Date of Adventure about 27 December 2024 to about 6 January 2025
I’m getting way behind in posting things that I’ve been doing so I thought I’d just make a huge post of travels through the Flinders Ranges in South Australia.
I’ll start with just driving into the Flinders and a little bit of what it’s like driving down some of the roads that I was on. I did spend quite some driving time on tarmac (paved roads) but that isn’t the interesting part. This video shows driving in as well as some of the driving in the gorges in the northern part of the Flinders.
Originally, I expected these to be higher mountains. And it’s really desert mountains except for the areas around the creeks. It’s been a relatively dry year so all of the creeks I saw were dry beds. But they all had trees growing along them, mostly eucalyptus of one kind or another. There are lots of different kinds of eucalyptus in Australia. Someone told me over 100 varieties and I could believe that.
To add to the video, here are a few more pictures of the Flinders.
One of my reasons for coming to the area was to explore abandoned mining towns. Well, it turns out that there were abandoned buildings and mines all over. Just driving the paved roads I saw dozens of abandoned stone buildings. (Check out the prior post on the Abandoned Town of Wilson.) A lot of the abandoned buildings were clearly homesteads in relatively open areas. Back in the mid 1800’s there was a significant effort to grow wheat in this region. A lot of the farmers were put out of business by drought. This year, as I was driving through, I could see a few areas that are probably planted but have been cut and harvested and not yet replanted. But mostly the region is stations (ranches). More sheep than anything but some cattle as well. And it takes a huge amount of land to graze one cow. So the stations around here are the biggest in the world. (Eat your heart out King Ranch!!).
Up one of the gorges that I drove there was an abandoned homestead, the Hill homestead, with an abandoned windmill. I don’t know when this place was abandoned but it was obviously not that long ago.
There has been a bit of wildlife. Generally I see lots of birds and quite a few different varieties. Parrots and crows are the most common but lots of others. In this area, I’ve seen quite a few of the BIG birds.
There were feral camels a month ago. In the Flinders there are lots of feral goats. I’ve seen them at most campsites, except the caravan park in Wilpena. They are a little skittish but I managed a few photos, including some of goats in the “trap” that a guy had up the way from one of my gorge campsites.
The towns are all pretty small and somewhat closed down because it’s hot and off season. No reason to keep a restaurant open if there aren’t any customers. Parachilna is a tiny village, actually on one of the main paved roads. This is the one where I was hoping to get a dinner of local, feral meat.
Here are a few more sights. The last two are in the town of Quorn, which is where the Ghan Railway ran and they’ve kept a lot of the relics and remnants of that old railroad.
The rock outcroppings throughout the area are kind of different because they are all at angles or even perpendicular to the horizon. I guess I’m more used to the layers being closer to parallel to the horizon. However, it does make for interesting scenery!!
Although hot, the camping has been pretty easy and pleasant.
And sunrises and sunsets have been spectacular. I’m not sure why. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of dust in the air. I always think that dust and pollution make for the best sunsets.
Of course there’s virtually no light pollution so nights are great! I’m not that good at nighttime photography but have tried from time to time. One of these nights, in the middle of nowhere, on a new moon, I’m going to try to get pictures of the milky way. One night, in the gorges I was trying for some star photos and got this one, taken to the south. Not a great example but I’m sure that the colors in the sky are due to the aurora australis.
