Day 496 | Middlesight Water Hut: yup, the Hilton, just no service

13 km | zzOz total: 16,055 km

Kaboom!!

Not rifle fire or bike tyre explosions this time, a massive dry thunderstorm last night that went on an hour or so, lucky I was safe and snug in my tent.

This morning started similarly, except today a sprinkling of rain discoloured my tent briefly, 10 minutes later I rolled it up dry.

Around the horizon were momentary shards of forked lightning, one of my sensible shoes rationales for evacuating areas as Summer approaches further north as I did, there ain’t much in the way of shelter out here, ie, none. Some dramatic cloud formations as I started to get spectacular vistas of the Flinders Ranges while I trundled down, mostly down, the ridges on a terrific occasionally graded fire track that’s chained off to the Public from cutting up.

It’s one of the most memorable sections of the Mawson, on the way to Wilpena, plenty of White pines around, an arid area stayer, living with the River Red Gums that match the size of the creek bed they inhabit. Down at Trezona, the national park campground, where you cross Brachina Creek they are as mighty as you will find.

I had a break from riding down at the creek and went to find the, err, I’m not so sure what exactly I’m looking for, it’s something geological, marking sediment that was starting to be laid down in the Ediacarian Period, 620 million years ago, just prior to the Cambrian, when in this area, the Brachina Gorge the most ancient fossils on Earth have apparently been discovered. I guess there’s other most ancient elsewhere as well, we like to go on about our Guinness Book of Records type stuff. There’s major geological timeline signage as you progress down Brachina Gorge, getting younger all the while, but frankly I’ve had sufficient of these gorgeous gorges in recent times, this one may have been easier on the body than yesterday’s effort.

I stopped at this familiar shepherd’s hut once again, was here more than 3 years ago from my entry in the hut book, for an early lunch, umm, quite early, and then I thought I’d look at those massively jumping gears, took a few links out of the chain. The bunks looked just somewhat too tempting and like Goldilocks I lay down for a lunchtime nap, that’s the first bed, of a sort, I’ve seen since I left Mt Isa very nearly four weeks ago.

So I didn’t get far today, it’s probably more restful than Wilpena where I’ll spend a few nights to reacquaint myself with the hiking trails.

Not a cloud in the sky, no worries about thunder tonight.

No worries at all.