Adelaide to Wilpena Pound and back

Wilpena Pound is one of the wonders of South Australia, a huge natural amphitheatre, with plenty of great day walks offering fabulous views. I’ve covered it in a separate post, this one is about getting there and back, but here are a few photos as a reminder.

There are three main routes to Wilpena from Adelaide, all taking pretty much the same length of time, about five hours if you don’t stop, but there are a few things to see on the way.

The ‘coastal’ route offers surprisingly few sea views despite heading through or close to a number of Port cities (Wakefield, Pirie, Germein and Augusta). I stopped a couple of times though, firstly in Lochiel to see the red salt Lake Bumbunga.

Secondly in Port Augusta, the last chance to stock up on reasonably priced food and petrol, plus saw a few local sights. Flinders Lookout was the highlight, lovely views along by the river.

The close by Australian Arid Lands Botanic Garden were a little underwhelming unfortunately, if nicely presented.

There were some nice heritage buildings in the town centre.

And a very cool lookout point from a converted water tower.

On the way back to Adelaide I took the Clare Valley route, which passed through one of Australia’s main wine and grain regions. There are small farming settlements, gradually growing in size toward Adelaide, with a surprising amount of beautiful colonial era architecture, in particular churches.

One of which only had two graves by it, one impressively grand.

Orroroo had a couple of nice buildings, a war memorial, and a huge, 500 year old gum tree.

Magnetic Hill is famous for cars rolling uphill, but it’s really an optical illusion. A spirit level would have been handy…Jamestown has clearly seen better times judging by the Caltex, but did have a nice river running through it and the largest ducks I have ever seen.

Clare had a few more nice heritage buildings, including a couple in 1930s bungalow style, with their distinctive chunky columns, looking somewhat out of place.