After a couple of really long driving days, we decided to head to the Flinders for a bit of hiking exercise and a deep down feeling of health.

We set up camp in the Flinders campsite and joyfully discovered the camp swimming pool, cooled off and splashed around in relief (I must point out that TC has no a/con and it's in the high 30s and low 40s here at the moment) so a dip in the pool was a bit of a luxury.

We picked up the maps and recommended routes and decided to try the St Mary's Peak walk. Its a 22km hike that takes between 6 and 8 hours to do depending on level of fitness, and amount of times you stop for photo ops etc etc etc.

I'd walked a whole bunch of the hikes in July when I was here in the winter, so we figured this one was great for us and our level of fitness....

Did you notice the title for this entry? hmmmm, not such a good plan. We got up at stupid o'clock in the morning, packed water and donned hiking boots and sun cream and headed off. It took about an hour or so to get to the base of the mountains. Then we just had a steady climb up.
I'll spare you the gory details, but flies, sweat, blisters, running out of water, 42 degree weather and tears all featured prominently in the following 8 hours of agony. Still, the views were nice:
pic 1, pic 2, pic 3, pic 4. We did make it to the top... we even made it back to the tent and into the pool before passing out for the evening and vowing never to walk again :oP