Sunday, July 24, 2005
Last night was very pleasant, temperature-wise, as was the morning. We packed up and headed towards Wilmington. Just before Wilmington we turned off onto a road to Alligator gorge. The dirt track was quite steep but the views of the ranges were fantastic.
From the car park we descended some steep steps until we stood at the bottom of a narrow valley. We followed the little brook upstream. Along the way were sheer sides of glowing red sandstone, in layers and blocks, contrasted by the brilliant white of the smooth barks of the gum trees. It was spectacular, but extremely hard to capture with the camera because of the strong light and deep shadows. About 300 metres from where we started were the Terraces, where the stream cascaded down platforms.
We returned downstream and then continued past the steps. The setting grew more dramatic as we continued. The walls of the gorge slowly closed in. In places the stream had formed pools which reflected the sides of the gorge. At times the walls of the gorge widened into a cavernous theatre, and then they squeezed so close that there was just about 3 metres of floor space which was occupied by the stream. We had to pick our way with stepping 
stones in the middle of the stream. In some places there were large flat overhangings of rock and the gorge almost had a roof. As we reached the edge of the gorge, the height of the walls reduced and instead of being sheer they became the sloping sides of the valley. There were steps which we ascended and made our way back to the car park. We were unsure of what to do next...to go directly to Port Augusta or to Quorn. We started towards Port Augusta, drove a short distance, then changed our mind and drove to Quorn. As we drove along, we noticed that we were slowly being surrounded by ranges. At Quorn we dropped in at the visitors' centre. The friendly lady there gave us a few options for things to do in the region. We decided to go to Warren Gorge and have another try at spotting the yellow-footed rock wallaby. We got there, and just as we parked a wallaby came jumping down the steep hill side. It was the most colourful wallaby we had ever seen, 
with lots of yellow on the sides and some stripes too. But when we got out of the car to photograph it, it bounced its way up the slope and disappeared. The gorge was also fantastic. The rocks were bright yellow and glowed in the evening sun. It was short gorge, about a hundred metres, and after looking around and not finding any more wallabies on the other side we returned to our car, still scanning the slopes hopefully. Getting into the car, we spotted one resting on a rock and watching us. We watched the wallaby and he watched us and when we had enough of each other, we moved on and went to a caravan park in Quorn. It was run by the same lady we had met at the visitor centre. She and her husband had moved to Quorn from Adelaide to get away from the big city and move to the hills.
