When it came time to leave the weather seemed more like a cold wintry mid winter morning rather than a warm summer day that's normal for summer. Though rain was threatened, nothing more than a few misty droplets was evident on the screen but that cleared with a minute or two. The further we rode north, the less cloud cover and by the time we reached Hawker 90 minutes later we had mostly blue skies.
The 145 km route http://goo.gl/maps/RkTbF takes us up the eastern side of the northern Flinders Ranges so there's a couple of not to steep hill climbs, some not to long straights and lots of high speed sweeping bends for most of the 90kms north of Orroroo. For most of that distance the road gradually rises up a couple hundred feet and then the next 5 kms or so the road descends down to meet the Quorn to Hawker road. There's also quite a few creeks crossings and no bridges as the water doesn't flow that often even if it does happen to rain.
Apart from Orroroo there's only three other towns to go through. Once thriving railway towns in the days of stream not much exists anymore. The hotels are still in business and supported by the local farming community and tourists these days.
It was about 10:30 when we arrived in Hawker and spent the day with Heather's aunty and cousin.
During the afternoon we went for a walk to the old railway dam which is now used by the locals to water their gardens. Lindy, the cousin took the dogs for a swim.
This is one of the many ranges of hills that are around the area. Taken with zoom on max at the dam site.
The Hawker hotel is next door and I took a couple pics of that. The last time we were up in town we bought pizza from there and Lindy mentioned that they might be expanding their take-away menu as well.
We were going to leave at 4:00pm but it was nearer 5:30 before we did so. I intended to stop and take more pics on the way back home but due to our late departure I wanted to get back home before 'roo o'clock. Heather drove the Magna which was loaded up with potted plants and I had the bike to myself.
The return trip was 288 kms all up and the fuel gauge hadn't reach halfway (usually 250kms). Most of the way up we had a tail wind which was the same headwind I had going back home. With Heather not yet used to the car the ride home was closer to 80/90 kph as I followed her. All up we had a good day and the only expense was the $27 cost for the bike fuel as lunch was provided and there wasmore than enough fuel in the car to get back home.
