Pichi Richi Railway and Beyond

Quorn Railway Station

We left camp at about 9.30 and made our way up to the Quorn Railway Station where the toot of a steam whistle excited our interest the coming rail journey. After getting our tickets from the cheery lady in the ticket office (we had prebooked months ago which was just as well as it is School Holidays in South Australia at the moment) we joined the approximately 200 other eager patrons to board our steam powered train. We boarded at 10 a.m. in COVID safe numbers per carriage and were finally underway at approximately 10.45 for the hour long trip out to Woolshed Flats (right next door to where we had free camped on Sunday night). There we were able to purchase home cooked sausage rolls and pasties for lunch while we waited for the locomotive to be relocated to what would now be the front of the train for our return trip to Quorn.

Our rather grand mode of transport for the morning

After returning to Quorn it was back to the vehicles for the rather short trip to the Cradock Hotel via Hammond, an historic old town consisting of a couple of old houses, a deserted general store, a derelict hotel and a rather grand, but unused, Roman Catholic Church. The scenery was quite pretty being mainly sheep pastures leading up to the foothills of the Flinders Ranges. After partaking of the obligatory drink at the hotel (a condition of camping behind the pub) we set up our camp on the wind blown gravel two acre lot of land that formed the campground on the traditional lands of the Banggarla people. The wind was victorious in the end, cutting short our normal after dinner drink of the Old Tawny by inundating us in swirls of red dust. But we live to fight another day even if our vehicles are being buffeted by 30 to 40 kmh winds

The Public Bar, Cradock Hotel

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