Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
Stokes Hill provides many different views – all, splendid – in literally every direction.
When rapidly moving clouds scatter across an otherwise intensely-blue winter’s sky, even someone who looked in only one direction would still enjoy a constantly-changing vista.
This is most spectacularly true during daylight’s first or final two hours.
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I took the photo at 2.36 pm on 04 June 2023, circa 80 minutes on from the image in #13 of this series.
We were now just east of the Flinders’ “spine”, and driving on the sealed surface of the Flinders Ranges Way.
The temperature was decidedly “brisk”, but the rain-bearing weather system had very nearly petered out.
My photo’s foreground expresses my fondness for grasses.
The image then looks across to some of the (then, cloud-shrouded) peaks which rim Wilpena Pound.
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For the most part, the Flinders Ranges – South Australia’s largest/longest “mountain” chain – run south-north, for more than 430 kilometres.
Of greatest interest to most tourists/travellers/walkers/nature-lovers is Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park, most especially the section within a 30 kilometre radius of Wilpena Pound.
All of the very best locations are best accessed on foot, or only accessible by foot; many of those wonderful sites, however, are only a short and easy walk from somewhere motor vehicles can reach.
If the question is, “what places are legally, sensibly, safely accessible by motorised transport?”, the short answer is,”it all depends….”
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Today’s featured image looks west/ish, at 1. 54 pm on a wintry winter’s day in the Flinders Ranges.
We were circa 45 minutes drive, plus around 15 minutes walk – mostly north-ish – from Wilpena.
I think that you/ the image are looking down and across part of Bunyeroo Valley.
Zooming in on its various sections will likely prove rewarding.
The photo below was taken from the same vantage point, not many seconds later, and with the same (400 mm) lens, but it looks in the opposite direction, facing a much closer horizon.
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The featured image in the previous chapter and the three photos in this chapter were all taken in Wilpena Pound, within the space of less than three minutes.
Not very far above us, clouds danced.
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Blue skies are not the only good skies!
Arguably, this post’s clouded sky is every bit as beautiful as any blue one.
Inarguably, endlessly-unclouded skies would prove lethal to all life on “our” planet…as would “grey skies, nothing but grey skies”.
For humans who enjoy walking in Wilpena Pound – or in any other glorious outback Australian place – the pictured kind of weather is “ideal”, not “poor”.
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Another writer’s words:
If a 17-kilometre-long by eight-kilometre-wide elliptical crown of furiously serrated mountains, with a sunken natural amphitheatre in its centre, were plonked just about anywhere except six hours’ drive north-west of Adelaide, it would surely be a national icon by now.
Wilpena Pound covers eight times the area of Uluru, is 300 metres higher and arguably as culturally significant.
(click here for all of travel journalist Steve Madgwick’s Wilpena Pound: Australia’s unknown icon)
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This post’s photos were both taken as we neared the most easily-accessed section of Wilpena Pound’s rim.
“The Pound”-proper is a prodigious natural amphitheatre.
Various of its mighty ramparts are visible from many vantage points.
However, its interior – the actual Wilpena Pound – is properly visible only to those who walk up into it, or fly over it; to see just how massive and how spectacular it is, you need to climb one of its rim’s higher peaks, or take a flight.
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At 9.03 am we were walking uphill, but easily.
Less than half an hour later, we would be inside Wilpena Pound.
The pictured “grass trees” are neither grasses nor trees.
Xanthorrhoea is an Australian endemic genius of circa 30 species of flowering succulents.
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Conifers and eucalypts both tend to be domineering – they are particularly adept at excluding other kinds of trees.
In the Flinders Ranges, however, one sometimes sees “pines” and “gum trees” thriving, surprisingly near to each other.
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