Think of Outback Australia and you’ll probably imagine the Red Centre, with
its iconic monolith Uluru (formerly Ayers Rock) and the Olgas in the
Northern Territory. But just across the border in South Australia is another
Outback that is just as alluring.
The Flinders Ranges have drawn me since I fell in love with the works of Hans
Heysen, the German-born Australian landscape artist who started painting the
region in the 1920s. Probably the first artist to open up the Outback to the
imagination of city Australians, dispelling the myth of a forbidding terra
incognita, he showed it for what it was: a land brimming with
magnificent River Red gum trees, blue and purple mountain ranges and
ochre-coloured escarpments and gorges. “Never before have we had an artist’s
record and vision of this strange land,” wrote Sydney Ure Smith, the
Australian art publisher, in 1928.
He was wrong. Indigenous Australians, of the Flinders region’s Adnyamathanha
people, had been painting the landscape for tens of thousands of years. I
saw their surviving work in the northern Flinders Ranges, where I travelled
with Cliff Coulthard, who helps to run Iga Warta (“place of the native
orange tree”), an Aboriginal tour venture.
Cliff’s father, Clem, a former sheep station worker, provided the inspiration
for Iga Warta as a way of providing jobs and allowing local people to tell
their stories. Cliff told me: “Dad said, ‘The sheep days are gone, mate. The
next thing is tourism. We’d better get into it.’ Then he died on us.” But
the cultural influence of Clem and Cliff’s people lives on in the Flinders
region’s place names: Wilpena, Arkaroola, Angorichina, Patawarta, Oratunga,
Parachilna, Brachina.
Heading north from Adelaide, I allowed a week to drive along a route that
would take me to most of them. This region is vast: the ranges that form its
central spine stretch more than 400km (250 miles) from Crystal Brook in the
south to Arkaroola in the north. A four-wheel-drive vehicle is not
obligatory, but it is the wisest option: most roads are unsealed, and sudden
downpours can turn them into instant waterways.
Be prepared to share them. Crowded is not normally an Outback term, but the
winter months are the season for crowded roads, Outback style. That’s
because the “Outback season” is during Australia’s autumn and winter months
from April to October, when searing heat gives way to cooler days, and a
less intense sun allows the Flinders to show off their ancient ochre colours
at their best. If you time your visit for August, the start of the
wildflower season will reward you with an outburst of new colours as well.
As I drove, the sweeping line of ranges was rarely out of my sight, the purple
and blue haze that surrounded them standing out against the red dirt of the
plains and gorges along the route.
My first stop was North Bundaleer, a 1901 homestead that Malcolm Booth and his
British-born wife, Marianne, have restored into possibly Australia’s most
splendid homestead accommodation. My bedroom, the Red Room, reflected
Marianne’s passion for mixing English, Irish and Chinese antiques. Its
bathroom, built into the old conservatory, offered a 180-degree view of the
gardens as I stood under the shower.
The house is on the southern fringes of the Flinders, about 40 minutes’ drive
from the gulf where Matthew Flinders, the British explorer after whom the
ranges are named, sighted them while circumnavigating Australia in 1802.
North Bundaleer was a crumbling wreck when the Booths, from Sydney, found it
a few years ago. They are among a new wave of pioneers who have rescued the
region’s decayed stone homesteads and crumbling frontier-era hotels and
turned them into places where capricious 21st-century city types are happy
to eat, drink and sleep.
An easy morning’s drive took me to Wilpena Pound, the region’s great natural
showpiece. This immense enclosure, an ancient ceremonial ground according to
Aboriginal mythology, is surrounded by hills that hide it at ground level.
Everyone told me a scenic flight over it, from the Wilpena Pound Resort, was
a must. I preferred a one-hour walk along a creek trail full of river gums
and wildflowers that took me up a rocky bluff to a lookout. From there, the
view into the pound — a vast plain surrounded by the giant circle of hills —
was as majestic as anything I had seen in the Red Centre or elsewhere in the
Outback.
Here, you can also see the giant river red gum, still standing outside the
Wilpena resort, that Harold Cazneaux photographed in 1937 and called The
Spirit of Endurance, an image that is now an Australian icon.
Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary, north of Wilpena Pound, intrigued me in a
different way. The land here is drier and harsher. But it is now home to
yellow-footed rock wallabies, euros and other Australian marsupials thanks
to the foresight of Reg Sprigg, a geologist who created the sanctuary almost
40 years ago. As well as seeing the animals during the daytime, the clear,
dry air of the winter months gives you perhaps Australia’s finest views of
the night sky from Arkaroola’ s astronomical observatory.
After seeing the animals, you can eat some of them if you head on to the
Prairie Hotel, at the railway whistle-stop of Parachilna, in the northern
Flinders. This old Wild West-style pub has been restored by ranchers Jane
and Ross Fargher into an obligatory Flinders port of call, while the meal to
try on the menu is Jane’s Feral Mixed Grill consisting of smoked kangaroo
with bush tomato chutney, camel mettwurst, emu prosciutto and goat chop on
mash. Roo meat is still rare in city restaurants: Australians are hesitant
about chomping into their national emblem. But this was the Outback, so I
plunged in, and was pleasantly surprised by its lean, tender texture and
game-like flavour.
As I ate, I sensed something surreal among the crowd that had gathered in this
desert oasis as the sun set on the ranges across the plain. Its isolation
has guaranteed its endurance.
To Broome and back: winter winners Down Under
Red Centre
Temperatures in Uluru (Ayers Rock) and the Olgas, a collection of giant
boulders near by, can reach 40C (104F) from December to March. In winter
daytime temperatures are usually 10 degrees cooler (though the nights are
colder, too). Make Alice Springs, in the south of the Northern Territory,
your base for visiting Uluru, the Olgas, Kings Canyon and the MacDonnell
Ranges, a spectacular range west of Alice, with red and ochre colours best
seen in the early morning and late afternoon.
The Kimberley
This region of Western Australia is an easy, if lengthy, drive from Darwin
along the Victoria Highway. The winter months make the area and its open
spaces easier to explore.
The Great Northern Highway takes you through spectacular Outback country to
Broome, a former pearling town on the Indian Ocean, and to Cable Beach, with
its turquoise waters and stunning sunsets.
Great Barrier Reef
Stifling humidity makes the towns of Cairns and Port Douglas, the main
jumping-off points for the Great Barrier Reef, places to avoid in summer.
Come winter, the humidity disappears, but the days stay warm enough to do
your exploring comfortably in shorts and tropical clothes. And, unlike the
Outback in winter, night-time temperatures do not send you scurrying for
sweaters.
Need to know
Book by July 31 for a three-week trip to Australia with a stay in the Flinders
Ranges with Travelmood. The price, from £975pp, includes return flights from
Heathrow to Adelaide, and a six-day South Australia package with two nights
at the four-star Pacific International Apartments in Adelaide, a four-day
self-drive to the Flinders Ranges, with one night in the wine-growing region
of the Clare Valley, and two nights at the Wilpena Pound Resort. Departures
from August 8 until the end of September. Price includes four days’ car
hire. Details: 0870 0664556, www.travelmood.com.
Getting there: Travelbag has return flights from Heathrow to
Sydney via Kuala Lumpur from £628pp. Book by the end of July. Details: 0870
8146545, www.travelbag.co.uk.
British Airways has return flights to Sydney via Bangkok or Singapore from
£674pp for travel from August 8 until the end of September. Book by the end
of July. Details: 0870 8509850, www.ba.com.
Car hire: Travelmood (see above) can organise car hire from
£23 a day.
