MONDAY 14 MAY     ARKAROOLA

It was a lovely, sunny morning.

In keeping with our alternating days policy, we decided to walk to Arkaroola Waterhole, about 5kms each way from the Resort.

This route, broadly, followed the Wywhyana Creek, to its junction with Arkaroola Creek, then went upstream along the latter to the waterhole.

The first section from the Resort, was along the same road track we’d driven yesterday, on the way to the Echo Camp track. So we had driven it, but knew it would be a pleasant, scenic, walk.

Yes, the walk was varied, and all on gravel roads. There was quite a bit of up and down work, parts of it quite strenuous. Funny how you don’t notice that from a vehicle!

We left camp at 10.10am, and got back at 1.40pm. Not bad. John found the last couple of kms tough, which rather surprised me, after the other, longer walks he had recently done.

There was still a little water in the Arkaroola Waterhole. We saw ten feral goats around it. They had made stringent efforts, here, to get rid of these pests, because of their drastically bad effect on native vegetation, and had succeeded in really reducing the numbers. But, obviously, some had still survived. They were very people shy and ran off as soon as they saw us.

There had been a cloud build up through the morning and there were a few spits of rain, just as we got back to camp. Then the heavens opened and there was a real deluge, complete with thunder and lightning. This continued through the rest of the afternoon, and made the camp area pretty sloppy.

M had a stream running through her camp.

There were, at times, some very spectacular skies.

The lightning continued, in the distance, after dark.

No campfire tonight – for obvious reasons……

We watched the ABC News on TV – hadn’t done that for a while.

Retired for the night, wondering if the road would be open for us to leave tomorrow, as planned?

Found out later that there was 16mm of rain here through Monday afternoon and evening. It had felt like a lot more.