After departing the Gawler Ranges, it was time to head back to the coast at Whyalla. It was the last coastal stay before we stopped at Mount Remarkable and began our journey down the Murray River.
This was also the start of our slightly out of order travels, as Easter and the School Holidays had meant a hasty re-organisation to secure campsites. In the end it worked out fine, even if we did a little back tracking.
Whyalla
Whyalla was the big town stop after our time in the Gawler Ranges and outback towns. It is an old company town, owing everything to the local steel works. It’s not longer a company town, but it still feels like the steel works are the centre of its universe.
Beyond that, we enjoyed time at the beach and parklands. We took in a few of the local sights including the lookouts, main street and generally checked the place out. It didn’t jump out and grab us, but it certainly wasn’t a terrible place to be.
Steelworks
The Whyalla Steelworks are the biggest thing going in town. The major employer, the biggest sight on the horizon and fortunately for the interested, open for tours.
The steel works almost folded but have been resurrected and continue under the Gupta group. The Whyalla port is built to serve them and the steelworks smokestacks are ever present on the horizon. Being engineers, we decided to take the Steel Tour through the town and steel works. The tour guide knew his way both around steel making and the town, giving a good history of both. We were surprised to learn Whyalla is now only half the size it once was.
Inside the steel works was the main show. You were restricted to staying on the tour bus, but the bus took you through the entire steel making process, from blast furnace to finished product. The physical size of the place is astounding and it is absolutely filthy. Everything seemed to be varying colours of grey to black, coated in thick dust.
The other thing was the sheer amount of resources involved. In particular water and energy. This wasn’t a total surprise but the challenges of feeding the process were immense. At different points you could see the red hot steel being processed, with steam and flame belching from every gap.
We left realising that despite the dirty, resource intensive process we cannot currently live without steel. Right then it felt like a necessary evil.
Jetty
We have seen and visited plenty of jetties this trip, but Whyalla is home to one of the coolest. When the old jetty was no longer safe, they decided to rebuild with something different. They certainly succeeded and the end result is the circular jetty. It looks very cool, both from above and on its deck and gives several different vantage points to the water below.
People were catching plenty of squid as we wandered around and at the right time of year the rare and very special cuttlefish can be spotted in the water. This was one jetty on which we felt entirely safe.
Northern Beaches
Our final adventure staying in Whyalla was to the northern beaches. There are a series of small beaches on the northern side of town, with a few smaller attractions as well. We did this drive, stopping to see the lighthouse, coastal drive, the cuttlefish spawning area and a few of the beaches.
The first section (with the coastal drive, lighthouse and cuttlefish spawning) was interesting and had some nice views. The further section was less pretty and less interesting. Its only highlight was the shingle beach. It was a rare and interesting piece of geology. A small section of shingle stones that were pushed there when the water was much higher. It was interesting to see, but probably not on our list of recommendations.
Mount Remarkable
We have loved many of the National Parks we have stopped at so far. There have been none that we haven’t liked. Mount Remarkable was certainly high on our list of favourites. It probably had one of the best (and prettiest) campgrounds, with so much to do just a short walk from your site.
The whole park is split into three pieces; the Mambray Creek section, the Alligator Creek section and Melrose section. We camped at Mambray Creek and made a day trip to Alligator Creek but unfortunately had to miss the Melrose section. Even the allure of Mountain Biking could not overcome our time constraints. The whole park is on our theoretical list of places to return to.
Campground
The campground at Mambray Creek was one of the best so far. Our site was literally right on the creek, the kids had to take a few steps to enter the creek and have all the nature play they can desire. For a touch of luxury (but more convenience) it even had hot showers and drinking water. A first for us in a National Park.
It was the proximity of the campground to the walking trails and more importantly the creek bed that made it so great. The girls, as well as all the other kids loved it. There had been several iterations of fort built on the bank and they were able to continue its development. By the time we left, it had doors, walls, a floor and window. Not bad for something built entirely of foraged materials.
The other big thing about this campground was the change of landscape. It was lush and green, with towering, beautiful gums, spectacular hillsides and an array of wildlife. It was certainly a change from the more recent desert parks.
Walks
If we had explored all of the Mount Remarkable National Park, we would have found even more great walks. The ones we did were all pretty good.
Daveys Gully
Our first effort to Daveys Gully was probably the least special. That’s not to say it’s a bad walk, but by comparison to the others is not as pretty and didn’t grab us as much. It took us up the valley near the campground, before climbing up and out of the valley and down the hillside. It gave a reasonable view of the valley and over the creek, but something about it was just not doing it for us.
Wirra Water Loop
The Wirra Water Loop was just plain pretty. Winding along the creek bed behind the campground it focusses entirely on the massive gum trees that line the area. It told you how these magnificent trees work, survive, become hollowed out and ultimately are so important to the ecosystem in the area. The walk was just beautiful and later in our stay, when the weekenders had departed, Christian walked it again. It was one of the most peaceful walks he had done in years. Nothing but the wind, trees and birds along the trail.
The Narrows
When we went around the other side of the park it was specifically to walk The Narrows. It was another gorge walk and after quite some time between gorges we remembered how much we loved this kind of thing. The Narrows was more vegetated, supporting a diverse and dense range of plants and trees than most gorges we have seen. It was obvious we were walking along the path of the waterflow, but it didn’t seem to be very permanent.
Sugar Gum Lookout
Finally, we went for our longest walk in the park. We hiked about 9km up to the Sugar Gum Lookout. It had us starting by winding along the creek bed. The path made a couple of crossings avoiding the water before we merged with a fire trail.
We quickly ducked up a side trail after being told it was the best place in the park to spot the Yellow Footed Rock Wallaby. Our detour was unsuccessful but rather pretty. Later the trail took us to an old shepherds hut. It was incredibly basic and to have shared this dwelling with a family would have been tough. You would have frozen in winter and absolutely baked in summer.
Eventually we began the climb to the lookout. It was a steep and slippery uphill trail but the view from the top was worth the hard work. After a short break, we made our way back to camp. We realised that given how easily we had eaten this trail up, we could have perhaps attempted some of the other longer trails.
Mount Remarkable was certainly the highlight of this part of the trip. Our three nights there were really enjoyable. Knowing that we’d missed a huge section of the park was frustrating, but time was pressing us now. Besides, we had better leave something for our next trip.