View of Rawnsley Bluff from my campsite
The drive north takes me past Wilpena Pond where I stop to check my email and make some calls. The place I am staying at has zero phone or internet coverage but once I drive into Wilpena I get full signal.
The visitors centre is a very nice design which seems to fit well into the environment. About 5km north of Wilpena is the turn-off, a dirt track that will take me into both gorges. The scenery is very nice and colourful, the gorges though are much wider than the ones I seen at Karijini National Park, back in Western Australia.
The trees mark where usually the water flows
The dirt track leads right into the bottom of each gorge, then either criss-crosses dry riverbeds or follows them. Rough going for my van and I have to drive real slow because I am driving along, across or even inside creekbeds. Many large Eucalypts are growing inside those creekbeds, only ever getting water when there is some flowing, which is by no means a certainty, often over long periods of time.
Brachina Gorge seems to be much deeper with walls of stone rising on both sides of the riverbed. Four 4-wheel drives pass me in convoy when I stop to make space. They are the only vehicles I see, so it seems that I have the place mostly to myself.
Exit to Brachina Gorge
When I finally exit the park track I come to a well graded dirt road where I can finally speed up again. Driving at slow pace with so many obstacles on the way one needs to pay 100% attention so as not to end up in the ditch and is quite tiring. As a result of feeling quite tired by now I drive south to Hawker, to re-fuel and from there drive back to my campsite.
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