Seeing Red

Australia is a land of incredible opportunity, even though many of its citizens are supposedly ‘doing it tough’ (please read ‘Europe: a land of debt and austerity’). Incredibly, much of this is allegedly built on that vast expanse of supposed nothingness that accounts for 90% of the land and an insatiable appetite for digging up its rocks. Western Australia has been particularly self-satisfied to have found itself with a big pile of rocks (mine mine mine!), though its role as condescending supreme saviour of the country surely cannot last forever. The rocks will run out at some point, and all that will be left is a big hole in the ground filled with water for mega rich Chinese businessmen to float around in while the rest of us, lacking any kind of intelligence, skill or expertise other than digging up rocks, serve them cane toad skewers for hors d’oeuvres.

It seems I have been missing out on this 90% of land and, before it gets torn to rubble, I was very pleased to have an incredible opportunity to touch its edge. It came by way of Adelaide, and a non-mining work related trip (yes, there are other industries!). While brief, Adelaide itself affirmed itself as pleasant and agreeable – nothing more, nothing less – and blessed with a fine beachside suburb facing west.  A place where you can watch the sunset, but sadly not get a post-work kebab from the souvlaki brothers at 10pm on a Thursday evening, because it has transformed into a ghost town. Who says Canberra has all the fun?

Nevertheless, the next day kicked off with a hearty hotel buffet breakfast and enough fuel to take me north, towards Port Augusta and running parallel with the southern flanks of the Flinders Ranges. A stop for belated lunch – local ham, local cheese, not so local Coke Zero – at Mount Remarkable was not especially remarkable, but it signalled a transition point from fertile, country South Australia to the much fabled outback. Now the roads were straight and flat, the pastures barren and rocky, the colours reddening and skies enlarging. The small town of Hawker provided an outpost of four wheel drives and onward provisions for expeditions into the dust, and, for me, a merciful ice cream to take me the last, increasingly beautiful kilometres to Wilpena.

Wilpena is little more than a campground and small resort sitting alongside the Flinders Ranges National Park visitor centre. But the entertainment here is really the many trails that start from this point, effectively at your front door, and venture into and around Wilpena Pound. It was along one of these trails that I tiptoed in first light the following morning, a three kilometre climb of some 400 metres or so to the randomly named Mount Ohlssen-Bagge.

The sun emerged as I scrambled over one of the two more tortuous parts of the trail, but its glow immediately sparked renewed vigour in my legs, and a dramatic landscape waking up in a haze of red. It wasn’t quite a champagne breakfast at the top, but the apple and hotel cookie, was hardly a letdown given the grand landscape in which it was chomped down.

After such a heart pumping start to the day, the journey down was a relief – I always like it when gravity is on your side – though a trifle annoying as the steps do go on and on and on. And there at the end of the trail was my room, and a cup of tea and a shower before heading out for walk number two. This one actually required a little drive, to Arkaroo Rock, but the walk was a perfect wind down, agreeably warm, pleasantly shaded, set at the foot of the rugged ranges illuminated by the eastern sun. Mid way round were some Aboriginal cave paintings, though nearby were also some more recent schoolboy penis drawings, of which authenticity I cannot be certain.

Starting the day so early meant that with two walks down it was only just lunchtime. This was the lazier part of the day, a Wilpena Pound Burger at the resort almost matching the size of its namesake.  It was something I had to walk off, albeit fairly sedately, and walk number three met that criteria just perfectly. This followed a generous, wide and flat trail into the Pound, following the course of a semi-dry creek, lined with incredible River Red Gums and occasional billabongs. At its end, an old homestead, now long abandoned, unable to survive on the cycle of droughts and flooding storms. Further lookouts nearby offered a chance to take in the scale of Wilpena Pound, which is essentially a ring of mountainous ranges, enclosing a somewhat lusher, more fertile expanse.  It gives the appearance of a natural crater, formed on the sea bed billions of years ago. Let’s hope it’s never pillaged for rocks to sell.

Ambling back to base there remained an hour or so of light to enjoy and of course the culmination of the day as the sun set. Further opportunity to enjoy the warm, reddening light as the sun says its goodbyes for a little while, kissing the rolling folds and crevices of the land goodnight until dawn. Rapidly giving up its warmth, but uniting a random assortment of grey nomads, backpackers and me to share wine and crackers and create our own warmth.

I can see how this land can get under your skin, how it can captivate in its elemental simplicity of earth and air. How it endures, despite frantic efforts to dig it up. How it is unchanged since long before some people daubed ochre on its caves, and even longer before Bazza declared his love for Noelene in a chalky etch next to a penis. How its sweeps and curves affect and reflect the light, changing every minute, alternating from a softening glow to the full force of a spotlight. How it stretches on and on and on, into a nothingness that is anything but empty. And how it compels you to rise early for the second morning in a row, to watch this land unfold before you, emerge into shadows and light, and carry on just being.