Wednesday, October 26, 2016 – 24.62 km

After a rest in Burra that I’m going to skip over (I was lazy, ate ice cream, blah blah), I’m back on the trail and attempting to reach Kapunda by Halloween. Halloween isn’t a major holiday in Australia, but Kapunda is known as the ‘most haunted town in Australia’, so isn’t there poetry in being there for Halloween? A sort of desperate, Halloween-loving, straw-grabbing poetry?

I’m not sure yet how I’ll divvy up the kilometres in this leg, so rather than a ‘plan’, it’s actually more like a ‘notion that I find cool and am hoping will work itself out’. Just like 95% of my plans. Two important factors in the completion of this plan are 1) my bad foot and 2) making use of the huts, since they have fireplaces and in Burra I was again unable to purchase gas.

Road walking to start today, then fence following, then an excruciatingly long walk (10 km+) down Top Road, a sealed/paved but deserted road. It felt like a road in a post-apocalyptic world, which was fitting because I was heading for a place called ‘Worlds End’. I’m unsure whether the name means ‘World’s End’ and they’ve left out the apostrophe on the map because grammar is for hosers, or whether it’s meant as a statement, like ‘Worlds end all the time’. Both options make it sound like a charmingly depressing place.

The flies were crazy today. A headnet is an absolute must on the Heysen.

Located between fields, the World’s End campsite has a water tank and grove of trees. I had heard that the dry campground at Burra Gorge about 1.3 km further along the trail was nicer, so I decided to keep walking after collecting water. Flies entered my Nalgene when I tried keeping it open for filtering, so I just filled my dirty water bag and set off.

The gorge campsite is pleasant and I pitched my tent beside a picnic bench. There are some caravans here and a seemingly drunk guy with a car and camp chair (dodgy). No fees and no facilities except a drop toilet.