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Wilpena Pound and the Flinders Ranges
Hawker was a great little town, a frontier outpost where the only restaurant was in the pub, which also served as a gathering place for all the locals every night. I had dinner surrounded by rowdy cowboys and miners, who drank, spat, cussed, and laughed uproariously. I could still hear their laughter as I walked out into the night, under a clear starry sky that took my breath away.
It was cold the next morning in Hawker. I drove out of town and into the
beautiful red desert just as the sun was coming up. I found myself
driving into the most wild and remote part of Australia that I had seen
yet. The landscape gradually rose in elevation and soon the mountains of
the Flinders Range came into view.
I arrived at the Flinders Range National Park and made my way to the
Visitor Center to get a permit for overnight camping. This was going to
be my longest hike yet, and my first night sleeping under the stars of
the southern hemisphere. I picked up my permit and a topographical map
of the park, drove over to the long-term parking lot and pulled out my
backpack to make sure I had everything I needed. Then I found the
trailhead and blissfully wandered into the wilderness.
Wilpena Pound is a vast basin, surrounded by an almost perfectly round ring of mountains. The trail starts on the outside of the ring, and gradually climbs to a pass, called the Tanderra Saddle, which forms an entrance to the Pound. Just to the right of the saddle is Saint Marys Peak, which at 1,171 meters (3,842 feet) is the highest of the mountains that surround Wilpena Pound.
From the Tanderra Saddle, it was a difficult trek up to Saint Marys Peak, but it was a side trip well worth taking. There wasn't much of a trail anymore, but a route through the rocky outcroppings was marked with occasional blue circles painted in conspicuous locations. Sometimes I would lose the route, and have to backtrack to the last blue circle, then try a different way until I found the next blue circle. Finally at the top I reached my reward. From Saint Marys Peak, I could see all of Wilpena Pound, spread out below me like a giant moon crater. Although it looks like a massive meteorite struck the Earth here, the Pound was actually formed by the uplifting of sedimentary layers in the Pre-Cambrian period some 800 million years ago.
Wilpena Pound was an important source of Dreaming stories for the native Adnyamathanha people, who called it Ikara. One of these stories describes how the basin was created when two Akurra coiled around each other to form the circular mountains. Akurra, or the Rainbow Serpent, is a familiar participant in the creation legends of many natural features in Australia.
I clambered down from Saint Marys Peak and retrieved my backpack where I had left it at the saddle. From there I began the gradual descent down into the pound. I soon found myself in a forest of small shrubs, with the ring of mountains rising ever higher above me. I hiked another five or six kilometers until I reached Cooinda Camp in the center of the pound. It seemed like I was the only person on Earth at that time, as if I had entered a lost world of quiet emptiness. It was wonderful.
I pitched my tent in the campground and began to wander around, no longer encumbered with a heavy backpack, just a bottle of water and my camera. I made a short trip into Edeowie Gorge, a dry riverbed that formed a small canyon through a series of rocky outcroppings. I found a rock to sit on and gazed peacefully out at my own little lost world, safely surrounded by mountains that held me in their protective grasp.
As the sun neared the horizon, I went back to the campground and cooked some dinner over my stove. It began to get cold after the sun went behind the ring of mountains, so I climbed into my sleeping bag in the tent, leaving a big flap open so I could look out at the stars. It was then that the kangaroos began to come out. I couldn't see them in the darkness, but I could hear them hopping around in the bushes just a short distance from my tent. They might have been wallabies for all I knew, but it sounded like there were a lot of them.
It was freezing when I woke up the next morning. It was the coldest part of the day, right before the sun comes up, and I was too cold to sleep any longer. I got up, putting several layers of shirts on, as well as my woolen cap and gloves, and made a big cup of coffee. I broke camp, leaving everything as clean as I had found it, and began to hike out as soon as there was enough light to see. I continued the loop trail through the pound, this time coming out of the bushy forests and into large open meadows. By this time the sun was up and I could see groups of kangaroos and wallabies scattered throughout the meadows. At one end of the meadows was a flock of emus, gazing warily at me passing by with my huge backpack. There were small islands of trees scattered throughout the meadows, and parrots flew from island to island, noisily squawking their arrivals and departures. I felt like I had arrived in the Garden of Eden.
I reached the end of the meadows and came to an old abandoned homestead that had been turned into a museum. Nobody was there, but a series of signs told the tragic story of the place, how early settlers had tried to raise sheep there, using Wilpena Pound as a natural enclosure for the livestock. A series of draughts forced them to give up their venture, and the land was returned to its natural state.
The trail then followed Wilpena Creek, which flows through a gap in the mountains, making the only break in the circle. I soon found myself back at the Visitor Center and reluctantly said goodbye to this amazing place.
Next up: The Kangaroo that Saved my Life.
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