Ikara-Flinders Ranges

South Australian National Parks severely undersells the campgrounds it manages in the National Parks. Possibly a visitor management / containment strategy? There is a requirement now to book and pay online before you go, which poses some challenges for the picky camper. How do you know where you want to be until you’ve had a look? How do you know which of the campsites within a campground you’ll want? Where is the wind coming from, where is the sun? Anyway, based on the knowledge that we had, we chose Acraman campground in Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park.

But the actual campground (same campsite) looked like:

We were very happy campers!

We bailed on the first night we’d booked because the weather was a bit foul. As we drove north from Port Augusta the rain stopped but the moody skies remained and the wind was fierce.

We ended up staying in a cabin on Rawnsley Station, one of the many nearby stations to focus more on tourism than grazing. It meant a golden toned sunset walk to a nearby hill to overlook the south side of Wilpena Pound in the howling wind.

And the next morning, a nice, steep hike up the side of Wilpena Pound, to a lookout into the middle of it.

Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park, and the broader region of the Flinders Ranges is seriously stunning. Range after range after stunning range that can look so different depending on the time of day, the cloud cover, the angle of the sun. There are some spectacular views, like from the Razorback lookout over the Bunyeroo Valley.

Or the view of Heysen Range from a point where Hans Heysen once painted.

Or the many views of Wilpena Pound from lookouts on the main road.

We walked through Bunyeroo Gorge, with the extensive geological interpretation along the route. It does seem to be all about the geology here in the NP. The geological history of the place IS quite spectacularly on show. I’ll resist relaying the entire story of its formation, but it is well embedded now. Or drilled in. Hard not to come up with a geological pun.

It has been less easy to find out information about the living part of the landscapes. There are some completely unexpected aspects, like the dominance of the Cypress Pine in many places we’ve driven and walked through. To keep the echoes of last year’s European holiday going, it makes us feel like we’re walking along the Amalfi Coast.

And like the Amalfi Coast, this landscape feels to us like it has been heavily impacted by human activities, by the 170 years of pastoralism. There isn’t really a reference point, a relatively undisturbed part of the landscape, to compare it too. The National Park was established in the 70s, and so had already had 120 years of pastoral impact before it was protected.

As the South Australian Arid Lands Biodiversity Strategy for the Flinders Ranges says:

Since the mid-1800s, excessive grazing, weed infestation and introduced predators have had a combined damaging effect on the fragile environment of semi-arid ranges of South Australia. As early as 1900, many small to medium sized mammals and some reptiles had all but disappeared. Even when stock was removed from the National Parks, threatened species continued to decline because there was little regeneration of native plant communities or improvement in soil conditions and animal habitats.

As far as we can tell feral goats remain a huge problem, and their tracks are scored into hillsides all over the park, and they are presumably eating the seedlings and small plants that are attempting to grow back.

We went for a walk at Wilpena Pound, the headquarters of the National Park in the region, and less than a kilometre away from the office was a herd of very healthy looking goats, quite unfussed by all the humans walking past. Ironically it was just 200m from a sign promoting the Bounceback program.

But then, I also recognise that I don’t really understand this landscape at all. I have so little experience of such an arid place, where rainfall is less than 250 mm per year. Or where what looks like soil from a distance turns out to be just rock of differing sizes and state of erosion.