Day 4 Wilpena Pound

After another cool night we rose to another great day. Today we have a couple of things loosely planned. A bit of house work (washing), a morning coffee/tea with a planning session and a lot of procrastination was the order of the day. We decided, in the end the 6km round trip to the old Wilpena homestead was the first adventure for the day.  It was a very nice walk, not too strenuous, with some great scenery, rock formations and plants, to say nothing of the wild life. It really is quite nice here at the moment with things relatively green and the wild flowers starting to blossom. The wild life also seems to be booming as well. There are a number of emus with chicks, kangaroos with joeys and birds galore.  They have these birds here which we have not seen before and people have been calling them “happy family”. They seem to roam around in packs and look a bit like a sparrow on steroids. I personally think the name is a misnomer as they don’t sound all that happy to me. Bloody things sound like their bluing all the time.

Old Wilpena Homestead

Sculpture at the homestead

The home stead is really well preserved and the story board chronicling the life of one of the siblings shows the hardship and heart break the early settlers endured. I don’t think too many of us “modern” folks would cut it out here. Now the walk to the homestead was 6 and a bit kms return but we ended up walking about 8 kms. You see we decided to go up to the second lookout. Now according to the “map” it was about 600 mtrs to the top what it didn’t say is the track rose 320 mtrs. How do I know this I hear you asking?  Well I had my GPS with me. The panoramic views from the second lookout, across the “pound” and back through the gap to Wilpena were fantastic.  By the time we returned it was to late to do anything else so we chilled out. Damn life is hard. I have discovered the invariable life comedian again. The men’s urinal and I can hear you say “Don’t go there” but here at the pound he has been at it again. I would not say I’m that tall but I am not vertically challenged either, however, at the urinal is a sign which says “please flush after use button is on top of the cistern”. Not an unusual request but the cistern is more than 2 metres off the ground. I can’t see the button and can just reach it on my tip toes. Some people really have no idea.

some locals enjoying the sun

Some non locals sharing the sun