Wednesday 8 September 2010

Heysen Trail: Postscript to Jinxed

Flinders Range when it is not raining
First I want to add that the Flinders Range in South Australia received half of its yearly average rain fall in the two days I have described.
When I hitched out of the rain on a dirt road, a family gave me a ride: They told me they had driven one hour to the Flinders Range just to see the rain! They had never seen so much rain in this region and wanted to sightsee the flooded creeks..... Welcome to Australia where people sightsee the rain!
When I was sitting in the library writing my last blog entry it had just started to rain again and it rained another 50 mm. To hike and hitch out of the misery had been one of my wisest decisions. I spent the rainy day in a warm hostel bed reading a book and listening to the rain and wind outside.... And funny enough the only other guests in the hostel where a bunch of older Heysen Trail hikers. They hike the trail in weekend long sections every month over several years. And because their hike had been scheduled for that weekend, they had gone out and hiked that day.... poor bastards!

3 comments:

David said...

Beautiful South Australia at its unpredictable best ! A great read. Regards D.

Serge said...

Lovely photo. You have captured the charm. I suppose you've heard of Ludwig Leichardt. Not so bad for you then Chris. Judith Wright calls it clean, lean, hungry country.

Serge said...

Oh yeah - the flies. You missed the flies. "Australia's a great place - 50 million flies can't be wrong."