We’d been looking at visiting Mt Little Station for a while now, but big rains earlier in the year cut off access to a number of roads. The upside of that is a few months later, the place is very very green and full of life. Here’s a recap of our 4 night visit.
Off To A Bad Start
After 5 hours of listening to kids whinge and fight in the backseat, we pulled onto the Mt Little Station Road and headed towards the homestead. The check-in area is at the homestead itself, and parking is about 100 metres away (the sign says 50 metres but I’m skeptical!). But that’s not what made the bad start.
I’d booked about a month earlier. I had tried to call initially but Kelly, the owner, was busy and asked me to send an email. No problem. So I sent off the email saying we want to “book a camping site for the nights 6th to 9th July (departing morning of the 10th)”. It was all confirmed as booked in.
On arrival, after introducing myself, I get the “Yep, Ryan – and you’re here for two nights”. Oh no. Our campsite has other peopled booked to arrive in two nights time. We’re supposed to be booked for 4 nights. And the booking sheet is looking very full and Kelly is flipping pages back and forward disconcertingly. “You only booked for two nights though?” she says. “No, I booked for 4 nights”, I confirm. She mentioned I emailed her and runs inside to gather the evidence.
Kelly reappears saying “yep, July 6 to 10th you said”, in a tone that was seemingly pleased that she was right. “Yes, that is 4 nights” I point out. “Oh but you wrote July 6 to 9” – ignoring the “departing on the 10th” part. In my head I’m thinking that still doesn’t explain why you’ve booked people in our site from the 8th, but by now I’m just tired and want to set up camp, so I let her keep flipping through the booking sheets to hopefully find us a spot.
With seemingly nothing on offer, she finally mentions the words ‘overflow’. This doesn’t sound good to me. It sounds like all the good spots are taken and we’ll get the scraps. But at least we have a spot. I didn’t fancy hunting around for a free camp with only a couple of hours light left in the day.
Information Pack
At arrival, guests are given a plastic folder containing a host of information about the property, activities to do whilst staying, and other tourist attractions in the area.
This includes an all important map of the property, as if you are like me, don’t get any phone reception there. I’d highly recommend downloading offline maps before arrival. The provided map shows roads that don’t really represent exactly whats happening on the land. The signage around the property is lacking so it’s easy to miss a turnoff. You can’t really get lost though as point the car south and you’ll eventually make your way back to camp.
Also included is a menu for Mt Little famous Pizza Night! This gave us 2 days to come to a decision on what we’d order. Curiously, the menu does not include prices.
Campsites
Mt Little Station offers a fairly large number of campsites along the edges of the usually dry river bed that runs through the property, and a smattering of sites more out in the open. It is the latter where the overflow site lands. It actually wasn’t that bad – some flat ground set in a mini amphitheatre like setting – small rises on most sides. Very secluded from others too. But the kids were quick the point out there were zero trees to climb, and we were a long way from exploring the riverbed.
Although the campsites are mostly along the edges of the river, amongst the tall gum trees, they are not all equal. Some are set quite far back, in exposed areas, and some look really nice surrounded in trees and plenty to explore for the kids nearby.
We had a drive around sussing out a few of the sites. Campsites 1,2,3 all looked nice – close to the river edge. When I say river, I mean river bed. These Flinders creeks rarely flow. But the kids enjoy exploring the rocks on the dry beds. Those camps are somewhat close to the main track, but also close to amenities as well if you need that. Campsite 30 was out on its own in a paddock really – not ideal. The campsite we were originally booked at, 21, was also set back from the river, and I think no better than our overflow site. That made as feel a bit better about being ‘bumped’ out of it.
With better knowledge, next time I’d ask for one of the better sites. There will likely be a next time as things improved and we all ended up having a great time.
Affordability
There were a couple of primary reasons we chose Mt Little for this trip. One was, being school holidays, I wanted assurances of getting a camping spot that free spots Parachilna or Chambers Gorge wouldn’t give me. And two – Mt Little don’t charge extra for kids under 12!
I went through a number of the station stay booking processes, and whenever I’d add 3 kids on, the nightly price would skyrocket. All for a patch of dirt. The logic doesn’t add up. I just simply won’t go somewhere that is charging $70+ per night for nothing than ground to set up camp. I understand it includes access to their property, but then some are charging big sums on top to drive on the 4wd tracks they have too. Kids aren’t actually using anything extra? They obviously have a business plan that works, but I feel like more families would visit without the extra kid charges.
Mt Little Station is much more reasonable in this regard. $25pp, kids under 12 free. Still expensive for a patch of dirt, but that’s almost all inclusive. Access to the entire property, and they’ve clearly spent a bit of money setting up amenities around the place, even if the self contained don’t need them.
Things to Do
We spent our days exploring the property, going for hikes, and nights around the camp fire. The kids favourite hike without a doubt was the pirate cave.
This is a reasonable trek up through a creek bed, but easy enough for the kids to manage. Their excitement when they saw a pirate flag flapping in the wind at the front of a cave was high. When they realised we could climb up to it to go inside it it went through the roof. And inside the cave, is a treasure chest and pirate clothes dressups. They loved it. For the next few days they’d just keep asking to go back to the pirate cave.
The most popular hike seemed to be Mayo Gorge. This might be because of its proximity to the main camping area, or that is a permanent body of water. Given the recent rains the area had had, this one had a decent flow of water trickling down. Its about 1.5kms from the car park / gate, but you can open the gate and drive pretty much all the way there. Half of it was along the creek bed, so high clearance required. The aftermath of the floods earlier in the year was evident, with huge trees on their side washed into other trees still standing. I was a bit underwhelmed with this gorge though. Maybe a bit too spoiled from our Gibb River trip!
Near the Pizza Tavern, there are some goats, donkeys and camels that the kids loved feeding the nearby weeds to. They seemed very friendly even though signs warned of ‘attack goats’.
There is daily animal feedings at the homestead for $10 per child, but my kids never get ready early enough for that sort of thing (it started at 8:30am).
We didn’t get out to all the little hikes and ruins on this trip, so something to look forward to in the future.
The Mt Little Station Pizza Night!
The famous Mt Little Pizza Night was running Saturday and Wednesday nights (check their website to be sure) when we visited. We’d decided beforehand we’d make this a night, and pretty well decided on our choices before heading off. We arrived about 30 minutes after the posted start time, and the place was pumping! Barely a free table in the house, and a lineup that looked like it would take 45 minutes to place an order.
One of us found a table, the other got in line, and the kids immediately made friends with all the other kids running around. The place had a great vibe.
Locking in our Order
Now the reason that menu provided in the information pack didn’t include prices became clear. Our order was blown up as I was slapped in the face by some $30 pizza prices. I’m not big on eating out but made plans for this one to be a treat. But, our family order was going to be $150 so sacrifices had to be made. Our condensed order was:
- Cheesy Garlic Pizza
- Hawaiian
- The Mt Little Special
- Meatlovers
$100. The pizzas are thin base so not particularly filling and we devoured them all. My favourite was the Cheese Garlic Pizza which was value at $15. I would’ve just got 6 of them instead! Delicious. The kids liked the Hawaiian which looked nice but I didn’t get to try it before they polished it off.
Sian loved the Mt Little Special, but too much green stuff on it for my liking so I passed on that one. The Meat Lovers was weird as. I normally love a meat lovers but couldn’t get into this one. There was oodles of caramelised onion and mince perhaps. Sian said it tasted like spaghetti. I don’t like spaghetti so that makes sense! I ate it anyway as I as starving.
With BYO drinks and a few large fires going, we hung around chatting with other travellers, and let the kids play. I bonded with another bloke who got as confused as me by the maps – we’d both ended up at the same dead end, haha! Peter, one of the owners, let me know they had booked 200 pizzas that night. Quite a feat and shows that they’re well rehearsed at this. Despite the huge lineup that greeted us on arrival, it really didn’t take that long for our first pizza to arrive. Even with the price shock, we all agreed this was a great night and well worth it.
Mt Little 4wd Tracks
Mt Little doesn’t offer anything in the way of proper 4wd tracks. However, pretty much the entire property benefits from being in a high clearance vehicle. Particularly with the recent floods, the entire property still has a wet bog holes scattered around. They generally have secondary tracks to avoid them, but there is no avoiding the wash out crossings, with some steep exits required.
You can drive to the top of Mt Little itself which provides some great views of the surrounding areas. This one is marked as 4wd on the provided map. You wont need to engage 4wd if its dry, but it is certainly a steep and rocky track. Good fun, and only takes about 10 minutes to the top. It can be accessed from both sides. Interestingly one side is not marked as a 4wd track. With some quite lump sections I certainly wouldn’t be taking a regular passenger vehicle up there.
The property is only roughly 20km from the campsites to the northern end. Due to how slow you need to take the tracks, it feels a lot bigger than it is.
Are we heading back?
Like most places we visit, the kids say we absolutely need to go back! They loved pizza night and the pirate cave. This quick trip to the Flinders has given me a desire to book in a longer trip. I’d really like to explore a bit more. I think Mt Little Station would certainly be included in any type of Flinders Ranges tour. Recommended!
