Day Sixteen – Sunday 5th May- Arkaroola The joys of the Australian bush: roos, rocks and pinnacles

On the advice of one of the staff last night Ewan delivered the tyre to the mechanic shop this morning. Apparently, he has got a suitable tyre but we will wait and see whether it all works out. (And whether we have to mortgage the house to pay the bill). Fingers crossed, because the only option anywhere out of here is 130kms of unsealed road. Some of us are hoping that the ‘major’ unsealed road will be less traumatic for the tyres. However, the adventurous males who enjoy taking risks have taken our car (sans spare tyre!) for a trip to Lake Frome; a huge salt pan. More unsealed road so let’s hope they – and the car- survive the trip!

Meanwhile the three females decided to try the Mawson- Spriggina Track. 8kms and four hours of not too difficult terrain in theory. The idea was to test out Liz’s ankle to see if it would cope. One of the biggest challenges is trying to determine exactly how challenging any walking trail truly is. This one was described by various people and brochures as gentle, gradual grades, rocky, a minor steep trail, stony slopes and so on. You find yourself sizing up the person giving you the information: are they fitter than you? (invariably yes!) are they younger than you? (invariably yes again!) do they look as if they have any experience walking trails? (unknown). It makes it very difficult to decide which walk to choose. For the first half it was a fairly standard track heading upwards towards Sitting Bull Rock and the pinnacles. The views weren’t as stunning as yesterday but the colour and type of rocks changed constantly. The walking trail map gives you great detail about the types of rocks you are passing through. If you were a geologist this would be heaven, I’m sure.

Mawson and Sprigg (after whom the track is named) were geologists who estimated the rock layers were deposited between 800 and 500 million years ago. Sprigg found fossils of worms 555 million years ago. There’s some rocks on display near the campground all carefully named which should be useful as our knowledge is scant. It’s well beyond our knowledge to identify the rocks: Jude and I can only remember igneous, sedimentary and what was the other one? We really should have paid more attention in Geography! Anyway, Liz and I decided we would walk the last half back along the road as it would be flat and not rocky – joke. Jude followed the right map to finish the proper walk which was very rocky and difficult in places. Liz and I walked nearly a kilometre extra to follow the rough road back and still managed to get lost a couple of times: 8.8 kms was more than enough for us.

Update: The tyre has been fixed and the boys have returned from Lake Frome. They did have some excitement: lots of emus and kangaroos but not one car/person seen. Unfortunately, one of the kangaroos decided to cross the road at an inopportune time and hit one of the back windows, breaking it, and putting a dent in the drivers door. It bounded away apparently. But Ewan, always prepared, had black tape and managed to cover the hole. With red dust everywhere and a window broken by a kangaroo now we truly look as if we have travelled the Outback. Then we had two exciting activities to enjoy: it was roast dinner night at the Restaurant and and we were booked into the 'Under the Dark Skies' experience.

But first we headed off to see the yellow-footed wallabies that are lured near Reception with a promise of food and water. We have seen some in the wild, but very few, so it was great to see them up close. They really are exquisite: tiny and yellow-striped, with very long tails and pointy ears. After snapping some shots we headed for drinks, roast dinner and sticky date pudding. Delicious! At 8.30pm we piled into a bus and headed for a viewing point about 7kms from the Station. So no ambient light and a startling array of stars. It's the second darkest 'Dark sky'in the world: apparently there's a network of Dark Skies according to Andrew our knowledgeable guide. He guided us to our seats using a red torch as we were trying to accustom ourselves to the dark. We were outside, so very warmly dressed and given a special chair which lay back. We each had a red headtorch and a pair of high-powered binoculars. It was tricky to get them focused properly but eventually we were all fine. He used a strong laser to point out features of the sky. We were asked to let him know if we saw a plane, as it is illegal for him to shine it in the pilot's eyes even though the two planes we spotted were kilometres up in the sky. Apparently they had to get a special licence to operate the laser light at all. For the next hour and a half we laid back and watched while he explained nebulas, star formation, distances to stars, galaxies, the magnetic Poles, the lifespan of stars, and so much more. But to be honest, just sitting there and looking at the millions of stars of the Milky Way and surrounds was a wonderful experience. We had a look at some stars through a strong telescope at the end before heading for home. I must say when I got up in the middle of the night for a pee (too much information I know!) I really appreciated the array of celestial objects that much more!!! your star gazing correspondent Dianne