Living in Denmark, close to the Wilson Inlet, we essentially live in a wetland. Moisture suckers (or more properly moisture absorbers) are our friends, and we always keep a couple in the camper trailer. Which has made us laugh being out here in the dry, dry, dry like I’ve barely experienced dry, Flinders and Gammon Ranges.
It’s been so dry that the static electricity crackles at any opportunity. The dust is a fine powder that puffs up with each footstep. And gets into my eyes to make them red and sore. As we drove in to the NP the number of dead trees and shrubs was shocking. And once we started walking, the number of carcasses of euros and wallabies in various states of decay was particularly challenging.
The Grindell’s Hut campsite, like most of the campsites up here, was next to a dry creekbed, but still an oasis of green, with more of the amazing river redgums, the cypress pine, some grasstrees and the incredible smelling curry bush.
We’ve loved our whole time in the Flinders, but this Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges National Park has been particularly special. The drive across from Leigh Creek was breathtaking, and then the drive in to Grindell’s Hut was equally spectacular. There are some imposing dark bluffs and ranges here that glower over everything else, and are only glimpsed from high enough points.
Looking at the satellite imagery for this part of the world is a fair indication that it will be spectacular (and arid) country.
We did two great walks – to Bunyip Chasm (almost) with a group of 5 triathlete, cycle-tourer adventurers who were staying in Grindell’s Hut, which is more like a comfortable house, halfway up the hill, with incredible views over the ranges. One of the five, Ross, was a former ranger and more recently Regional Manager with the National Parks, so he was a very helpful source of information for us over the couple of days we hung out with them.
It was a beautiful walk that followed a creek bed until it turned into a narrow rocky chasm that required some clambering up at points, negotiating snakes, dessicated wallaby and goat carcasses and ever present rocks.
The next day was another excellent walk, a circuit that involved a spectacular gorge fed with a spring, so it was truly a lush oasis of reeds and rushes, thickets of young river gums and teeming with birds.
The second half of the walk took us up over the surrounding arid rocky hills, such a contrast to that tiny bit of water and green growth we’d walked amongst. And the higher we walked, the more that thin smear of green lushness was lost in the orange, brown rocky hillsides.
Another highlight of the Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges National Park was the huge number of yellow footed rock wallabies about. The Bounceback program we read so much about at Ikara-Flinders Ranges was all about bringing the wallabies back, and whatever they’ve done up here has worked, because the wallabies are everywhere. They are particularly beautiful, and their yellow stripy tails shine in the sunlight as they move away from us, usually belatedly. Mostly they seem quite unfazed by us. It was a little troubling that possibly the wallabies were just so hungry that they were drawn to either us at our campsite, or the creekbeds we were walking along.
Our final night here was a bit of a sleepless one, with a wild and windy front passing through. It was mainly bluster, with just a small amount of rain that smelt incredible (briefly) and dampened down the dust (briefly). It apparently takes the summer thunderstorms to provide enough rainfall for any of these creeks to flow, and then it is just an ephemeral barrage of water moving through.