, I have ‘lifted’ a picture from the net. Thanks lonelyplanet.com

The following morning it was time to start exploring. We headed into the National Park and took the dirt road towards the spectacular escarpment that leads to the starting point of a track that climbs partway up it to Arkaroo Rock.

It was a steady but relatively easy climb up a rocky walking trail on a cool winter's morning through the bush with spectacular views appearing at every turn. After about an hour we reached our goal.

Arkaroo Rock is an important site for the original inhabitants of this area, the Adnyamathanha people. It depicts the formation of Wilpena Pound. There are many paintings here on the underside of a huge overhanging rock including bird tracks, snake lines, waterholes and people created in red, yellow and white ochre and charcoal. They are either drawn using dry pigments that were brushed or applied by finger or using wet pigments mixed with water, animal fat or blood.The site has been dated as 5 to 6000 years old.


It was nice to sit a while there alone in this magic place.

Back on the road again we came across some local wildlife. We had seen plenty from a distance on the journey so far but those around Wilpena seemed oblivious to visitors.



Our hosts had recommended the Bunyeroo Gorge circuit drive so we made the turn onto what looked a pretty good road but it deteriorated somewhat as we got further along it. However the views and the country were so beautiful we drove on.

Initially the drive is through grassy plains, covered with native pines and surrounded by bare hills. Within a few kilometres, the purple peaks of the distant ABC Range are the dominant feature.

Then there is a very steep descent down into Bunyeroo Gorge. Once down into Bunyeroo Creek, you actually drive up the creek bed, which has been carved out of the ABC Range over 590 million years. There was some water in it but not flowing and I was glad I had the low ratio all wheel drive and extra clearance of the Forester at this stage.

Emerging from Bunyeroo Creek, the road enters the Wilcolo Creek Valley and there is now a dramatic change in scenery. Immensely steep hills, sheer gullies and pyramid peaks, with the Heysen Range on the left and the ABC Range on the right, with dense stands of native pines and giant River Red Gums and many small creeks to cross. Luckily for us they were mainly dry although one nearly had us out walking it before risking the drive through.

It was here we decided to have lunch. Another magic spot.

After another 20km or so we were back into open and flat country with the vegetation changing from open scrub back to native pines. After passing through one last creek, we came to a T junction. The Brachina Gorge or the Sacred Canyon? The latter won out.

Another dirt road but a reasonable one. Emus and kangaroos were everywhere.

From the car park it was a rather difficult walk along a gum lined dry creek bed that got somewhat narrow. Then we came across quite a deep waterhole that needed a detour climb up the canyon walls a little way.

Finally we came to a small amphitheatre that is obviously at the bottom of a raging waterfall during wet times. There on the smooth sandstone walls we saw the ancient Aboriginal rock engravings which had been pecked onto the rock with stone tools. They represented animal tracks, people and waterholes. Many are very weathered and difficult to pick out but it was worth the effort.

At the end of an exhausting day it was great to get back to the comfort of our cabin, cook a meal and enjoy a bottle (or two) of our Clare Valley purchases.

That night the heavens opened up with torrential rain and we were witness to a great lightning and thunder show.

While we appreciated that the locals were pretty happy about this, the next morning we awoke to find it still raining and ourselves fogged in. Is this really a desert after all?

We were resigned to the fact we had come all this way and the exploration of the Pound itself would be denied us. Part of travel we rationalised so out came the books and CD's. Within two hours the rain had stopped and the fog began to lift and we made a bee line for the Pound.

Obviously others had not been so optimistic. The ranger station was basically deserted apart from staff.

There is only one way to get into the Pound and that is to walk. And it is quite a way along the beautiful River Red Gum lined (and dry despite the rain) Wilpena Creek until you get to a narrow opening, Sliding Rock, cut by the creek through the 'wall' of the Pound. A slight climb and you are inside. There the original Hill homestead has been reconstructed with a history of the place, "Jessie's Story", reproduced in plaques. It is a story of hard work and heartbreak in a tough environment but one that reflects others in the region. I had thought that this may be available somewhere on the net but it is not. Luckily someone has photographed the plaques. They are worth a read.
http://www.pbase.com/lambsfeathers/jessie

Walks continue all over the inside of the Pound but we were interested in climbing up to the top to Wangarra Lookout. 'Only 800m' said the sign but it forgot to mention the thirty degree slope. Really good for walking off the previous meals and wine as well as testing the heart.

At the base of the track there is a sculpture of Aborigines pointing the way with the legend of the formation of Wilpena on the back.

..................(click on image to enlarge)
We both took it very easy climbing up the steep and sometimes quite slippery rock pathway, stopping from time to time enjoy the ever increasing panorama (and catch our breath).

At the top, the view was amazing and well worth the climb.

We looked into and across the pound and.......

back over to the gap in the escarpment from where we had come through.

We enjoyed the solitude for some time and then made our way down, passing a lot of late starting 'puffers' on their way up.

Back at the old homestead we sat and enjoyed a long picnic lunch in the sun with a friend.

Then it was a leisurely stroll back to civilisation on an alternate route along a tributory of the creek, that had billabongs filled with water from the previous night's rain, for a coffee at the ranger station cafe' and a warm up in front of a fire.

What a great day! An item on my bucket list crossed off and a far better experience than ever expected.

Needless to say we fell into bed quite exhausted but did have time for a farewell BBQ and a good bottle of red to celebrate our mountaineering prowess.

Next morning we were up early and, after saying 'goodbye' to our favourite huge river gum standing in the dry creek bed at the entrance to Rawnsley Park, we headed back down the highway for the long drive to Adelaide.