Murray's conquering of Mount Ohlssen Bragge on Thursday had the undesired and unexpected consequence of damaging his left (and until now, good!) knee. Yesterday was therefore spent quietly, taking anti-inflammatory tablets at regular intervals and cursing! The only walking Murray managed to do was up to the cafe for a coffee and a lap of the camp ground.
Sue, Ian and I embarked on the 'Drought Busters' walk in the afternoon and that took us part of the way up the Mount Ohlssen Bragge track (far short of the top though, I hasten to add) so I took a couple of photos of the offending Mount seeing as Murray had forgotten to take the camera, so lacked any documentary evidence of the toughness of the climb to the top. Here then is Mount Ohlssen Bragge taken from the safety of the 'Drought Busters' track:
The views even from our relatively easy climb up and around were spectacular - across to Wangarra Hill, beyond which is the Pound, looking through the native pines and grass trees. The colours were superb, even though the cloud meant we did not have a beautiful blue sky as a back drop. I was reminded often of why the Flinders Ranges is one of my very favourite places.
As the afternoon went on and the sun started to get lower in the sky, the cold set in again, so we soon found ourselves enjoying a drink and trying to keep warm around the camp fire at Sue and Ian's van. Managed to almost cremate the tea as we barbequed it on Murray's plough disc, as the fire was so hot.
This morning was freezing cold as the cloud had disappeared and the sky was clear and blue - the temperature inside Sue and Ian's van was two degrees! Very hard to hop out and head for the showers in those temperatures. Sue and Ian set off for Port Pirie as they have to home by the 20th, whilst we stayed put to give Murray's knee another day to recover.
By the afternoon we decided that we should walk a bit of the way down the track to Hills Homestead seeing as it was such a beautiful (but still quite cold if you were out of the sun) day. Set off along the Wilpena Creek and surprised ourselves by making it all the way to the homestead, a distance of 3.2km. It was a beautiful walk through this small gap in the ranges surrounding the Pound - superb River Red Gums and native pines along the way and the blue sky highlighted the reds of the rocks and the greens of the vegetation magnificently.
We decided that we would walk back, even though we could have caught the shuttle bus and were very proud of ourselves. A 6.4km walk was quite an achievement for both of us and at 10.30pm I can report that neither of us seems to have suffered any major damage, which is even more surprising!
Tomorrow we will start heading for Broken Hill en route to the Menindee Lakes and will probably make it to Peterborough. The rain is forecast to return in the morning, so hopefully we can get going before it arrives, although as this part of the journey is on sealed roads it is much less of a problem.
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