We walked the southern Mt Lofty Range this morning – up it, down it, and around it, on home made paths, on gravel ones, stony, wide and steep narrow ones with sheer drops. We both felt dizzy for awhile, not a good place to have those feelings so stopped for some protein and water. This experience took me back to Switzerland and our four hour non stop climb where I fainted twice with low blood pressure. After four hours of continual variations we staggered the extra steep last kilometre to the top.

As you can see a pattern is emerging. We walk most of our kms in the morning, then back to town for a late lunch, then another walk, a stroll round town and home by dark. My afternoon walk today took me to the home and studio of Hans Heysen, the Australian artist, born in Germany but living here in South Australia.

He quickly earned a reputation for his art, with an extraordinary ability to paint our Australian gumtree. He seemed able to catch the very essence of this native gem that covers Australia. Corrie and I became very fond of this tree as well on our NSW river journey last year. I was excited when I found out about Hans’s love for them also, so my 5km round walk to his house after a tough day was a breeze.

It was also a chance to find a eucalyptus branch on one of Hans’s gumtrees where I could hang my theraband to do one of my upper body exercises. I need to do this for just one of these exercises because there is no where usually to hang it from, inside. I am also thinking seriously about doing the reverse and hanging one of his gumtrees on my wall. 

There’s a walking track in front of Hans’s home and it’s called the Heysen Trail. It runs for 1200kms, starts in Cape Jervis and ends in the Parachilna Gorge in the Flinders Ranges. I would love to do this walk but the accommodation is too irregular along the way and we don’t camp, so I will have to be content with just crossing it several times a day.