Day 504 | 12 km north of Wilmington: still on the Mawson

29 October 2012 | 55 km | zzOz total: 16,349 km

The road to the Warren Gorge exemplifies the rationale about the Mawson Trail’s route: there’s a great road into Quorn about 30 km away, instead the trail turns off and heads up over Yarrah Vale Gorge Pass, you have a short sharp climb to get a view back out across the Willochra Plain, hills at a distance a colour approaching violet. Later after ks of almost granny cog incline there’s another view, this time to the Quorn wheat silo down next to the railway tracks and the bountiful vegetation of the town itself. The idea is not to take the most direct route, better to get the big view where you can.

I’d been wondering how closely I should follow the Trail, seems my natural inclination is to follow the inclines as marked by the usually plentiful Trail signage. I confess I took a short detour leaving Quorn where the track markers are not so apparent.

Quorn is a place with plenty of history on show, not quite fetishised, it’s just forgotten, modernity has moved on elsewhere: four old pubs adjacent in the main street hinting at the town’s folk recreational activity, at least historically, the railway station for the weekly historic train trip through the Richi Pichi Pass, a couple of closed historic general stores, two more modern pharmacies competing strongly for trade in a place where you might imagine the town’s population would suggest one would suffice.

I rejoined the trail out on a roller coaster dirt road, a car or two the only competing traffic in the course of the afternoon, past more stacked rock that would one day have been the hopes and dreams of someone’s home, and maybe a little early, but recognising the merits of a possible campsite snuck in behind some spreading trees not far removed from the road.

Tomorrow will be time for domestics, washing both self and clothes, in the hamlet of Melrose.

Might be a couple of nights to catch up with life.