The Pound

Saturday, 2 June 2012


Today it stopped raining!

As the sun was sort of shining (and also our final day here) this morning, we decided to undertake the walk to Wilpena Pound and climb to the lookout. We did cheat a bit and take the shuttle bus part of the way – considered it important for the local economy – and saved having to walk the first couple of kilometres. The driver was very good and pointed at the spring which is the source of the water supply for the resort. He did assure us the green coloured water was very well treated and filtered before it came out of our taps. It does look and taste okay.

The first part of the walk took us along beside Wilpena Creek to the old Hills Homestead, which was the home of the family who first cleared and farmed the Pound. Jessie, who came to the farm house as a 12 year old to look after her brothers, had left her story for us to read. Made us all ponder just how lucky we are today!

Then it was THE CLIMB! This was up the side of the mountain on a track formed from the natural rocks, with a little bit of artificial assistance. The walking poles were a great help as we climbed to the first lookout and suddenly realised we were actually inside the Pound. We continued climbing (supposedly only another 400 metres!!!) until we reached the top of the ridge and were able to get a much better view. Although I had been hoping to see the complete circle, this was not to be, but we did see most of it. Definitely worth the climb. Don’t know how we will stagger about tomorrow, though, when the muscles really start to protest.

This afternoon the sun actually appeared and most of the clouds disappeared and the dumper was swapped for a polar fleece. With the milder conditions, we decided on another walk to have a look at the resort’s solar power supply. All the power needs of the resort are met by these panels, but we did have a sneaking suspicion that there is a diesel generator as a back-up. It was a fairly easy walk, mainly on a road, through grass lands, with kangaroos bounding away in all directions. We even saw the odd emu, as well. For those of you who may be interested, emu poo is dark green and massive!