WILPENA POUND,IN THE FLINDERS RANGES - 0CT 2000

On the long weekend of October 2000, I travelled with friends Stuart and Jeremy to Wilpena Pound, deep in the Flinders Range Mountains in South Australia. We spent 3 days outdoors camping in tents and bushwalking to the top of Olssen Bagge, which was a 941metre climb and took 2 hours.

Along the way we encountered numerous reptiles and wildlife in their natural habitat. There were friendly kangaroos that would eat food out of your hand and some aggressive 2-foot long lizards that nearly ate Jeremy for lunch!

We noticed that much of the landscape is untouched by modern development and that some Eucalyptus trees, were up to 3 metres wide and were therefore thousands of years old. South Australia

Has a magnificent range of places to visit and explore.

There were some embarrassingly funny moments, especially when I did the boy thing and climbed high into a Eucalypt and started showing off and singing from about 40metres high. Stuart filmed me dancing and singing from the ground and then I noticed to my horror that the branches and trunk were crawling with massive inch long ants that give a very painful bite!

I screamed with fear and started to climb down like a man possessed! Jeremy and Stuart were in tears of laughter as I nearly fell out onto their heads. It was all captured on film and this taught me that Nature runs things in the outback.

Jeremy also came to grief one night when he was walking to his tent in the dark. We heard his voice then a loud ‘bu duff tumble tumble' shouting cursing and painful noises in the dark! The torchlight was gone and so was Jeremy!

It was difficult not laughing, so Stuart and me were holding our sides in agony as Jeremiah emerged from the darkness moaning and groaning about the chair size rock that he fell over! Why do we take the piss out of each other so much when somebody has a misfortune?