Sacred Canyon

Flinders Ranges

Flinders Ranges

Flinders Ranges

17/5/2012  -  Another beautiful morning, even nicer than yesterday and not as much breeze.  We are off to explore a bit more of the area in the Flinders Ranges today.  We called into Wilpena Pound again  to check our emails and then headed on to the Sacred Canyon which was 13 kilometres up a dirt and corrugated road but the Canyon was worth the drive.  There were aboriginal engravings in some of the rocks there but the rock formations and colours were worth the drive in.   Some of the huge rocks were so rounded and smooth and it just shows how the water gushes down through the canyon and down the river in the wet season.  It was then on to Bunyeroo Gorge stopping at a couple of lookouts on the way.  The views from these were just magnificent.  We could see the layers of sediment that make up the ranges and the colours were great.  Some of the layers looked like they had been painted on the mountain.  The road into the gorge was dirt and was quite steep and winding.  On the way into the gorge there were quite a few emus grazing beside the road.  As we were driving down through the gorge we were actually driving along a dry river bed with cliffs either side much like the Brachina Gorge yesterday but Bunyeroo was not quite as big or interesting. When we came out of the gorge we headed over to the Aroona Ruins which were situated up on top of a hill so they would have had great views from there.  The stone house was build in 1854 and belonged to a sheep farmer, John Hayward.  He was the first pastoralist to bring sheep so far north. He described his home as a “splendid bungalow”. There isn’t much  left of the original building, just rock walls and stone steps down to what was once a cellar.  We had lunch at one of the National Park campgrounds nearby and headed back to the camp.  We had had enough of dirt, corrugated roads.  I did a load of washing and we got  organized to leave here tomorrow.  Pa did a bit of investigating this afternoon and reckons if we stay here again we should get site 18 as it has its own fire pit, is up the hill a bit and is close to the amenities.