Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
Deep Creek Conservation Park is circa 110 kilometres south of Adelaide – 90 minutes driving time, almost all of it on good roads.
One of South Australia’s better kept “secrets” includes SA’s best remaining (tiny) remnant of a once relatively common but now very rare type of forest, spectacular coastline, lovely bushland, wildflowers, many birds, and lots of ‘roos,
And that’s not all…
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South Australia’s longest chain of mountains is named after Matthew Flinders, not by him; “the navigator” did not impose his own name on any natural feature.
One of the Flinders’ gems is Parachilna Gorge, on the mountains’ western side.
Very soon after you drive back out of the gorge, you look across a seemingly-endless, flattish plain.
Sitting in it, nearby, is the almost-town of Parachilna; effectively, its excellent pub is the town.
Lake Frome’s vast salt-flat is a deal further “out there”, due west…so too the setting sun, at 5.19 pm on 06 June 2023.
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Do you fondly imagine that Australia has overcome its “rabbit problem”?
This post’s 2023-vintage photo was taken recently in a “well-managed”, much-loved National Park.
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To my eye, Coober Pedy is an ugly town, albeit a singular one.
So, I was delighted to see something so lovely, growing not many footsteps away from a hideous shopping venue and car park.
I love the way such tall grasses look, especially when wind whiffles through them.
Alas, however, I was admiring a very “bad” plant.
Buffel grass – Cenchrus ciliaris L, pictured above – is “arguably the greatest invasive species threat to biodiversity across the Australian arid zone.”
Some beef producers, however, still view it fondly as “great cattle feed”.
The relevant legal requirement in South Australian Arid Lands:
Land owners in this region to take reasonable steps to kill plants and prevent their spread. Enforceable by the South Australian Arid Lands Landscape Board.
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“Plane Henge” is the signature “permanent exhibit” in what at least one writer has described as “the world’s largest art gallery”.
Mutonia Sculpture Park sits beside the Oodnadatta Track, less than one hour’s drive west from Marree.
If you were overhead, in a functional aircraft, Lake Eyre South would also be within your field of view.
The “park” includes the ruins of the Alberrie Creek Siding, on what once was “The Ghan” railway line.
Arguably, Mutonia strains to near or beyond breaking point any reasonable definition of “art gallery” or “park”.
Inarguably, its sheer unlikeliness leaves a lasting impression on most visitors.
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Generally known simply as “The Breakaways”, Kanku-Breakaways Conservation Park is an “unearthly” and beautiful place.
Nearly 900 kilometres north of Adelaide, it is also very “remote”.
From Coober Pedy, however, it is less than a 30 minute drive.
You probably have not visited this part of the South Australian outback.
Nonetheless, it may look “strangely familiar”…
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Its boastful sign notwithstanding, Coober Pedy is definitely not a city.
846 ks north of Adelaide, Coober Pedy has fewer than 2,000 “permanent” residents, and the local housing market is decidedly “depressed”.
The town’s self-declared status as “opal capital of the world” is, however, defensible.
Reportedly, its name derives from kupa piti – a phrase coined by the local Aboriginal people whose ancestors arrived in South Australia’s outback more than a few thousand years before kupa piti described any of it.
Kupa piti translates as “whitefellas’ hole”.
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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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