Leaving Morgan, we drove down the river valley to Blanchetown.
In the quest to understand the Murray-Darling river system, we revisited Lock One which we last saw in mid March. The flow then was 5,000 megalitres/day (1,900 million US gallons per day), the river level downstream of the lock was very low and there was precious little birdlife to be seen.
Today the flow was 32,000 megalitres/day (12,00 million US gallons per day), the downstream level was 2.1 metres (7 feet) above sea level and the weir was providing food for something like a thousand Pelicans and many Great and Little Black Cormorants.
The flow will increase over the next month but predictions of the maximum level seem to change daily or weekly. It seems that the river below Lock One, the lake system and the Coorong will once again receive only a small part of the recent floods in northern New South Wales and south-west Queensland. We will visit the barrage at Goolwa and Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert soon to see what effect the increased flow to date has had.
We stopped for lunch at a lookout on the cliffs just downstream of the lock and watched, with fascination, the Pelicans taking advantage of the wave lift off the cliff. They had no reason to be flying as they were except for pure enjoyment. Clearly there is abundant food for them and they have plently of energy to spare.
We followed the river to Swan Reach where we crossed on the ferry and headed west towards Adelaide.
As we rose out of the immediate valley of the river, the environment changed back to mallee scrub with poor red soil, sparse vegetation, mallee trees and the occasional shingleback, that icon arid land reptile which we had first seen around Broken Hill.
Suddenly, we reached the hills which protect Adelaide to the east. The scenery did a quick change to what would, in Yorkshire, be called dales - rolling green hills complete with dry stone walls.
Rising 400 metres in 5 kilometres (1200 feet in 3 miles), we burst into the lush green countryside of the Adelaide Hills with lush vegetation, vivid green grass and small properties with lots of sheep or horses in small fields. The contrast with the previous 2000 kilometres (1200 miles) was overwhelming.
We drove on to Tanunda to overnight in the caravan park surrounded by brilliant red bottlebrushes and masses of singing birds.