While our Coffin Bay enterprise was being formulated, there were still places to go and things to see.  We’d never been to the Flinders Ranges, even when we lived in Adelaide, and we were keen – a bit like Karajini in WA, it was near the top of everyone’s list.

We’d planned to drive to Quorn and then on to Flinders after a warm up walk.  But a bigger treat was in store – the Quorn Show was on the very day we were there (it lasted exactly one day) and the showgrounds were easy walking distance from our camp.  It had one of everything – one twirly throw-up ride, one fairy floss stall, one C&W singer on stage etc etc etc.  It was also the semi-final of the regional fruit cake bake-off and the final of the scone competition.  Most of the exhibits also had junior sections as well – I think they are no longer amateurs as the blue ribbon came with a $2 coin, the red ribbon got $1, and, on top of that, all prize winners received a packet of Laucke flour.  Sadly, I missed the chooks and ducks and geese display because it was closed while judging was in progress.  It was a beautiful day and the locals appeared to be enjoying themselves enormously.  There’s even a South Australian Country Shows calendar with about 50 events just like this all over the place – wonderful.

It was an easy 100km up the road to Flinders and we pitched our camp in the bush section at Rawnsley Park Station, overlooking a dry creek bed and just out of reach of any falling limbs from the beautiful river red gums beside the creek bed – all very Hans Heysen.  What you never see in any Heysen painting is the flies.  By the time we’d set up, we had to retreat inside ATGANI to escape their attentions.  It was the first time in our entire journey that we’d had to break out the fly nets.  As well as the thousands of sticky little bushflies buzzing into any available orifice, there were also lots of horrid bluebottle blowflies buzzing everywhere and getting inside the van in a split second of carelessness.

Undaunted, we’d come for the hiking and particularly to get a look at Wilpena Pound.  From Rawnsley there’s a “challenging” walk which eventually reaches a Pound lookout, so we settled on that one.  Less of a walk and more of an uphill scramble, it climbed a few hundred vertical metres up what looked like a sheer cliff but which had various narrow passages that allowed the scramble to continue.  It was hot, the flies were unbearable, the climb was hard and the view of the Pound at the top was massively underwhelming.  Wilpena Pound looks a bit like a large elongated meteor crater (it’s a syncline in fact) and the word pound comes from the enclosures that villages used to have for containing stray animals – animals which were returned to their owners for a fee or sold off to cover costs, so just like a “dog pound”.  The views out across the rest of the area were more impressive with lots of folded and tilted layers of rocks which light up particularly at dawn and dusk.  Then we climbed back down which was just as little fun.

There were helicopter flights here, of course, but the prices were inexplicably almost twice what we’d seen (and paid!) elsewhere for comparable flights.  No chopper for us, less because of the scenery and more because there was no value to be had.  After just a couple of days, for the first time in our entire trip, we departed early and a couple of hikes short of the plan!  It felt as if we hadn’t given this area a fair go but the flies were intolerable which meant that being outside was intolerable and who wants to sit inside a caravan in the middle of the bush? – not us!  Even after dark, cooking on the bbq was a pain because there were still some particularly stupid flies trying to self-immolate and therefore, falling into the food.  Revolting. 

And so we advanced our plan – next stop the Clare Valley.  Turned out it was a long weekend in SA (Lack-of-Labour Day) meaning Clare campsites were full, so we settled on Burra where by good luck rather than good management, we parked on a grassy site overlooking the creek and were visited regularly by the local ducks and wattlebirds (Red ones Richard).  Best of all – no flies.

Driving from Flinders to Burra was astounding.  It felt like we were travelling endlessly through the usual red-brown gravelly desert, then drove over a single hill and entered a surreal green and gold agricultural paradise where wheat and barley and canola covered most of the ground and the rest was full of fat contented cattle and sheep, ignorant of their futures.  A completely different rolling landscape with so much production going on – who knows if it’s a particularly good season here, but it sure looked like it to we city folk.  As ever, I wished that each field had a sign saying what the particular crop was but contented myself by simply guessing out loud.  Also astounding was the massive crop of wind turbines on top of every hill.  There seemed to be thousands but a little research told us that there are just over 1000 in the whole of SA, so it must have been only hundreds.   

Burra is a delightful country town with a sense of history, a DIY heritage trail, an open-air copper mine museum and a great collection of business names.  It seemed to be a quirk of this area but who could resist getting their hair cut at Snippety-Do-Da or their takeaway food from the chef at Cook O’ Burra?  The heritage trail had a unique feature – we collected a key at the Info centre ($50 return deposit) and then walked and drove around to the various listed sites and opened locked doors and gates to see what was within.  Lots of signage explained what was going on if you were prepared to read, there was also a bit of audio-visual content and all in all, it was a brilliant way of allowing access without having to man the sites.  Maybe this is being done elsewhere but we hadn’t encountered it.       

Close as we were to the Clare Valley, we were anxious to give a couple of wineries our custom.  Fortunately, we chose Kilikanoon first and needed very little else thereafter.  The white grape around here is Riesling and it’s not the girl wonder’s favourite thing (I know…and she also likes Apple on her phone and wrist, but what can you do?) so we loaded up with excellent reds and decided to struggle through.    

When we were very young and had managed to dump our much-loved children on one or other of their grandparents in QLD (those were the days; the little darlings flew by themselves and were undoubtedly allowed up into the cockpit), we went to Robe on SA’s limestone coast (no capitalisation back then).  We stayed at a guesthouse called Greymasts, bought a crayfish “off the boat”, cooked it in the backyard and had our FIRST EVER bottle of Champagne (Veuve, since you ask) while we ate the lobster with bread and possibly butter – a 40 year old memory we’ve never forgotten.  Christmas comes early!

Well, Burra to Robe is a solid two day drive if you want to go via Pinaroo and the Riverland, but due to some navigational disagreements, we dismissed anything to do with the Murray River, zoomed swiftly past the Big Lobster in Kingston and arrived back in Robe after all those years, that day.  It’s still fabulous!  Even Greymasts is still there, and looking good! 

Tragically, possibly catastrophically, certainly expensively, you can’t buy crays direct from the boats any more.  If I was their marketing manager, I’d agree, but for us, a bit sad.  Nonetheless, the co-operative runs a great fresh seafood shop in their unattractive light-industrial area and we ponied up, bought our lobster and retreated to ATGANI to repeat a long-lost ritual.  We opened the champagne (Lanson this time), split our lobster and relived great days.  You know those people who say, “Never repeat your successes” – ignore ‘em.

We walked the “tour” around a town that was internally just the same but, from the outskirts, was unrecognisable – 40 years in an attractive seaside spot apparently allows for a bit of development.  We played 12 holes of golf on a fantastic dunes layout (the last 6 were up-and-down-a-paddock style…and we were tired).  Robe’s iconic image is their red and white striped navigational obelisk.  In one of those stories I love, it was initially painted white but couldn’t be distinguished from the sand hills, so they striped it.  Access to it is closed off now and it will tumble into the sea in the next decade or two!

The couple of days lost in the Flinders allowed a couple of days in Coonawarra before we headed into Victoria (quel dommage).  We found a great camp site at Sue Bell’s Bellwether winery – 100m from any other campers, a late afternoon wine tasting and a pre-ordered lamb camp-oven dinner around the campfire made for a pretty good stay.  Cheerful conversation with a couple of two-year-visa tourists from New York and Ireland reaffirmed belief in the future and all was well.  (We’ll skate over Trev’s inability to heat the lamb sufficiently).

Of course, we needed wine so we fought through the rain (weather had deteriorated a bit) to Balnaves, which was delightful and productive.  I was particularly keen on trying an old-school vineyard so Redman filled the bill and was “entirely adequate”.  It was the Coonawarra, so it had to be Wynns to finish.  What chance?  Sue Hodder just happened to pop into the tasting area (you had to see the staff jump to know how highly she’s regarded), gave us 10 minutes of her charming time and we tasted some exceptional wines – when was the last time someone poured you 2006 Michael’s Shiraz – I bet you remembered it!  We left, entirely satisfied, somewhat leaner in the wallet and thinking how great it is when big businesses still know how to do things perfectly.  Joy!

It was the Great Ocean Road from here, the flies had disappeared, Dan Andrews had resigned and Victoria was therefore wide open – what could possibly go wrong?