North to the Flinders

It was a wrench to leave Adelaide, we had seen so many good shows, and loved the city itself, with it's parks and lovely old buildings.
However the time had come to move on, north to Port Augusta initially for a couple of days, while we reorganised ourselves ready for the challenge of the Flinders Ranges and the Oodnadata track.
The Flinders Ranges are really a number of individual ranges, each of which is a series of hills in a line, and they stretch for many miles in a north easterly direction from Port Augusta. Wild and rugged but with lovely valleys in between, they were originally settled in the early 1800s for pastures, but many drought years and overstocking ruined the land within 15 years.
The 'Old Ghan', the original narrow gauge railway that ran from Port Augusta to Alice Springs,  ran through the southern and western part of the Flinders, and still runs as a tourist railway up to Quorn, around 50k.
Started in 1879, it opened the way into Australia's remote interior, and provided isolated residents with a physical link to civilisation.
It took 50 years to reach Alice Springs, and during the war provided a method for the forces to defend the north, but was closed in the mid fifties in favour of a standard gauge railway that runs some 200k to the west. I shall be saying a lot more about this railway in future entries, as we will be following the line as we pass along the Oodnadata track.
Our first camp is at Wilpena, a 'resort' around 220k up from Port Augusta, built on the old Wilpena Station land. The name is aboriginal, and the main feature here is the Wilpena Pound, a circle of hills surrounding a lush valley around 5k from our camp.

There is a lot of wildlife here, many lovely birds as well as animals of all sorts. Unfortunately a lot of species have become extinct in the area, not least through the settling of Europeans, and mainly through the introduction of feral animals, goats, cats, dogs, rabbits etc.It is said there were 100,000 goats here at one time, but culling has brought that down to less than 10,000, still a lot competing for the poor feed available.
They call this bounceback, discouraging ferals in favour of allowing the native animals to return, in particular the Yellow Footed Kangaroo, which is only seen here.

We took a walk some 8k(5 miles) into the pound and climbed a hill to see the valley from above, it was a beautifully clear day, and we could see range after range of hills surrounding us. During the 1800s all this valley had been cleared for grazing and growing wheat, it has now returned to native bush and big red gums, many over 50ft tall already.

On the way back we stopped to study a sculpture of the aboriginals who inhabited this area before the Europeans, the pound itself was a large village at one time, who moved on when pasture was formed.

The weather here is a sight cooler than it was in Adelaide, but not so cold as to be uncomfortable. It's around 28 in the day, and 18 at night, so we need our doona, but we can walk around in shorts and tshirts.