If circumstances had allowed, we would have extended our stay at Rawnsley Park Station to allow us to visit some of the 4wd tracks and other gorges. What it now means is that we need to return in the future. We do plan to visit Adelaide sometime in the future and the Flinders Ranges will be a short detour during that trip.
With a lot of sadness we departed just after 9:00am and after saying goodbye to new friends.
In no hurry, we travelled the 35k’s to Hawker for fuel. We must add that the average fuel consumption was showing 10.6 litres and that did not change until after we departed Hawker.
When we arrived in Hawker last weekend, there was only one service station open. As previously mentioned, that was the Mobil on the corner of Cradock and Wilpena Roads. This has to be the first service station in Australia that we have seen that provides disposable gloves on the diesel bowser and the owner and staff actually go out of their way to help you. This is truly a “Service Station” and also doubles as the local Visitor Information Centre.
From Hawker we travelled down the “R M Williams Way” to Orroroo via Cradock. We had an experience with the caravan as we approached Cradock. As we slowed for an 80kph speed sign, the road took a dip and a turn to the left at the same time. Our ESC system on the caravan detected this and promptly applied some brake to the caravan. The braking had no effect on the car and was only felt for a second or so. We can only assume that the ESC felt it was necessary to “make an adjustment”. This has not happened before nor did it happen again during our trip today.
For reasons we cannot explain other than the terrain today was undulating, our fuel consumption was around the 16 litre mark. We detected very little wind however any wind would have been coming from in front of us for the majority of the trip.
We arrived at Peterborough at lunchtime. Having been here before, we had already decided to have a relaxing afternoon including long showers. “He” took the opportunity to remove the contents of the rear tray and clean away the dust from a couple of days ago. Much to our surprise, there was very little and it looks like the rubber seal we purchased in Alice Springs may have done its job.
We could not get television so we did our blog, read and had an early night.
We did mention in another blog entry that we did not have internet at Rawnsley Park. In 2008, the only way to get telephone (Telstra) reception was to climb the hill behind the caravan park. “He” actually did that on the day we arrived. We found out yesterday that there was some telephone and internet coverage in the camp kitchen at Rawnsley Park. This is true and we were unaware.