Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
Desirable qualities in a beach:
1. A glorious, entirely natural setting, not ruined by “development”.
2: Uncrowded, clean sand.
3: Unpolluted water in which to swim.
4: An abundance of sunshine and shade.
5: A location within two hours’ 2WD driving distance of comfortable accommodation and decent dining.
In this instance, all five qualities are present, notwithstanding the fact that the nearest ocean beach is more than 1,5000 kilometres away.
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By their very nature, sandy soils are “poor” – low in nutrients and unable to retain much moisture.
Yet in some places where rain often falls and the sun often shines – including some of Amazonia and parts of the world’s largest sand island – rainforest flourishes.
That island is Australian. (Queensland’s Fraser Island/K’gari)
So too is this post’s sandy, “desert” location, which is circa 900 kilometres distant from any ocean’s shore.
Even an ignoramus would never mistake the Simpson Desert for rainforest, but s/he would almost certainly be hugely surprised to discover just how beautifully vegetated is so much of it. (as are a great many other sandy, “arid” Australian places)
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This post’s “much closer view” involved almost the very same vantage point as the previous post’s “landscape” image.
You may recognise the particular bush which is present in both photos…but to very different effect.
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South Australia’s Painted Desert has to be seen to believed.
It takes some effort to see it; access to this spectacular, very fragile place is restricted, and the Painted Desert is on private property.
Arckaringa Station handsomely meets any reasonable definition of “remote” – more than 960 kilometres from Adelaide, it is more than 100 kilometres north of Coober Pedy.
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As previously noted, Mt Sonder is relatively modest in altitude and bulk, but it is particularly beautiful, especially when the sun is not too high in the sky.
What makes it even more beautiful – and this true of almost every mountain, hill, gorge and creek in and around the MacDonnell Ranges – is the fact that it sits within such beautifully-vegetated country.
Almost anywhere you look, it just gets better and better, the more closely you look.
You should never fail to look closely at all layers of whatever landscape you find yourself within – foreground through to horizon.
If you look at the watercolours painted by this region’s most famous artist, you can see that Albert Namatjira (1902-1959) understood this very well.
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Photo is copyright Doug Spencer.
No fakery involved. Taken at 1.04/pm on 14 June 2023 in Emily Gap.
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“Ghost” who glows…
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I took the photo at 10.45 am on 17 June 2023, looking up, as we set off into Ormiston Gorge.
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After taking the photo featured in #14 in this series, my beloved and I decided to scramble our way up to the path that followed a ridge line, rather than retrace our steps along the gorge’s floor
This proved surprisingly easy.
Less than ten minutes later we were heading back to Ormiston HQ, via a well-made pathway that gave us easy access to the lookout from which I took the image featured in this series’ first chapter.
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To reach the pictured location, you need to be able-bodied, but – in stable weather, at least – it does not involve a very long walk, nor an arduous/particularly hazardous one.
It still surprises me that relatively few visitors to such a magnificent place are prepared to walk more than a very few, very easy steps away from the car/bus park.
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