Amelia the explorer: Shakedown Trip- Arkaroola (South Australia)

ARKAROOLA- Amelia's new favourite word. She says it with such passion and fun.

She loved the place; and not just for the chocolate icypoles to be found at the Lodge. Other favourites included finding Ocre and painting with it, bushwalking and discovering a myriad of weird and wonderful flowers, the bold emus who wandered through our camp, finding some pink clothesline string that someone had left behind, using the porta potty (note to self: we have to move her away from this fascination!), cooking dinner on the campfire and the wonders of the constellations and night sky. She's finding it a bit strange that "Milky Ways" don't just belong in Nanna's pantry.

The road North from Yunta was rough- beyond any we'd experienced to date and at one point we were ~~travelling~~ crawling through the dust at 20 kms an hour. Mind numbingly and bone jarringly horrendous. We ran out of "I Spy" topics after about 30 mins and the rest of the almost 5 hour drive was tedious. Not helped by following some slow (frustratingly inexperienced) drivers in front of us who refused to pull off the road to allow us to pass. But this allowed for some creativity and we invented necessary variations on the "What am I?" game, which has allowed us to pass the time. (Amelia tended to want to play "Imaginary I Spy" which was a touch confusing.)

I found these floodway signs very funny given the dry conditions- but I'm sure it does rain sometime.

Also we must have crossed "Tea Tree Creek" a dozen times so we're guessing they're just called that after the vegetation in the area.

Along the way we saw some interesting ruins from a mine, Amelia luckily being quiet enough to follow a tiny skink along a broken brick wall and we arrived at the wilderness sanctuary by 5pm. We try to never finish our travels this late as it leads to some grumpiness as we set up camp. We set up the bare minimum, just leveling and lifting the Jurgen's roof so we could sleep. Dinner that night was at the Arkaroola Lodge, where we competed with a seniors tour for the buffet offerings. They were some hungry tourists that was for sure, full of jokes and good humour after a days sightseeing.

Lucky our billy's in better shape!

"But this car won't go- it has no wheels!"

Waking up we decided to move to the bush camping area and after a few interesting manoeuvres we found the perfect site and settled in. A few other campers were scattered around- but we had plenty of room to play. The next few days were filled with exploring the area- finding amazing rock formations, beautiful gullies and a remote mine (which was actually quite successful for awhile).