Round Australia: Day 135

Day 135 Port Augusta

Today we started off to have a light day so we could rest up before going to the Great Australian

Chris our guide

Bight. We went off to the Arid Areas Botanical Garden. This was shown on the ABC’s Gardening Australia and we just had to see it. It is just 2 kms from our park and is free entry. The place is owned by the council who technically run it, but they have this group called The Friends of the Arid Areas Botanical Gardens who take on the management of the place. They are all volunteers apart from a couple of paid employees and they have collected plants from across Australia from the areas that have less than 240mm of rain. It was officially opened in 1996

and they have just the best collection of arid plants. They have trails setout and all are name tagged but we opted for a guided tour that they run at 10 every day. Chris was our guide and she took us around part of the garden in just under 2 hours. She was very knowledgeable about the plants and had collected some herself for the gardens. She was an absolute gem and we would highly recommend the tour to others. During the tour we saw three lovely Sand Goannas about

75cm long and they were not worried about us at all.

After the tour we went back inside and had lunch at the café. We finished with a selection of flavours of icecream – Quondong, Lemon Murtle, Native Lime and Lemon Pepper and they were nice. From there we drove back to town and Chris had mentioned a lookout up in the ranges and the Finders lookout which was next door. So off we went to the Finders lookout. It was really a cliff overlooking the inlet, or so I believe. Once again the car park was cordoned off by bushes so you cannot see anything unless you walk, fortunately Maureen could. We then headed for the other and took off into the hills, had we realised it was 60kms away, we might have decided not to, but we were on our way to Quorn and it is a lovely old town. I say this with certainty

Hardest wood in Australia

Lizzy

as there are no new buildings in Quorn, they are all old stone buildings and it has character plus. From there we took a side road into the hills. The road was fine for a while then it turned into a track. I thought we had made a mistake but the track was excellent. Instead of red dust and corrugations, it was white dust and smooth road. We went hooning along the track and found Buckaringa Lookout. Again you have to walk up to it, but at least you get some beautiful views from the road leading up. The Flinders Ranges are just majestic and roll along. On the way there you pass the grave of some Earl of

the Beast on the way out

View from Flinders Cliff lookout

Carysfort’s son who died during a flash flood whilst out rounding up sheep in 1852. There are also old farm buildings scattered along the route as well to show just how isolated these people were.

We drove back down to Port Augusta and went to the shops to get some tea and headed back to Girt by 5. Tomorrow we start the Eyre Highway.