Having left the Flinders Range National Park, I really enjoyed the drive from Quorn, through Wilmington to Melrose. The scenery was incredibly beautiful, but not in a natural/wilderness kind of way. We were driving through fields and fields of gold – of the wheat kind – but also grass and other crops. The wheat, having turned golden in colour, blended in nicely with the golden brown grass on the hills in the distance. The paddocks, some harvested, some not, formed a beautiful golden mosaic, punctuated only by ribbons of trees between them. We observed lots of harvesters in motion, easily spotted by the small cloud of chaff blowing out the back.

We pulled into a nice large free campsite on the edge of Melrose, surrounded by fields of wheat on one side and grass on the other. A little further to the west, Mount Remarkable towered over the plains, just waiting to be included in photos of one of the most spectacular sunsets we’ve seen so far.

Sunday morning (9/11/14) we drove the short trip into Melrose, the starting point of the 12.4km return hike to the summit of Mount Remarkable. It was a nice walk, with more incredibly beautiful views looking out over the valley. Thankfully the weather had improved on the previous days, with a nice breeze keeping us cool during the climb.

Many of the gullies towards the top of the mountain have these huge slopes of loose rock. Never seen anything like this before, but they look cool!

There is not that great a view at the summit – too many trees to see through. However, you can get a glimpse of the ocean out to the south west. Fortunately there are plenty of uninterrupted views looking out eastwards (over the wheat fields) during the climb.

Following some lunch we backtracked 20km’s to Wilmington in order to head into the Alligator Gorge part of the NP. We did about 4km’s walking here, including the walk down the Gorge itself. Not quite as stunning as some gorges we’ve seen, but pretty good nonetheless!

Back to the same campground again that night, but the sunset was no where near as spectacular… We had to organise/finalise some school stuff for the boys – emailing stuff in etc – and we didn’t get away till after midday Monday. So Mon, then Tues we head down in the direction of Adelaide before swinging towards the Yorke Peninsula, and it’s all more beautiful wheat country. Just before the Clare valley some green starts appearing in the golden brown blanket – some green in the grass, and then, the vineyards start appearing! Clare is of course a major vineyard/winery area.

Not being wine drinkers, there wasn’t a lot for us to do but drive, but its pretty scenery, and Clare itself is a nice upmarket little country town. We looked for a bakery, but surprisingly didn’t notice one as we went through! We were hoping to find some treats for lunch, as it was our Wedding anniversary (11/11)!! Yes, its 14 wonderful years I’ve now shared with my beautiful wife, with many more to look forward to! Don’t worry, we got those treats a little later over at Port Wakefield :cringe:, but hey they tasted OK….

That reminds me of a little story from when I was a design engineer for ADI, at their munitions manufacturing plant at Benalla (regional Vic). A colleague and I flew to Adelaide to do some testing on some AN1 Primers at the defense testing facility at Port Wakefield. AN1 Primers are basically metal tubes, by memory roughly 500mm long and 25mm in diameter, with lots of holes and filled with gunpowder – they are a part of the cartridge used to fire 5″54 projectiles (that’s 5″ in diameter!) used by our navy.

Anyway, commercial airlines tend to not like people taking large metal tubes filled with gunpowder on board….so we sent them down by appropriate road transport. However, after doing the tests (functioning the primers) we had to get these metal tubes back to Vic. We decided to take them with us on the plane, despite them being covered in gunpowder residue/remains and stinking as such. Not only that, as we didn’t have any other check in luggage, we tried to carry them on-board!!! This is around 2004 – a few years after 9/11!! The security guy manning the x-ray scanner at Adelaides sleepy airport pulled us up for having pieces of metal piping, so we quickly agreed to check them in as luggage, but fortunately he didn’t seem to notice the reek of gunpowder emanating from them!! (they still stunk even though we wiped the outside down with a rag) Hate to think what would happen if we tried that nowadays, especially during the G20 – reckon we’d have a circle of paratroopers dropping out of the ceiling and encircling us, followed by days of intensive interrogation!

So Mount Remarkable, and the drive down to Clare completed our journey of the Flinders Ranges! Great range, exhibiting the typical harshness and toughness seen in Aus’s outback ranges. Full of beauty despite, or perhaps because of, this. I gather the end of the range is considered to be around where the Clare valley starts. We’re now doing a quick trip down the Yorke Peninsula, before heading into Adelaide to hopefully catch up with some extended family!