We packed up after breakfast and loaded the camels. I kept on looking north west to the Vulkathunha–Gammon Ranges and wondered what would it be to like to walk in them. Would it be similar to what we had done when we made our way through the northern Flinders Ranges to the plains? Would it suggest ways to bridge the great divide that blocks the peopled Pleistocene from the peopled present? It is ironic that Australia’s history is understood as white, modern and lacking antiquity — a history defined by European ships, foundational white human arrivals and the technologies of European modernity.

It was an easy walk to the old dog fence with light rain falling and then onto the pickup point by a bore near the Junta-Arkaroola Rd. We hung around for a couple of hours to unpack in the sunshine and for the new group to load up the camels. After lunch we were driven back to Blinman via Wearing Gorge.

We unloaded the swags at camel HQ in Blinman, picked up the car, and drove the short distance to the Blinman pub for a shower, meal and sleep. Dinner was lamb shanks, chocolate pudding and ice cream. The pub was full of tourists. Prior to dinner I wandered around the small Blinman township with its short, colonial past and then the Blinman dump. I was taking some exploratory photos for a possible future visit.

It rained during the night. The following morning on our way to Hawker we made a detour to Stokes Hill Lookout, with its bronze diorama of Wilpena Pound, and stopped for a coffee and quango pie in Quorn. We stayed the weekend in the Hawker caravan park.