We couldn’t leave this area without doing part of the Strzelecki track so we turned right at Lyndhurst and kept going. I wonder why the Strzelecki track is declared 4WD only – it was quite wide, nice and even gravel road with several sealed sections in between... I guess this is due to the gas fields probably 350km on the track and maybe the track changes after that. We camped halfway at an area within the dunes which we used as shelter against the wind. There was another couple camping so we had a campfire going until midnight or so. During the night we could hear several dingoes howling close by and far away. Some of them most have been pretty close, but we couldn’t spot their tracks around the tent in the morning.
The next day we left the Strzelecki track and drove into the Gammon Ranges National Park and camped in Arkaroola where we met our friends from the Birdsville track. At one time we saw three Grand Vitaras which were going bush... We camped close to the creek and had a fire going each night. You can do several bush walks and drives at Arkaroola . We decided to have a look at the Paralana Hot Springs which are just 30km away. But the way was quite hard to drive – narrow and rocky. Most times you couldn’t drive faster than 25km/h and you had to use low gear. But it 
was worth the hassle although you can only stay around 15min in the area. I think some radioactive material heats the water and it might accumulate in the air (definite no camping)… A sign near the spring says that helium and radon gases evaporate here… All trees and bushes must love this special water – they were green and quite tall. The spring itself was hard to spot as it was underneath a rock but you could see bubbles coming to the surface all around the rock. Sometimes they were really small and one at a time and at other times they were surfacing within the second. Driving to the springs is 4WD. Some parts of the track are pretty rocky and Anja had to move a few rocks to make it easier to get through. Great, even corrugations found their way to Arkaroola! 
Some of them really bad and it was a bumpy ride in a few spots. Other parts of the 4WD tracks had quite a bit of erosion damage and you had do drive carefully in low gear around and over them. – Oh, corrugations… getting to Arkaroola was bad too. The last 10-20km of the road were so bad that we had to slow down to 20km/h. Corrugations deep as mountain valleys… - Okay, not so deep but at least very, very deep! If you don’t believe come here and check it for yourself! :-)
We did the Ridge Top Walk enjoying the views. The walk is 5km one-way but you could use a shuttle service to get to the start of the track. You had to walk up the ridge and then it was easier as you were walking on top of the mountain which was at the peak around 600m above 0. It was amazing how many flowers we saw – red, yellow, purple... including the national flower of South 
Australia. You can enjoy the views to both sides of the mountain and they definite look different – to the south it’s more rocks and to the north are more trees and bushes visible. We had luck with the weather – it was sunny but not too hot so we could see long distances...
Enjoy, Tom and Anja
PS: The pictures below are from our ridge top walk and yes they look fantastic. But you should have a look at the uncompressed photos for the web. They will take your breath away…
PS: Some more photos from the driving track…
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