Heading north from Whyalla (following our tour of the steelworks factory), a large mountain range begins to dominate the distant horizon. It has been quite some time since we’ve come across such a range – all the way back to the Pilbara I think! Sure, there are hills and the like in southern areas of WA, and they are probably classified as a mountain range, but they don’t have that same impact of tallish mountains rising up starkly from the surrounding plains.

Initially, I wasn’t sure what this range was, thinking that the Flinders Range is 100km’s or more to the north. Well, the national park part of it is up there, but the range is a lot bigger than the NP and it was indeed the Flinders Range we were approaching. It’s a pity I didn’t take any pics at this stage, as all later pics showing the mountains are from an already elevated height. Following a stop in Port Augusta for some info, a quick look around, and a bit of shopping, it was time to head off to Quorn – the first town on the range.

The road up to Quorn is quite pretty – its a windy scenic road that weaves it’s way up the mountain. As per most of SA at this time of year, the country side is dry and brown, but nonetheless scenic. A nearby train track followed a similar route up the hill, being rather steeper than most tracks I’m not sure if it is still used.

Quorn itself is a little old town with old buildings. Nice enough, but we didn’t stay long, heading off to the next town Hawker. Having climbed up onto the range, there are a lot of flat plains up here to drive along. However the range still protrudes out from this plain, along the left edge as we head north.

Hawker is another little country town on the plains, the final one before the National Park and the tiny Wilpena Resort that is at its southern end. The terrain becomes hillier as you get close to, then enter, the NP.

We rolled into Wilpena Wed evening (5/11/14), expecting to stay the night under our 2 month NP pass, but it turns out that Wilpena Resort is privately owned. Rather than pay additional camping fees we travelled a little further north to one of the actual NP campgrounds. We turned down the Brachina Gorge Geological Trail road, and pulled over for the night at Trezona campground, which is one of the 3 that the guy at Wilpena recommended (being his favourites). A lovely place to camp the night, on the banks of a creek lined with huge old gum trees.

Thursday morning we headed west down the Brachina Gorge, seeing the sights and changing ancient geological rock patterns revealed by the creek. Made for some nice viewing and photos…

After a short retrace, it was south to the Bunyeroo area where we planned to do some hiking. We did the Bunyeroo and Wilcolo Creek Hike, around 10km’s all up including the detours to the lookout. This was a nice walk along the Bunyeroo and Wilcolo creek beds, and up through some pine forests, giving a nice lookout to the surrounding mountains.

Though a warm day (in the 30’s), none of us found it a particularly difficult walk. We spent the arvo resting in shade in the parking area, debating whether to do the nearby 7.5km Gorge walk now or in the morning. The problem with waiting till the morning is that it was forecast to be 40C the next day! The boys were dead set against doing it tomorrow (even though it’d be in the morning before the worst of the heat), but Nicole had started to feel a little dizzy and unwell.

In the end the boys decided they were going to do it today, to get it over and done with, whilst Nicole and I would do it in the morning! Nicole didn’t like the idea of the boys doing it on their own however, so I reminded her of the concept of helicopter parenting; which to my surprise she hadn’t heard of…! The walks are well marked and signposted, with posts every 200m, so she agreed in the end; but you should have seen Jonathan’s smile and grin when I was pointing out that in 5 years time he’d have his own drivers license and be off doing anything he wants!

So around 5:45 the boys set off on the Gorge walk, with Jonathan planning on walking to the 2km point before returning, and with Daniel mumbling about only wanting to do 1km…. (but they had to stay together) Don’t worry about the late time – the Sun doesn’t set here till 7:30 and it doesn’t get dark till 8:30! In any case, they came back 50 minutes later – smiling and happy, and claiming to have walked 4.4kms!! I trust them 😉

Turns out Nicole still wasn’t feeling 100% in the morning either, so we didn’t end up doing it after all! As the boys were the only ones to do this walk, here is Jonathan’s take on it….

The walk was called Bunyeroo gorge walk and we walked 4.4kms. The gorge cliff changed sides as the walk went on it was on the left side then the right. There were some cool rock formations and gums on the walk, and a lot of lizard skink things.

We spent Thursday night at the nearby Acraman campground. Fri was hot as expected, so we basically did nothing the whole day! Didn’t seem as bad as the heat wave we experienced at Quondong Point though!

We returned to Wilpena Sat morning, in order to do the 6.4km walk to the Hills Homestead. More pretty scenery on the way.

The Hills Homestead walk leaves from Wilpena and is a nice easy stroll, mostly beside the creek and with a fair bit of shade. The Hills Homestead is a restored original home from around 1904, and there are some interesting boards with stories about life here so long ago.

We certainly live a pretty cruisy life compared to how they did back then (a century ago). For them, much of the life was about working, and only in the rare good years did they have time for much else it seems. Despite trying multiple things – wheat, sheep etc – and a few boom years, it appears everyone from this area ended up either dying, or leaving, this tough unforgiving landscape. It also served as a reminder that inefficient, overbearing and poorly run governments are not a modern phenomenon. Back then the government used to stipulate how many head of sheep you had to run per acre, when doling out the land leases! Of course the tough dry country out this way had no hope of sustaining anything like what they required, which quickly stripped and degraded the land of any vegetation….

On the way out of Wilpena (having completed the walk) we had a quick look at the Solar Power Station which provides power to Wilpena. We were told it is the largest in the southern hemisphere! On seeing it I couldn’t believe that to be the case – it’s substantial at 100kW, but nothing huge! Turns out the signs say it was the largest off-the-grid system when it was built in 2009! I’m sure there are plenty of much larger ones out there now, but probably mostly on-grid.

Deciding that we’d seen enough of the Flinders Ranges NP for now (but not the Flinders Range itself), we headed back down through Hawker, Quorn, but then took the alternative scenic route through Wilmington. We stopped the night near Melrose, on the edge of the Mount Remarkable National Park, but you’ll read about that in the next post!