The Australian Arid Lands Botanic Garden is just outside Port Augusta and we spent a day there walking the trails and seeing if we could spot any new birds.

In the morning we followed the short trails near the visitor centre and then headed over to Garden Lookout – a raised area with a boardwalk and views of a salt lake in the distance.

After lunch we walked the only long trail in the gardens – the Red Cliff Walk (5km loop). The trail went to the back of the gardens and then came out on the Spencer Gulf just outside the garden boundary.

There were good views of the Flinders Ranges and also a good spot to stand and look at the red cliffs that the walk is named after. Because the sun wasn’t directly on the cliffs the full glory of their ‘redness’ was hard to see – so we went back to the same spot five days later to see them again in the morning light.

There was pretty good bird viewing in the gardens and we saw our first ever zebra finch.