Dingley Dell

Can’t really comment any further on the terrain surrounding Broken Hill – it was all shrouded in thick fog when we left the next morning. It eventually cleared to reveal mostly flat, low-ish scrub extending to the horizon in every direction, which continued pretty much to Yunta. In Yunta, we had a quick stop to top up on diesel, then we pointed the BT north onto the dirt (yay).

The drive from Yunta into the Flinders was awesome. We followed the Yunta-Arkaroola road north, turning off west towards Erudina, then at Martin’s Well heading north-west to enter the northern part of the park. The first section was flat-ish, straight-ish and smooth-ish, with expansive views in every direction. We stopped at some ruins on the way (maybe Waukaringa?) – allowing two 4WD convoys to converge on us from different directions. It was almost as entertaining checking out everybody’s setup as it was checking out the ruins. Unfortunately Ryan had chosen that stop to check all our tires and was in the process of re-inflating one that he had let down too far when he found himself surrounded by a dozen 4WD experts (or so it felt to him)(he managed to finish the whole process without it looking like it was the first time he’d taken the air compressor out of its box)(albeit somewhat hurredly). The ruins were worth a look – amongst the graffiti on one wall we found in large letters “Mike and Mal Leyland” – took a photo for my parents.

The road got rougher once we turned off the main drag from Yunta to Arkaroola. We were tailed most of the way by one of the convoys and got to hear retrospectively about all the interesting parts of the landscape or challenging bits of the road via the convoy leader on his UHF. Was kinda educational actually (although it might have been slightly more helpful to hear about the rough bits before we drove over them). Also spotted our first (and only for several hundred kms) Sturt’s Desert Pea (unfortunately not in time to stop - thinking we would probably see dozens of them soon enough).

We finally escaped from the convoy at Martin’s Well – seems that more people tend to turn south and come into the Flinders via Hawker. Our route was probably a bit rougher (although not too bad), but it did give pretty good views of the whole eastern side of the ranges for most of the approach (which I insisted we stop multiple times to take photos of)(sorry Ryan). Somewhere along the way we discovered that the snorkel cap was slowly working its way up the snorkel shaft – we pushed it back down and tightened it up (should have checked the rest of the truck a bit more carefully – see next paragraph).

We finally entered the National Park, duly deposited our fees in the roadside box, took a few more photos and hurried onwards to our camp under grey skies with threatening rain. We pulled into an empty campground at Dingley Dell (just northwest of Oraparinna) – and within 30min we were completely surrounded by other campers (splitting up one convoy who had to camp either side of us). After we pulled up we discovered one driving light hanging by its wiring from the bulbar. The first amazing thing about it was that it wasn’t broken, the second was that the bracket had come apart from the light but was still sitting in the gap between the bulbar and the bonnet and the third was that the nut to hold it all together was balancing inside the bulbar centimeters from the hole that would have dropped it on the road (imagine initial dismay, then HUGE sigh of relief). Every stop from then on included checks of every accessory bolted onto the truck (can imagine my Dad saying “told you so…”).

The campground itself was pretty nice – several areas marked out for camping with a firepit and slab of rock (for sitting on?) at each one. They all fronted onto a small, dry gorge which afforded the neighbouring kids plenty of entertainment during the evening. Was overall quite nice, but VERY cold – we were wondering if camping out might not have been such a great idea…