Some of you may know I grew up in a small country town in central NSW, yep, this little city slicker used to be a country bumpkin, I was a no helmet wearing BMX bandit who could run bare foot through a patch of bindy burrs. Now my Christmas travel plans usually consist of beach dwelling and Pina Colada sipping, but when the opportunity to visit Wilpena Pound, one of Australia’s top travel destinations came about, I was on that like a Bogan is on beer.
Wilpena Pound has to be one of the coolest landscapes I’ve ever seen. It’s a giant amphitheatre and they say it’s dated around 800 million years old. It’s made up of raised rock circling through 80 square kilometres of the Flinders Ranges. You can see the layers of eras stacked upon one another, these crazy rock formations tell a history of the earth. It’s crazy, even to my own ears saying this, but I found it quite a fascinating destination. Before we went there, I thought it was an ancient volcano that caused this landscape, but it turns out it is something known as syncline, an occurrence that happens during a tectonic shift causing rocks to fold and shift, it looks like the rock was folded up and then the valley was formed by erosion. Cool huh?!
We checked into the Wilpena Pound Resort, I forgot that people work to a different time in the bush, so check in took a good 45 minutes, but the staff were really laid back with lots of country hospitality. I don’t generally spend too much time in my room, but it was spacious, clean and super comfortable, but most of all, it was air conditioned! Kind of necessary with the 43c degrees heatwave. We had an hour to kill before going on the Sunset tour, so we headed to the bar for a coldie.
I’ve been told I don’t wanna miss an outback sunset; and folks that’s not a lie. After the scorching heat of the day, hours in the car, the landscape was absolutely breathtaking. If you want to practise your breakdancing, visit the outback without a bug net for your hat, the flies love you – doesn’t matter if you are 500 kilometres from the nearest garbage bin, you’ll still be swotting the things off you. Apart from the flies, the peace and quiet at dusk was breathtaking.
I was giddy with excitement when the alarm sounded at 530am, we were off to adventure in the air on a 1hr scenic flight over the Pound. The day was perfect, the sky was clear and there was zero turbulence. We had a bump free ride giving us lots of time to take in the view below. And wow! The scenery was some of the best I’ve ever seen & sadly over way too soon.
Back at the Resort we tucked into a brekkie from the meat heavy menu; I’m pretty sure they eat meat with their cornflakes in the outback! The Menu had a mixed grill for breakfast, sausages for lunch and steak for dinner. Now it wasn’t the best feed I’ve ever had, but certainly satisfied the grumbling tummy.
They say the magnificent Wilpena Pound is a destination every traveller has to visit at least once in their life time, and I totally and absolutely agree.
Tell me dear reader, have you been to Wilpena Pound or the outback?
