Sherwood Diary: Days 18, 19 and 20 Wilpena Pound

We loved the drive from Gulf View RA to Wilpena Pound. We stopped at Quorn to dump and fill the tank with non potable water, then had lunch at the little town of Hawker. We arrived at the Wilpena Pound resort in the afternoon. Checkin was easy and we then had to find our own camping spot in the unpowered section, which is extremely large. We were given a 10 litre box of drinking water for free and together with the one we bought at Coles it should be enough.

We made a fortunate choice in staying on the eastern side of the campground because although we have an older style rammed earth ablutions block, as opposed to newer style ones on the other side, we have a number of BBQ picnic shelters and a very well appointed camp kitchen. It’s a short walk over there for taking our dishes to be washed after meals and I even made toast and coffee there yesterday morning, and brought it back to the van.

Yesterday morning I spent quite a lot of time getting a load of washing done before we walked over to the Tourist Info Centre before lunch. Later in the afternoon we went along the walking trail for about 1.5 kilometres and plan to do a longer walk today. The trail starts off with several options which later branch off and are colour coded for difficulty. We’ve realised that we won’t get views of the Pound (a huge bowl like area) unless we get up high. I’m not sure if we can drive to a suitable lookout, that is yet to be worked out. I don’t think we can do any of the climbs. I walked at least 8kms yesterday, but I think most of that was actually getting around the campground as our evening walk was fairly short, about 2 or 3 kms.

That said, the landscape was so beautiful on our drive here and we are surrounded by high hills in the campgrounds, so we are really enjoying the environment. On the drive here we could see a jagged range of hills, which I think is the rim of the Pound. There are stations with sheep and cattle grazing all around the park and it looks like really good grazing land. Coming close to the resort we drove into what looked like a pine forest. They are a type of cypress tree, not especially tall, but it makes the environment feel different, almost as if we are in a another country. Along the creek there are lots of beautiful gum trees as well.

So, now just a few of the photos. There is a photographer based in Hawker who takes incredible panoramic views of the area and we look forward to a visit to his gallery. I don’t think my photos do it justice at all.