Our Latest Travels - The Last of the Flinders Ranges

After our two nights at Rawnsley Park Station, it was time to hook up the van and move on.

We headed further north.  This geological feature is known as the “Great Wall of China”.

We visited the small village of Blinman, which has a copper mining heritage.  Unlike the previous day’s driving, where we hardly saw any other cars, the village was quite busy.

There are some lovely old buildings.

We had a nice wander around town.

The little cafe was quite busy.  It is called “The Miners’ Crib”, as a nod to the mining history.

We had a nice morning tea.  I had to try one of their traditional miner’s pasties with the apple at one end, being a full meal of veges and dessert.  We had come across these before at the little town of Burra.  Mick enjoyed a vanilla slice.  We teamed our morning tea with iced coffee and mocha.  Yes, it was a nice warm day.

There was lots of mining attempts throughout the Flinders Ranges in the second half of the 1800s, but the one at Blinman was the only commercially successful one.  It was opened as a tourist attraction in 2012.

We had no plans of doing the tour, but when we got there, a tour was going to leave shortly and only ran for an hour, so on the spur of the moment we signed up.  We are glad we did, as we learnt so much more about the town and its history.  We seem to be doing more little tours these days and do really enjoy them.

Copper was initially found by a one legged shepherd “Peg Leg” Blinman.  He and some mates set up a mining lease and did nothing with it.  They ended up selling it and making a huge profit.

The mine operated from 1862 to 1907, with most of the workers being Cornish.  Complete extended families were brought out and the men worked together in family groups.  The theory was that, being family, they would look out for each other and thus make things safer.

After the tour it was back on the road, driving through the Parachilna Gorge.  This was another dirt road, although one that you are happy to take the caravan along.  

It is scenic, but I think we were spoiled by the gorges we explored the previous day.

Once again, popping out the other side onto the flat plains.

We were looking forward to our lunch stop at the Prairie Hotel at Parachilna.  This is quite a famous place, used on films and rather upmarket.

We timed it well, as a tourist bus was just leaving.  There were a lot of people dining inside, but we were happy to sit on the verandah, enjoying our lunch while listening to John O’Dea singing.  A couple of his songs even mentioned Parachilna and the Prairie Hotel.  The only downside was the flies.  Oh my, were they pesky.

So what was for lunch?  The Prairie Hotel is famous for its “Feral” menu.  I had heard of their camel burgers, but sadly, they are no longer available. (Yes, there are estimated to be hundreds of thousands of feral camels in Australia, left over from the camel train years.)

In the end, Mick had a kangaroo schnitzel and I had camel sausage rolls.  Both were delicious.

Mick washed his down with a beer brewed on the premises.

He said it was really tasty.

Over the road, at the old railway siding there are some sculptures.

This one was clever.  It was actually lots of separate sections that look like a train when viewed from a certain angle.  It is a tribute to the huge trains that use to cart coal through here from the Leigh Creek mine, which is the next town north.  The mine closed down in 2015.  The trains were the longest in the Southern Hemisphere for a while, having 100 carriages.  Now the trains in Western Australia around Port Hedland are now much longer.  We saw one go through when we were here previously.

After our delicious lunch, we started to head south.

Back through Hawker.

Where we saw a little echidna.

And onto Quorn for the night.  It turned out that the Pichi Richi railway had been running that day and they were just in the process of putting the train to bed.  

It was nice to get to see it.

The Railway Station glowed in the late afternoon light.

See the silo in the background.  Well, that is why we were staying in Quorn that night.

Each night there is a light show projected onto the side.  

You sit outside, or in your car and tune in to an FM radio station and sit back and enjoy.  We were glad to be in the car, as the evening was quite cool.

The following morning was had just a little more look around the town.

And discovered that there were Sunday markets in the town hall.

This was a great opportunity to see inside.

OK, it was also a good opportunity to buy home made Eccles cakes.  They must be more popular in South Australia, as you never hear of them over here.  We also bought some beer cake, which we had never heard of.  It is of German origin and there are lots of German influences in South Australia.  They were both delicious for our afternoon tea over the next few days.

As we drove towards Port Augusta, we travelled by the Pichi Richi Pass section of the railway line.  The way the Pichi Richi Tourist Railway came about was that there was a proposal to dismantle the stone work in this section after the railway line closed down.

There was a public outcry, it ended up being saved and, as they say, the rest is history.

We just popped into Port Augusta to do some groceries, as we had explored the town last year.  I do like this mosaic.

What we did notice was that the bridgework that had been going on last year has been completed and you drive over a nice, wide new bridge.  I bet the locals are very happy about that.

That completed the Flinders Ranges section of our trip.  We really did enjoy what we saw.  The best thing was the weather.  We couldn’t have had better.

Next for some more exploring.