Gidday all,

Came off the Birdsville track at Marree and had a look around town. Stopped at the roadhouse and fuelled up. $1.90/ltr later and no water available as they have to truck it in and don’t give any away, not a problem as we had enough left to last a while. Marree, the home of the Lake Eyre Yacht Club, the boats looked a bit dusty.

 

Then on South through Lyndhurst and on to Leigh Creek, here we topped up on groceries as it’s a coal mining town of about 600 people and the little supermarket had a good selection and reasonable prices. Called into the servo to top up water and noticed an inside dual wheel had a flat. It always seems to be the inside one, you have to take both wheels off to fix it. Though with dual wheels if one goes flat you can drive on for a while with the other holding it up if you have to. Don’t know how long this one was flat for, I checked them that morning, will have to check more often I suppose. Had a spare tube so pulled over to a shady park at the servo and fixed the tyre. These Split rims are easy to work with when changing tyres thank God.

From Leigh Creek headed east to have a look at the Gammon Ranges National Park, part of the Northern Flinders Ranges. First stop Iga Warta, an aboriginal community, it has a shop and art and artefact display with info on the aboriginal history of the area. Very interesting. Then on to Nepabunna, another community who look after an area south called Nantawarrina Indigenous Protection Area, we plan to go through there on our way back south.

Found a campsite just outside the Gammon Ranges park boundary, nice spot. Into the park in the morning.

 

 

Camped at a spot called Grindles hut, used to be a sheep station before the national park existed. Old man Grindle murdered his son in law here way back then, in the morning I decided to fix the parking brake as it had stopped working. It gave me some trouble but I got it fixed, had lunch and decided to move on. Headed off to a 4wd track that leads to another camp ground, not far up the road we came across a ranger 4x4 coming the other way. The ranger asked if we had camped there the night and we said yes, she asked if we had seen a woman go jogging early this morning, but we hadn’t noticed anyone. Apparently the jogger hadn’t returned, and it was after lunch. She thanked us and kept on.

This track we took is a one way loop, it goes for about 50ks and ends up back at Grindles hut. One way because it is very narrow and there are very steep hills to climb not being able to see oncoming vehicles over the crest. About 4ks in we came across a 4x4 on the track doing repairs, he was headed the other way. We stopped and he said he was good, the front wheel was about to fall off he said, but could fix it good enough to get to help. He was going the same way as us but decided to turn around when this happened. We squeezed around him and continued. One k on another 4x4was headed toward us, so much for one way road, they stopped and we squeezed past. They wanted to know where they were. We produced a pamphlet map and showed them, they had missed a turn and were lost. We left the pamphlet with them and they thanked us and were off.

Eighteen Ks later came to Mainwater Well campsite, a good sight, the road was rough and slow going, but that’s how we like it. Magnificent views on the ridge tops and even through the rocky valleys and creek beds.

 Off again in the morning and back at Grindles a few hours later, we heard they had found the lost jogger, she had taken a wrong turn and fortunately stumbled on another campground and campers that evening some seven Ks away.Moving on, will spend Sunday and the next few days in Nantawarrina indigenous protected area on our way to the South Flinders Ranges.