Thursday 22nd May
Parachilna Gorge - What a wonderful place to wake up in! I love bush camping, the tranquility and being able to hear the bird sounds in the mornings. The night sky without lights. The freedom.
By midday we'd left the Flinders Ranges NP behind as we travelled to the historic township of Beltana - now almost a ghost town. Many
of the buildings had signboards explaining what they were previously. For those few people who still live there, we
were curious as to why. What do they do
for a living?
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| Church |
The
old railway station was a nice looking building which is now private
property. The cemetery had graves
ranging from the mid-1800s through to 2013.
Cemeteries are an interesting way to get a bit of history of a place;
this one seemed to have a lot of unmarked graves too. We took the 'alternative route' through hills (to avoid the bitumen) to our next stop, Leigh Creek, then followed the road north to Lyndhurst which is the beginning (or end) of the Strzelecki Track to Innamincka. That's for another trip!
Farina was another interesting diversion on the route north - it was once a township but is now ruins. However a volunteer conservation group is working slowly to restore some of the buildings. We were pretty intrigued with the old bakery, which was built underground and which is still used on occasions to bake pastries which are sold from the mobile retail bakery. They were baking today and it smelled good!
Today ended at Marree, the beginning (or end) of the Birdsville Track and Oodnadatta Track. This too was once a busy railway town but the demise of the original Ghan railway has impacted heavily and it's not much more than a shanty town now, with a population of about 90. Mind you the population must have been double tonight, as there was a film crew in town. They'd been filming here all day, a new movie starring Michael Caton which involves 2 yellow taxis towed on a semi-trailer :) We stayed in the caravan park tonight.
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| The old Ghan railway line at Marree |
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