31 Oct—6 Nov—Rawnsley Park Station, SA
It’s Friday and we are off again, this time deeper into the Flinders Ranges to Rawnsley Park Station. We again travelled on the Flinders Ranges Way and turned left onto Rawnsley Rd. As we travelled through the hills we climbed to 479 m in the Flinders Ranges. We arrived around lunch time and set up in a lovely site with mountains on three sides of us.
Rawnsley Park Station is a 4th generation working sheep station which has been developed into a tourism hub with over 30,000 people visiting each year.
The station is very well equipped with a small info centre and grocery shop in the reception office in the caravan/camping area. The site also has eco villas, cabins, the Woolshed Restaurant, a helicopter on a helipad and an airstrip with Cessna’s which do tours. We had takeaway pizzas from the restaurant back in the CARDIS.
We ventured out exploring the station and surrounds on a very hot day. We attempted going to Rawnsley Bluff but the sign at the carpark read 12.6 km hard walk; not today. We went on to Pugilist Hill lookout which is about 10 km drive with great views of the Chace Range. The Rawnsley lookout is about 13 km along Flinders Ranges Way and overlooks Rawnsley Park Station. We drove into the carpark of the Arkaroo Rock area and found information of a 3 km hike; but not today either.
We were looking forward to the scenic flight over Lake Eyre for the day and were a little disappointed when the day started out windy with showers and storms predicted. Issue 1: the plane we were supposed to go on was grounded with an hydraulic leak and it’s replacement was already out on a short flight. Issue 2: just after take off the pilot’s seat dropped and he couldn’t see properly so this meant we just did a quick loop around and landed. Issue 3: over Lake Eyre the storms were getting worse. This all meant that there could be no flight today.
As we were now at a bit of a loose end we decided to visit Wilpena Pound to have a look around. We visited the Information Centre and had lunch at the Discovery Restaurant. We checked out the availability of a scenic flight from Wilpena and they had space on the coming Wednesday so we booked in Wright Air.
On flight day we woke very early and headed to Wilpena air strip for a 0630 hrs flight. Our pilot, Paul was fantastic with all the information of the area and great skill in giving us a steady flight. We saw some amazing countryside, from mountains, plains, towns, properties, natural attractions, salt lakes without and with water of many colours. The weather and company (another grey nomad couple) was perfect and the six hours literally flew by 😆.
See also 2025 “Morisset to Tumby Bay, SA to Granville” trip.
