Mount Ive Station

29 August – 1 September 2023

Mt Ive Station is very well set up for visitors with accommodation and camping, including powered sites. With a few more cold nights ahead of us, we booked onto a powered site for three nights and settled in for the afternoon. They also have a bar which opens at 5:00pm so we wandered up and sat around the fire with some fellow travellers, then Mick met up with some birders and chatted with them over a few drinks.

The following morning Mick set off very early on one of the 4WD tracks, with another birder, looking for the grasswren known to be on the property. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, they were not successful. We went out the following morning to a couple of other likely spots, but again were not successful. Mick tried in the afternoon and again the morning we were leaving, but he had no luck – looks like we’ll have to come back to Mount Ive another time.

  

Mount Ive has a number of 4WD tracks as well as access to Lake Gairdner, another one of South Australia’s famous salt lakes. We paid for the permit and obtained the key so we could drive out to the lake one afternoon. Of course we stopped along the way to take a few bird photos before arriving at the lake only to find that it was full of water! Just as well we went for the drive and not to marvel at the enormous expanse of salt.

Leaving Mt Ive we decided to go via Kimba and on to Lake Gilles – another potential birdy spot. We set off and tried to find our way using a combination of Google Maps and the GPS, which didn’t always agree. We had misplaced the paper map of South Australia so were a bit unsure when the GPS suggested a road that wasn’t signposted as heading for Kimba, but later we realised we should have gone that way instead of the much longer road we had taken. Along the way we saw three dead wombats – I’m not sure if that indicates there are lots in the area or if they are dwindling in numbers. We’ll never know.

Once we made it to Kimba, we stopped to pick up some fresh food and to refuel before continuing on to Lake Gilles.