Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
The shutter clicks which yielded this and the immediately preceding post’s images were less than one minute apart.
In the interim, my feet had taken very few steps.
Central Australia often reminds attentive visitors that whenever they pause to admire a splendid landscape they ought also look down at whatever is just in front of their feet!
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In mild weather, the short walk to this Central Australian landmark is very easy.
However, you first have to drive for 160 kilometres, south from Alice Springs.
That drive is a very different story – its final 20 kilometres, especially.
You should attempt it only in a 4WD with very high clearance…and a driver who is highly skilled, very patient.
Chambers Pillar was “discovered” by explorer John McDouall Stuart in 1860.
By then it had already been significant/sacred to (other) humans for many thousands of years; the relevant sediments were laid down circa 350 million years ago.
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The immediately-preceding post’s aptly-named Prairie Hotel sits on an almost horizontal plain.
Look out the pub’s back door, however, and you will see – running all along the horizon – the “spine” of the northern Flinders Ranges.
They were “built” circa 800 million years before the pub was.
Hop into a vehicle, drive east for ten minutes, and you will enter one of the loveliest of the Flinders Ranges’ many dramatic gorges.
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The pictured art object sits outside the front door of The Prairie Hotel, which is surely Australia’s most wonderfully-unlikely – and downright wonderful – outback pub
Be sure to read the “artist’s statement”.
The hotel pretty much is the hamlet of Parachilna, which a colourful signboard proclaims THE EDIACARA CAPITAL OF THE WORLD, where fossils rock!
That declaration is no idle boast.
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The Arckaringa Hills – widely known as “the painted desert” – are conveniently near to the roadhouse in this series’ previous episode….and likewise far distant from any city.
They are very good badlands.
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The Cadney Homestead Roadhouse is a bona fide “remote” location.
It sits on the Stuart Highway in South Australia’s far north, nearly 1,000 kilometres north of Adelaide, a little more than 150 ks north of Coober Pedy, and 534 ks south of Alice Springs.
The Painted Desert is conveniently nearby.
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Just over an hour east of Alice Springs, Trephina Gorge Nature Park is easily-reached and richly rewarding.
Its signature “attractions” are Australia’s allegedly-largest ghost gum, and Trephina Gorge.
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The Curdimurka rail siding – near Lake Eyre South in the SA outback – saw its first train in 1888.
The last one went through in 1980, nearly three decades after the pictured water tank and gigantic water softener lost their raison d’être, when diesel electrics replaced steam locomotives in 1951.
This “big softie” was erected in 1943-44, so its working life was very brief.
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Today’s photo shows a repeatedly-pleasing aspect of our June 2023 “outback” trip: it included a surprisingly large number of sightings of Australia’s largest raptor.
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Some of Australia’s mines are many thousands of years older than most Australians realise…and enormously more colourful.
A spectacular and easily-accessed example sits in desert, circa 600 kilometres north of Adelaide, just outside a quasi-“ghost” town.
A formerly-important “railway town”, Lyndhurst saw its last train in 1980, but is still the crossroads for the Oodnadatta and Strzelecki Tracks
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