April 27, 28 ... Hawker

Wednesday morning and it took us about an hour to traverse Adelaide from south to north but we basically just had to follow one road so it was quite easy. As well as a very beautiful city it is also simple to navigate and we enjoyed our stay very much, but it was good to get on the road again.
We stopped at Clare for an early lunch and a restock of the pantry. It was a nice town with some attractive old buildings from around 1880. From here on the countryside just got more beautiful. The Clare Valley is all vineyards and olive groves. They must produce an incredible amount of wine (Riesling) and olive oil!

 As we got closer to Jamestown we got into wheat and sheep country and the towns were more"outback" looking, but still appealing. We stopped and read the story of R M Williams as we had been following his road for some time and his history was very interesting.
 

Around Oororoo we started to see some hills in the distance and these gradually grew as we approached Hawker. I expected a reasonably large town but Hawker has a population of 490, 492 tonight, so it is quite small. The Big 4 is pretty basic but quite okay.

The hills out of Orroroo

                      We went for a walk around town (pretty quick!) and climbed Police Hill to the lookout. 

Hawker

Police Hill Lookout - Hawker

It is really warm here. At 9pm we are still in shorts and T-shirts. The stars look amazing and it is very quiet and very dark, with plenty of mossies and crickets ... so we know we are really in the bush!

At the risk of Morgan laughing at my use of superlatives, I have to say that today (Thursday) was a highlight in the trip so far. Wilpena Pound is certainly an exceptional landform. After completing a fairly long bushwalk I have to say "well done" to Garry and Faye...St Mary's Peak, 1188m and a round trip of 23kms ...how amazing that you two managed such a feat. There is no way that I could do that but Garry has added it to his list for "next time"...we'll see!

Wilpena Pound

 We started this morning with a visit to the Panorma of Wilpena Pound painted by a local artist, Jeff Morgan. It was in a purpose built circular building and it took him over 3000hrs to complete. To paint it, he climbed St Mary's Peak (a 14.5kms walk) and took more than 60 photos to get the 360 degree perspective. Needless to say, it was pretty good, as were many of his other paintings. The one below sold for $22000. It is 5.2m x 2.6m.

"Coopers Creek at Sunset"

Hawker has proven to be a bit of a surprise package. The General Store here is a real Aladin's cave. It has incredible things like huge stuffed tigers for sale and an actual sized, rubber chocolate sponge cake, with strawberries! It looked quite life-like as did all the other fake cakes! There was an endless range of "treasures" and Garry was lucky to get me out of the place.

After this dalliance we started our drive out to the Pound, so called because it is an area completely closed in by ridges except for one pass. In fact, it is a remnant valley floor of a mountain range about 600million years old. It is shaped like a giant crater, 17kms long and 8kms wide.  There were a number of lookouts on the way out and each time we stopped the views got better and better.

Eventually we got to the National Park and had an early lunch before our walk. We chose to do the Hill's Homestead walk and then continue on to the Wangara Lookouts, both lower and upper. It was about 7.8kms and the last bit was pretty steep, but the views were worth it. We also had some close contact with an emu and some kangaroos, neither of which seemed fazed by people at all.
The track wove along the valley bottom through beautiful trees and with glimpses of the ridge line.

Hans Heysen Trees!

It seemed incredible that anyone had ever actually lived in such an isolated area but one family actually grazed sheep and grew wheat inside the Pound for many years. The sheep were their undoing as they grossly overstocked and pretty soon there was no feed left. The house is still in good repair but it must have been a very lonely and hard life. Of course it would have been paradise for the indigenous people as the Pound has a permanent water supply.

This sculpture illustrates a local aboriginal legend.

The Hill's Homestead

After our walk we continued our drive out towards Blinman which is now a SEALED road!! We wanted to see two more lookouts and I would have to rate them as two of the best in Australia ... definitely not to be missed. Hucks Lookout showed one of the ranges and Stokes Hill had a 360 degree view of the whole area ... really spectacular. Because of the scale, there is no way any photo can do it justice but this might give some hint of the panorama.

 

It was now time to call it a day so we didn't meet any of the wildlife on the way home. This was certainly a wonderful experience and we are so glad we made the small effort to take this detour before our trek west.