March 11 -- Outback Bound

Originally our plan had been to drive all the way from Melbourne, over the GOR and onto Adelaide and Wilpena Pound (WP) in 2.5 days. While in Melbourne Jay came up with a much better idea to fly from Melbourne to Adelaide which turned out to be a great plan since it gave us more time on the GOR and significantly reduced our car bound time. That's the good news. The bad new is that there was still about 6 hours of driving for us between Adelaide and WP and we wanted to avoid driving in the dark.

It seemed to take us forever to get our of Adelaide with all the stoplights plus we made a couple of stops and wrong turns and couldn't pass up the chance to play cricket with the gang. Then a food stop in Pt. Wakefield and an engaging and prolonged chat with the guy at the convenience store and the next thing you know it's getting to be dusk and we've still got nearly 200 km to go.

Under normal circumstances, I don't mind driving after dark. But we were heading into pretty desolate areas where towns were few and far between and generally were closed for the evening after dark. Also there's the kangaroo factor too. Those guys are known for bounding across the bitumen unexpectedly and in fact we'd seen 3-4 roo carcasses on the highways already. Add to that the fact that our rental car agreement considered driving after dark in the Flinders (where we were headed) a violation of our agreement that voided any insurance we had.

Our choice was to pullover and spend the night under the stars (in the car of course) or press on at a cautious pace. It was eerie and dark but the stars were magnificent (the few constellations we could identify were upside down -- that southern hemisphere influence again). We pressed on and only saw a coupld of kangaroos at the side of the road apparently not feeling our Toyota Yaris was worthy of bouncing in front of.

We made it to WP resort around 10 pm, relieved and tired from the long drive. There in the grassy area just a few steps from the bistro were three or four kangaroos waiting to greet us.