BUSH TALES

Acacia Ridge - Photo: Otto O'Mallee

Dust was choking everything. Although no more but a fine, translucent veil, carelessly discarded by the wind, it held the country in an iron grip, firmly imposing a mood of its own. Right now the late afternoon sun should have painted the jagged mountain ridges and meandering creekbeds in vivid, emotional colours. Yet its magic had been broken, its rays rendered powerless by by a flexible, inescapable light mesh of dust.

CLOSE TO PARADISE: ARKAROOLA

The area around Italowie Creek had once been the location of a violent family scene in the world of birds. Here, Mr. and Mrs. Mistletoe Eater had had a fierce, short argument.

AWI – IRTANHA THE MISTLETOE EATER

“A long time ago there lived a bird called Awi – Irtanha. One day he went out looking for tucker to eat.

A SUBTLE ATTRACTION BECKONS

“The Northern Flinders Ranges exercise a subtle attraction to return upon any sensitive person who once visits the region.” Sir Mark Oliphant in: Sprigg, R.C., “Arkaroola-Mount Painter, The Last Billion Years, p. 6

Some of my friends in Ireland and Germany do argue that I should have read the above words before my first trip and taken them as a warning.

MORE SURPRISES – BOOKED OUTBACK HOTEL AND A UTE

It was half past four when I walked into the Parachilna Hotel where I was told that the place was booked out. Quite frankly, I did not believe that the place could possibly be booked out but I only had myself to blame!

ANOTHER SURPRISE

The advice I had been given by the Wilpena-Pound National Park Rangers on going north had been right. While some creek crossings should be approached carefully, there was not going to be any problem on the track to Blinman, unless one veered off onto the closed road to Bunyero Creek and Brachina Gorge.

HANS HEYSEN – THE MASTER PAINTER

Leaving early, with frost still covering the ground, I was in time to enjoy the morning show of this master of visual effects, the sun, which this morning utilised quite a repertoire on its stage backdrop, the eastern walls of Wilpena Pound and Heysen Range. One painting by Hans Heysen, after whom the section of the ranges just a few miles west of me had been named, will always remind me of this morning. “In the Flinders – Far North”, painted in oil around 1950, shows a curved line of mountain peaks in the distance, partly touched by light.

NGARRI MUDLANHA, ST. MARY’S PEAK

Situated on the eastern edge of Wilpena Pound lies Wilpena Chalet, the Wilpena Pound Tourist Resort, consisting of a motel with good restaurant and bar facilities, a small store and a caravan park. Since the caravan park has no on-site vans I somehow drifted towards taking up a motel- room. Getting up early this morning and putting my nose outside the front door, quickly confirmed that the decision in favour of decadent comfort had not been such a bad choice after all: the air was more than crisp and the grass shining white with ground frost.

WILPENA POUND

Last night before sunset, I had meandered along and beyond the edges of Hawker’s caravan park, my eyes transfixed upon the distant, yet powerful outline of Wilpena Pound or, to be precise its south westerly section. The rugged line of mountains around majestic Rawnsley Bluff, at first appearing like a sharply cut image against the evening sky, only reluctantly fading into the growing darkness of the night was impressive, even from so far away.

HUGH PROBY – THIRD SON OF THE EARL OF CARYSFORT

SACRED
TO THE MEMORY OF
HUGH PROBY
THIRD SON OF THE EARL OF
CARYSFORT
WHO WAS DROWNED
WHILE CROSSING
THE WILLOCKRA CREEK
AUGUST 3Oth 1852
AGED 24 YEARS
Take Ye Heed Watch And Pray: For Ye
Know Not When The Time Is. MARK XIII.33
THIS TABLET
WAS PLACED OVER HIS GRAVE BY HIS
BROTHERS & SISTERS IN THE YEAR
1858

Only a few years before these words had to be chiselled into a big slab of Scottish granite weighing about one and a half tons, had Hugh Proby arrived in the growing colony of South Australia.

WARREN GORGE – BUCKARINGA GORGE – YELLOW-FOOTED ROCKWALLABY

Leaving Quorn early, I had hoped to be lucky enough to find some Yellow-footed Rock-wallabies (Petrogale xanthopus) at their morning feed around Warren Gorge.