Wilpena Pound

We can always rely on Regina for a great quote. “Everywhere you look - it’s so beautiful”. And rightly so. Mother Nature has been crafting it for million of years.

Our camp site is at the end of a fairly sketchy 4x4 track at the head of Brachina Gorge. It feels like we are in a Namatjira painting. The gums are massive, ancient, white, gnarled. Small forests of White Cypress scattered about. Meadows of low grassland. So many colours. Interruptions by the folded rock formations that lay at bizarre angles and rise to 1110m above the surrounding plains at just 200m. The rocks introduce new colours of pink, orange, white, ochre and grey, laid bare on the surface by folding like so much play-dough.

We cycled Brachina Gorge, every tuning along the mostly dry river bed a new delight. An information board at a lookout providing context of the slice through 120million years and a 9k deep seabed deposition turned on it side for all to see.
Fauna is front and centre. Close encounters with Mallee Ringneck Parrot, Euro and a Yellow-Footed Wallaby, Red and Grey Kangaroo, and many unidentified lizards.

Birthday Dinner under the stars of Roasted Vegetable Pasta, a very tasty Taylor’s Shiraz, Lemon Meringue Pie (with a candle), and a hand made chocolate from the eccentric little Chocolatier in Laura.

A tour with Mick, an Aboriginal Elder, into a restricted site was fascinating. A bonus is that his degree at Uni was in Anthropology. The discussions were certainly multi-dimensional.

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