This post’s photo was taken just a few seconds after the previous chapter’s, and from the same vantage point.
Here, however, I turned circa 70 degrees, to look a little south of due west, toward Wilpena Pound’s highest ramparts.
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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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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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At 8.56 am we were just beginning to walk away from Wilpena Creek, and uphill, towards the “lip” of the actual Wilpena Pound.
As is true of many Eucalyptus species, river red gums are forever-engaged in a cycle of growing and shedding their bark and leaves.
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Clearly evident: this tree is no youngster, it has not merely seen fire and rain, and is still alive, probably some centuries on from the relevant seed’s germination.
Commonly known as the river red gum, Eucalyptus camaldulensis is the most widely-distributed of any eucalyptus species; it is almost-proverbially hardy/“enduring”.
River red gums are the “gum tree” best-beloved by Australian members of Homo sapiens.
In 21st century Australia, this “iconic” species is in big trouble.
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