There will always be places to see. I will never tire of a road trip – the most recent one to our Flinders Ranges. We had the camper trailer packed from our long weekend in the hills with family. So there was only food to pack. We were on the road by eight. My brother had driven from Aldgate in his campervan to join us on the trip.
Leigh, my partner, grew up in Melbourne, but had lived in Queensland for forty years, while working FIFO in many different countries around the world. He had never been to The Flinders and was enthusiastic about the prospect.
We travelled north via Orroroo, through our lovely wide open spaces dotted with ruins and my mind-images of times gone by. It happens to me every time – I wonder what brought the folks of old to these outback places where they had to find water, establish dwellings, try to grow food in hard ground, travel great distances to stock up on supplies, and were isolated from friends, family, and even neighbours. I also see a myriad sights I would love to stop and photograph. But that can’t happen. It would take forever to reach anywhere if we stopped for all. And these photo opportunities are only there for seconds. It would be almost impossible, by the time we stopped, to find that exact place where the branch of that tree had thrown its shadow on the half-sunlit bush on the edge of an eroded section of that tiny spot of land.
Hawker was our first day’s destination. The town’s caravan park was lovely. We had booked an unpowered site as we were self-sufficient (other than toilet and shower). I was a little alarmed when the woman in the office told me that all the unpowered sites had been taken.
‘But I booked,’ I said.
‘I know,’ she said,’ but we’ve had a contingent of bikers arrive and they have taken over the whole area.’
She told me we could camp next to them. I had reservations, imagining noise into the night. However they turned out to be completely respectable, quiet and considerate.
That night we went to the pub for dinner. The office attendant had recommended the sporting club, but as its menu was limited to schnitzels, we fancied the more extensive menu of the pub. Big mistake. As we left the park, we saw twenty or so bikers walking up the road to the sports club.
There couldn’t have been more things wrong with our experience at the pub. Just a comedy of errors really. Leigh and I got our meals in reasonable time, but Dale hadn’t received his by the time we had finished ours. He went to the bar to enquire. ‘It’s coming,’ he was told by the hippy waiter, as if to say, ‘don’t be impatient.’ There was one other couple in the dining room, and a table of five outside. Just then, one of the outside people, came in holding a box of pizza. I heard him say to the woman at the bar
‘This pizza isn’t ours, we ordered a such and such.’
I heard this and jumped up to see if it was Dale’s. It was, but one and a half pieces had been eaten and it had been out there for at least half an hour. Another half an hour’s wait for Dale’s to be cooked and delivered to the table. The only saving grace for the whole night was the photo I took from outside the hotel as we were leaving. I looked at it when we got back to the park. I’d taken it from a distance but when I zoomed in, I saw that I had captured three people on the verandah. A young couple up one end was having a little episode. She had her back to the camera, but you could see from her body language that she was upset or crying. He was trying to pacify her. A young lad – probably a mate – was standing up the other end of the verandah, smoking, observing, one foot on a chair, waiting for them to finish. I couldn’t believe what I had captured – enough to write a short story about.
Next day we drove to Parachilna, stopped at the iconic Prairie Hotel – too early for lunch, so we moved on to Beltana. This now lightly populated town was once a bustling major stop on the Great Northern Railway line which later became The Ghan railway. It had also held rich deposits of copper that was mined there for years. When the mining stopped, the town all but died, but it is now a State Heritage Area – valued for its historic old buildings, which we visited, one by one, sensing the bygone spirit of the place. I wonder if this, for me, has something to do with memories of my childhood, when I lived in an old stone cottage with few amenities.
A middle-aged couple who live there in Beltana are in the process of restoring the old pub which had fallen into ruin in the fifties. They have done an amazing job in bringing it back to life. You feel like you’re just about at the end of the earth here, but there was a flow of ‘friends of the Outback’ coming through and ordering the light lunches and canned beer available.
We were going to head on up to Arkaroola but had got a puncture on our camper that day and felt too vulnerable now, without a spare, to go further. So we did a u-ie and drove back down to Blinman where we sat on the verandah with our nice cold beers and watched the flow of local cowboys and travellers going through the ‘revolving door’ of the pub.
That night we stayed at Angorichina Station camp-site. We set camp, flicked open our tables and chairs, and the three of us sat overlooking the creek below, with its abundant wildlife (including feral goats I must say). We put out some of the nice food we had brought, poured ourselves a wine and eased back with comfort and satisfaction and that feeling of sublime joy I get in these places.
We went to bed at about nine under a star-filled sky, but by two AM a bright flash, followed by a rumble of thunder, woke me. It intensified. I had seen earlier, as we sat looking over the dry creek-bed, high up in trees, debris deposited by past floods. It started to rain – steady, but not yet heavy. More thunder and lightning – for the next five hours. I was so glad we hadn’t decided to camp on one of the lower creek banks that had looked so appealing earlier in the day.
By seven AM the storm was over. I had never known a thunderstorm to just circle round and round like that for five hours. But we were in The Flinders Ranges, and there is a mystery about this place on so many levels.
Next day, Brachina Gorge, although I’d been there several times before, had a different look and feel about it, with everything green and a bit water-logged, with some running creeks to cross. A photographer’s paradise. At the end of the day these treasured photographs will mean nothing to anyone else but me, and Leigh. They will probably be discarded by my kids, as I have recently done with my Mum’s photographs of some of her trips.
While Brachina has a kind of ancient grandeur and intimacy, Bunyeroo Gorge itself is not so spectacular, but the views from above never fail to stop me breathing for moments at a time. This range is one of the oldest on Earth, and if you think about its gigantic, wrinkled form, one can’t help but wonder about its creation, and the sound it would have made.
We spent the next two nights in Wilpena Pound Resort. I still love the site – the native bush, the shady trees, but the amenities are now sadly lacking. A lovely experience was visiting Old Wilpena Station and its homestead, which is now an office for the traditional owners. One of the Aboriginal rangers came out of the house to greet us. Arthur. He was affable and welcoming. Dale, my brother, struck an instant rapport with him when he told Arthur of his involvement with the Ngarrindjeri, Kaurna and Peramangk mobs (to name a few of many) in his capacity as Project Manager for the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. The homestead is not normally open to the public but he invited us in to have a look. It’s a large and beautiful old solid stone building with French doors opening out onto the wide verandah all around. We had a wonderful chat with Arthur who was happy to cater to my ever-curious mind.
We’d spent a week in this spectacular part of the world, and when we got home, we unpacked the trailer and had everything in its place by the end of the day. For years, after Warren died, I’d had to do all of this myself, and it always seemed overwhelming and took so long. I am thankful daily for the love and companionship of Leigh, and for his help in so many caring ways.
We have another trip planned but I will tell you about that next time.
It has been a while since I put up a poem. Intended to today but have decided to maybe do that around the middle of the month.
Be well, be curious,
Warmly,
Sue
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