Flinders Ranges – Mooching about at Moorook

Day 3 Tuesday 13/8/2024 Hopetoun, Vic to Moorook, SA, 24 degrees

It’s another clear bright morning. I drag on some warm clothes and gallop outside to catch the warm glow of sunrise, but I miss it. Geez, I’m out of practise.

Campers are chatting by the lake, coffees in hand. What a shame we don’t have time for another day here. We take the road north to the Mallee towns of Patchewollock and Walpeup. Surrounded by endless wheat and lucerne the roads are lined with native pines and mallee gums. From here it’s westwards to the border.

We have a brief stop at the border quarantine while we are checked for fruit and vegetables at the South Australian Mallee town of Pinnaroo. The region known as the Mallee spans northwestern Victoria and southeastern SA and is easily identified by the stumpy Mallee Gum scrub. I’m wondering about the size of this area and Google it to find that at almost 84,000 square Kms and it is roughly the size Austria. Blimey.

Pinnaroo has an expansive parking area for RV’s on the old railway station land opposite the town shops, so it is easy to park. The town though is quiet, and we grab a bite to eat at what seems to be the only café. Yellow rosellas, common to SA, flit about the gums just out of camera range and the weather is pleasantly warm. I hope no one noticed that I took a quick zip on the flying fox in the kid’s playground.

You can’t help but admire the colour in these gums.

We turn north again, this time on the Browns Well Highway a rolling road through grain paddocks, tracts of sand dunes, Mallee scrub, and tumbleweed piled against the barbed wire fences. On the edge of the bitumen Gazanias bloom in shades of orange amongst long strings of paddy melons that look like yellow bocce balls.

Suddenly, everything changes, we are in Loxton, the Riverland. With the Murray River in sight, grapevines stretch across the hills along with bushy green citrus and flowering almond orchards. We continue through miles of almonds, the trees must number in the hundreds of thousands.

Moorook is a small settlement on the banks of the Murray and the RV campground is a swathe of lush green lawn running down to the water’s edge. With nothing to do or hook up to the vans, we stop, throw the chairs on the lawn and watch the wildlife.