Innes National Park – stunning coastal scenery on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula

Posted April 6, 2011 By admin and has no comments yet.

Stunning coastline on Stenhouse Bay lookout walk

We had never previously visited South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula.  We had always driven past the peninsula– heading either north or south, on our way to somewhere else.  This time, we decided to bite the bullet and see what it had to offer.

From Mount Remarkable National Park, we headed south-west, stocking up in Port Pirie before our drive onto the Yorke Peninsula proper.  Our destination was the Innes National Park, at the southern tip of the peninsula.  We knew virtually northing about the park, other than the availability of bush-camping, our preferred accommodation.

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Categories: Australian Flora, Birds, Marsupials, Our Favourite Places, Scenery, South Australia, Travel Blogs

Lincoln National Park & Memory Cove Wilderness Area – beautiful places on the Eyre Peninsula

Posted March 18, 2011 By admin

Memory Cove - a little piece of perfection

We left Buckaringa sanctuary, with a couple of weeks to spare before our next commitment to assist as volunteers at the first wildlife survey at the Australian Wildlife Conservancy’s Dakalanta sanctuary on the Eyre Peninsula.  For us, the choice was obvious; we’d head to the southern tip of the peninsula to re-visit the Lincoln National Park and a special region within it called the Memory Cove Wilderness Protection Area.  We’d visited those areas early in 2008 and loved them.

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Categories: Australian Wildlife, Our Favourite Places, Scenery, South Australia, Travel Blogs

More Adventures in the Flinders Ranges – Wallabies and Native Lilies – February 2011

By admin

A field of Garland Lilies

Our first stop after Scotia was Broken Hill – a rather gentle way to re-enter civilization.  After a couple of months in the remote Scotia sanctuary we certainly appreciated the cafes, galleries and interesting streets and old buildings of the silver city.  We intended a short stay but Mother Nature had other ideas, turning on the rainfall in a big way.  120mm or so in one afternoon and our short stay suddenly stretched to many days longer with highways cut in all directions.  We had planned to head up the Darling River to re-explore that area and re-visit Louth, but could cross that off the agenda for now.  We also planned to spend a week at Buckaringa Wildlife Sanctuary in the Flinders Ranges, but Katja, whom we met at Scotia and now planned to meet at Buckaringa, was stranded at Scotia after flooding there.  Okay – postpone that as well.

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Categories: Australian Wildlife, Birds, Marsupials, Reptiles, South Australia, Travel Blogs, Wildflowers

Scotia Wildlife Sanctuary – a ray of hope

Posted February 3, 2011 By admin

Woylie (Brush-tailed Bettong), seen during night-time distance sampling.

Scotia Wildlife Sanctuary, in the mallee country of far western New South Wales, offers a step back in time to an era when Australia’s medium-sized marsupials hopped freely across the landscape.  Nowadays, these beautiful creatures have all but disappeared in the wild, due to land-clearing and predation by foxes and feral cats.

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Categories: Australian Wildlife, New South Wales, Our Favourite Places, Travel Blogs

Mt Remarkable National Park – we return to the Flinders Ranges

Posted January 19, 2011 By admin

Nirbeeja, dwarfed by the River Red Gums, walks up the Mambray Creek track.

As we returned to the Mt Remarkable National Park, in the southern Flinders Ranges of South Australia, we realized that it was nearly three years to the day since our first visit.  We had loved it then, and wondered now how it would seem after so much travel in the interim.

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Categories: Australian Wildlife, Our Favourite Places, Scenery, South Australia, Travel Blogs, Wildflowers

A brief return to South Australia

Posted January 12, 2011 By admin and has 2 comments.

The rig, gibber plain country, South Australia

There were several things we really wanted to do after hitting the road from Alice Springs. 

The first was to see the centre of Australia in rare bloom.  Tick.
We wanted to visit Uluru again. Tick.
We hoped to see rain on Uluru.  A big tick.
And we hoped to do some volunteer work for the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC), Birds Australia, or Bush Heritage Australia. 

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Categories: South Australia, Travel Blogs

Rain on Uluru – a Dream Come True

Posted December 5, 2010 By admin

6.35pm

We’ll always remember the 4th of December 2010. It rained on and off overnight, quite heavily around dawn. We were woken by loud thunderclaps, and we were quietly excited that this might be the day – we might finally see rain on Uluru. By the time we got up the rain had all but ceased, so our first job was to make sure our campsite was secure, and not flooded, as there was a fair bit of run-off coming through the campground. As soon as we could, we raced up to the nearby lookout to check out Uluru, but were disappointed to see that the rain had cleared over her. Damn!

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Categories: Northern Territory, Our Favourite Places, Scenery, Travel Blogs

Cave Hill & the Seven Sisters Creation Story

Posted December 3, 2010 By admin

A 'bonsai' White Cedar on the top of Cave Hill

The day after our trip to Mt Conner we were booked with the same company (SEIT in partnership with the indigenous owned Desert Tracks), for a trip to Cave Hill.

Cave Hill is in the Musgrave Ranges, around 100km south of Uluru, but the country remains within Pitjantjatjara lands.  When we learned that Cave Hill had the most significant art site within central Australia, we were sold on the tour, especially given that the tour provided the only way for us to visit.

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Categories: Aboriginal Rock Art, Northern Territory, South Australia, Travel Blogs

Mt Conner

Posted December 1, 2010 By admin

Western face of Mt Conner

Mt Conner’s main claim to fame is that it is often mistaken for Uluru by first-time visitors to the centre.  Located within the Curtin Springs cattle station, it is not open to the public, and thus receives few visitors.  Most people content themselves with a long-distance view from the lookout beside the highway, while those in tour buses get even less – possibly a blurry photo out the window as the bus roars along towards Yulara.  But Mt Conner is worthy of its own place in the pantheon of famous Australian landmarks.

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Categories: Northern Territory, Scenery, Travel Blogs, Wildflowers

Kata Tjuta

Posted November 28, 2010 By admin

The main domes of Kata Tjuta. Mt Olga at centre left, rises 546m above the surrounding plains. Kata Tjuta is beautiful, immense and imposing.

Kata Tjuta, meaning “Many Heads”, may be less famous than Uluru, but is equally spectacular.  Kata Tjuta consists of 36 steep domes rising abruptly out of the surrounding plain.  Formed at the same time as Uluru, in the same sedimentary basin, Kata Tjuta nonetheless consists of conglomerate rock rather than the fine-grained sandstone of Uluru.  The tallest of the domes, Mt Olga (we don’t know its traditional name) rises 546 metres above the plains, almost 200 metres higher than does Uluru.  A walk through this area leaves one in awe, speechless and certainly feeling a little less self-important.  It is one of nature’s places of power.

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Categories: Birds, Northern Territory, Scenery, Travel Blogs, Wildflowers