Day 17 - Wilpena Pound, SA

We had an early start today, trying to fit in a few walks.  The main walk we wanted to do took you into the actual pound.  A pound is a range of mountains that create an area that is almost like a basin.  There is usually no entrance or exit and the only way into a pound is by scaling the rocky cliffs.  At Wilpena Pound though, there is an entrance along a creek that leads into a pound.

Wilpena Pound

 James and I headed out to the pound while Mum and Dad caught a shuttle bus to the start of the pound that cut off about 30 minutes of the 3 hour return walk. 

We caught up to Mum and Dad at the shuttle bus drop off and headed into Wilpena Pound.  The walk was really pleasant, we stopped at the old Hills Homestead and read the story of the Hills family and the hard life they had farming in Wilpena Pound. 
Afterwards we all headed to the Wangara Lookout, a lookout up one near the top of one of the surround mountains/hills.  we stopped at the halfway point lookout and left Mum and Dad there while James and I continued on (Mum still isn't over her cold).

The trek to the top lookout was quite hard. It was very steep, rocky and quite tiring.  It took awhile to get there. 

Finally James and I made it to the top and posed for a picture before heading back down. We ran into Mum and Dad on the way down who had decided that they wanted to get to the lookout too. 

We headed back to our room and had a quick rest before decided to visit Sacred Canyon to see some aboriginal carvings.

This little guy came over to say hi while we were heading back to our room :-)

We had to drive to the Sacred Canyon because it was a little out of Wilpena.  We stopped for lunch on the side of the road and cooked up some tin spaghetti.
We continued on to the Sacred Canyon.  We had to walk for a bit through a creekbed.  The canyon was pretty however the cravings were a little underwhelming.  Well the first set were. 

 
We continued walking and had to do a bit of rock climbing which was really fun! We found a wall of carvings, very interesting to study. 

Isn't the canyon stunning?  I really enjoyed climbing over all the boulders to get to the carvings, it was quite challenging to climb one handed and not drop the camera! But I managed well :-P
On the way back to Wilpena, we stopped an old tree.  This tree was captured on camera about 100 years ago.  Since then everyone tries to re-create the old photograph.   There is a plaque there describing the original photographer and why he took the photo of the tree.

Overall today was really interesting and fun. 
Next stop tomorrow, Peterborough, SA!