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In Parachilna Gorge east of the town some land was donated to the Soldiers’ T.B. Aid Society to establish a tuberculosis sanatorium in the pristine air there. Partly due to the efforts of Ella Cleggett the Angorichina hostel opened in 1927 and treated patients until 1973. It is now a hostel for travellers.
Used the on board haze reduction this time - works a treat. Still can't quite lose the reflection from the plexi glass ...
Three late afternoon angles on Ferguson Gorge, Moolooloo Station in the Flinders Ranges. Only accessible by 4wd along an at times quite rugged track and with paid admission.
Aroona Dam.
This reservoir in the hills to the west of Leigh Creek was built to provide water for the town and the brown coal mines. The Electricity Trust of South Australia designed and built the dam using around 160 post war immigrant workers. Work began on the reservoir in 1952 and the dam opened in 1957. Mt Aroona is 417 metres high and the rocks of the gorge are quite colourful with their red and purple colours. The reservoir can hold 7.5 gigalitres although the average rainfall of the hills is only about 180 mm a year. The concrete spillway is about 24 metres high and 236 metres long and when full the reservoir is 3.5 kms long. The dam site was selected to create a deep reservoir with as little surface area as possible to reduce solar evaporation of the water during the scorching summer months. Since 2016 water for Leigh Creek has come from an artesian supply that is then treated and filtered providing soft water that Adelaidians only wish for. Aroona Dam and sanctuary is now being considered for recreational use. For comparison Hope valley reservoir near Adelaide holds 2.9 just gigalitres. The landscape here has been denuded by feral goats and several rabbit plaques but it is steep, dramatic and impressively beautiful.
I was delighted to come across an old friend from my Townsville days in the middle of the Flinders Ranges. I always thought of them as being birds of the tropics, but looking at their distribution map, I can see that I should expect to see them much further afield.
Pichi Richi Railway.
In 1878 work began on constructing the Great Northern railway from Port Augusta through Pichi Richi
Pass in the Flinders Ranges towards Quorn. In December 1881 a railway line was extended from Peterborough (then Petersburg) via Carrieton and Hammond to Quorn. This then provided a rail link between Adelaide/Port Adelaide and Port Augusta. The Great Northern Railway was extended from Quorn to Hawker and then Maree in 1883 and eventually Oodnadatta in 1891.It was then extended to Alice Springs in 1929 by the Commonwealth but although the Commonwealth promised a railway to Darwin when SA gave up its Northern Territory in 1911 the Commonwealth never built a railway via the Flinders Ranges to Darwin. But the Commonwealth did build another railway which was promised to Western Australia in 1901 as a condition of WA joining the Commonwealth of Australia. Work started on a railway across the Nullarbor from Port Augusta to Kalgoorlie in 1911 with it being completed in 1917. So from 1917 the Pichi Richi railway line conducted trains to Perth. This ceased in 1937 when a new direct railway line was completed from Adelaide to Port Augusta via the Adelaide Plains and from Port Pirie along the coast to Port Augusta. The Pichi Richi railway then lost much of its traffic but it still had the Ghan travelling up to Alice Springs once or twice a week. When the Great Northern Railway from Hawker to Marree was closed in 1957 the Ghan service used the new Leigh Creek railway line which connected at Leigh Creek to Marree and Oodnadatta. In 1972 the section from Stirling North through the Pichi Richi to Quorn also closed. The section from Peterborough to Quorn had closed in 1969. It was then that the Pichi Richi Railway was established by volunteers for a tourist service. The only town along the Pichi Richi Railway is Stirling North. It was originally called Minchin Wells as there were good water springs there. Local Aboriginal people camped there because of the water supply and in the 1850s the Sub-Protector of Aborigines Mr. Minchin met Aboriginal people there. All the bullock teams and drays heading into the Flinders Ranges or the Willochra Plains or to Horrocks Pass stopped at Minchin Wells for water. A stand pipe in the centre of the town was used to water stock and people. Camel teams left from here for Alice Springs and the north, and eventually trains stopped here for water for their steam engines once the Pichi Richi Pass railway was completed in 1879. The town was surveyed and laid out in 1859 on land taken from the leasehold of Robert Barr Smith and his brothers-in-law Sir Thomas Elder and Edward Stirling. Hence the name officially became Stirling North rather than Minchin Wells. About this time the first hotel opened in Stirling North, the John Bull Inn. Stirling North has primarily been a transportation centre with a water supply! More recently it has had the new Port Augusta Gaol in its vicinity. The original Port Augusta Gaol opened at Stirling North around 1862.
Supplies were purchased in bulk and held in stores on the runs. Early travelers relied upon station stores to replenish their provisions.
Shepherds, stockmen and farm hands received rations as part of their employment package well into the twentieth century.
A rubble masonry building, the Wilpena Store was built in 1862. It is one of very few two-storey station buildings in the Flinders Ranges. The store was windowless; the dark, cool interior optimised conditions for the prolonged storage of food. The original thatched roof has survived, and is laced to roofing timbers with cowhide thonging.
The upper floor was destroyed by fire and replaced in 1899. Twenty years later it had been eaten away by termites and was not replaced.
Trying to protect bulk supplies from vermin was a constant challenge for early storekeepers. Goods were regularly spoiled by ants, mice and weevils. A novel approach was tried at Wilpena - the store has suspended vermin proof shelving.
In the madness that is my photography trips away, I often fantasise about different scenarios.
Seeing the meteorite in Russia this week made me think about how sometimes star trails will look like meteorites. Imagine the Ball of Light is a time portal into a distant time and the star in the top right corner is a courier ship re-entering the atmosphere delivering water to the fragile few remaining on the planets surface.
I love how long exposure captures time in an image. I loved this trip so much. This is up at the Yourambulla Caves up in the Flinders Ranges. A place close to my heart.
Peace, Denis
This geological feature just off the road between Wilpena and Blinman is a rocky ridge line known as the Great Wall of China due to its resemblance to the original.
Wilpena Pound.
For this northern latitude Wilpena Pound has a good rainfall and a microclimate because of the surrounding hills. It was always a special place for Aboriginal people and a prized location for sheep pastoralists. At Cradock they average 250 mms annually, Hawker rises to 300 mm and Wilpena has 390 mms (15 inches in the old rainfall). Further north at Marree the average is just 136 mm a year. Wilpena Creek flows out of the Pound which covers 80 square kilometres (20,000 acres). It is 6 kms wide and 16 kms long and its highest surrounding peak is Mt Mary at 1,171 m or 3,842 feet. Although Edward John Eyre in 1840 and others explored parts of the Flinders Ranges they did not discover Wilpena Pound. That was achieved by C Bagot in 1851. Bagot said in the press that there was only one ingress or egress to flat land with a permanent running creek suitable for depasturing 500 cattle. This plain was surrounded by steep rocky walls up to 1,000 feet high. The government responded by immediately sending Mr Burr of the Survey Office to the Pound for a trigonometrical survey in June 1851. Bagot gave it its aboriginal name. The furthest north leasehold run in 1851 was at Kanyaka between Quorn and Hawker. The Wilpena run was taken out in 1851 and originally covered 850 square miles but that was soon reduced into other leaseholds. Drs William and John Browne took the original leasehold and by 1853 the pine slab homestead was built (demolished 1931) and shearing sheds and workers cottages soon followed. George Marchant got a 14 year lease of 85 square miles on 1 January 1855. In 1857 he employed a manager Charles Powell, whose father had planted the first mulberry tree at Kingscote in 1836, and he stayed at Wilpena station until 1882 but with various owners. By 1860 Dr William J Browne held Wilpena run and he sold off the Arkaba section in 1863 before the big drought. By 1861 Henry Strong Price owned the leasehold which he tried to sell but could find no buyer. A report on Wilpena in 1865 says it covered 154 square miles and employed 19 married men and their wives, 24 single men and 41 children making a total of 101 people. Later in the 19th century Dr William J Browne owned Wilpena again and the government resumed most of it in January 1880. Tourism almost came to Wilpena Pound in 1920 when the Wilpena Forrest Reserve was created but the run was leased to graziers until 1945. At that time the Rasheed family established the chalet and all grazing in the Pound ceased. In 1970 adjoining Orraparinna station was purchased by the government to create Flinders Ranges National Park. Finally in 1985 the government bought the leasehold to Wilpena station to add to the park. Its name was changed from Flinders National Park to Ikara Flinders National Park in 2016 thus incorporating an Adnyamathanha word from the traditional land occupiers into the title. The Adnyamathanha people and their sub clans have been in the area for around 15,000 years.
The Pound is a natural amphitheatre with Rawnsley Bluff at the southern end (he was the surveyor of runs in the 1850s). The Pound has a fascinating geomorphological structure. The landscape here was deeply folded with synclines and anticlines. Synclines are downward folds of earth layers with a trough at the bottom i.e. Wilpena Pound. Anticlines are the peaks of the layers but in the Flinders Ranges the anticlines have been eroded away over vast geological eras leaving rugged edges above the synclines or troughs. The trough of Wilpena Pound has a layer of quartzite, then other layers beneath that. The end of the anticline from the western side of the Pound is the Elder Range. The true shape of the formation reveals itself from aerial photographs.
Kanyaka Homestead.
This pastoral leasehold run was established in 1852 by Hugh Proby who disappeared shortly afterwards whilst returning from a visit to his Pekina Run near Orroroo. This was one of the very first leaseholds in the Flinders Ranges. The next leaseholder John Phillips (with Alexander Grant) had the many fine stone buildings erected in the late 1850s. It was a large and prosperous run except during drought years and provided employment for 70 men and their families. The drought in the 1860s saw the sheep numbers drop from 41,000 to 10,000. When the government resumed large parts of Kanyaka Run for agricultural settlement in the late 1870s, especially for towns like Wilson and Gordon which are now both ruined ghost towns, the run became unviable. Phillips just walked out of the leasehold in 1881 and the buildings were left to crumble. So the government closed down a viable sheep station for unviable wheat farms that caused untold heartache and agony for the farmers and their families. Wheat farms were never viable this far beyond Goyder’s line of demarcation between grain growing and pastoral regions. The station cemetery which is not accessible is across Kanyaka Creek. Dozens were employed on the run in its heyday and many died there too. The large woolshed catered for 24 shearers at once. The property buildings included: station homestead; overseers house; men’s kitchen and dining room; carpenter shop; stables; shearers’ quarters; various huts and sheds; blacksmith shop; cellars etc.
Just one of many reasons to visit the best kept secret in South Australia! Check out more HERE: www.redzaustralia.com/2017/08/flinders-ranges-south-austr...
Up in the Flinders Ranges behind the hotel is Edeowie Gorge with its Edeowie natural glass. This slag-like opaque rock or lechatelierite is found in clay baked layers which have been subjected to mineralization and oxidation. In Parachilna Gorge east of the town some land was donated to the Soldiers’ T.B. Aid Society to establish a tuberculosis sanatorium in the pristine air there. Partly due to the efforts of Ella Cleggett the Angorichina hostel opened in 1927 and treated patients until 1973. It is now a hostel for travellers.
An icon of the Flinders Ranges, South Australia, striking against the distinctive geology of the Flinders.
Horrocks Pass and Wilmington.
Horrocks Pass is the junction of two different fault blocks in the Flinders Ranges created by past earthquake movements. This fault line across the Flinders Ranges allows a creek to flow down towards the coast and it provides a base for a road. John Horrocks the early explorer discovered this gorge in his explorations in 1846 and the pass and the nearest highest hill were named after him. It was used by earliest pastoralists from 1854 onwards and was the track followed by the Cobb and Co coaches from around 1860 on their journeys from Burra (Kooringa) to Port Augusta. In fact Beautiful Valley was a staging post from 1861. In that year Robert Blinman built an inn at the top of Horrocks Pass which he named Roundwood Hotel. By 1864 Cobb & Co coaches were passing through the settlement and the remains of their staging point stables can still been seen behind the Wilmington Hotel. The town of Wilmington later grew up around this Cobb and Co staging point much later in 1876. The first pastoralist in the area was Daniel Cudmore who took up the lease of Beautiful Valley run (88 square miles) in 1851. The actual Wilmington town site was located on the run of John Howard Angas who had the Mt Remarkable leasehold and Stony Creek runs which totalled 130 square miles. Just to the north of the town site was the Mount Brown run taken out by Abraham Scott (99 square miles.) The pastoralists could see that this was good grazing country. Horrocks Pass gave them a route to the Willochra Plains and the valleys of the Flinders Ranges.
The town was officially named Wilmington by the Governor Sir Anthony Musgrave in 1876. It was named his eldest son William Hammond Jervois. Governor Jervois’ wife came from American so perhaps she came from Wilmington in Delaware? Locals protested in 1876 when the name Beautiful Valley was replaced as the current town was created. Wilmington was the main town of the Hundred of Willochra. It grew overnight with the promise of good rains (rain follows the plough) and the opening up the Willochra Plains towards Quorn and the Flinders Ranges. By the early 1880s progressed slowed as hundreds of thousands of acres of land were forfeited and farmers walked away from their unsuccessful attempts to grow rain way beyond Goyder’s Line. But Wilmington still prospered as it had the Beautiful Valley to its west and good farm lands close to the Flinders Ranges. One of the first public buildings was the Institute where stone work began in 1880 with the official opening in January 1882. A new Soldiers Memorial Façade was added in 1925. The fine stone police station and attached Courthouse was erected in 1880 and closed in 1971. The stone Wilmington school opened in 1878 and was extended in 1882 and again in 1883. It was demolished around 1980 when a new prefabricated school opened. The impressive Globe Hotel (now the Wilmington Hotel) was built in 1879 as a two storey structure given the promise of the district at that time. Most new towns began with a single storey hotel!
The Wesleyan Methodists were the first to build a church in the town. They purchased land in 1876 and opened the stone Wesleyan church in 1877. The Bible Christian Methodists opened their stone church in 1880. It became the main Methodist Church in town after Methodist Union in 1900 and the old Wesleyan church became the church hall until it was demolished in 1953. The stone from the original building was partially used to construct the new church hall in 1953.Next to the church is the Methodist Manse. The original wooden cottage was replaced with a fine stone residence in 1924. The Anglicans began services in the courthouse in 1882 and did not open their stone church until 1885. The Catholics had St Dominic’s church a couple of miles out of town towards Hammond which was built in 1878 by the Jesuit brothers of Sevenhill. Two decades later they also built a Catholic Church in town in 1909 and the old St Dominic’s church was dismantled and rebuilt in Hammond with an opening there in 1907. The Lutherans built their church a couple of miles out of town towards Orroroo and it opened in 1891 and is still in use. Industrially Wilmington had some diversity. Edmund Dignan the local blacksmith started making strippers in 1887. He experimented and produced a chain driven harvester/stripper in 1893. It was favourably received and production continued for some year with sales across the state. It won several prizes and was patented. His harvesters were still being produced into the 1920s. Dignan works employed around 50 men. The business closed around 1928 with Edmund Dignan dying in 1932. Dunn the flour miller mogul from Mt Barker built a three storey stone flourmill in 1878. It operated until around 1915 when it was sold and the new owner demolished it all and three houses were built on the site. From 1897 into the 1920s Wilmington also had a butter factory which produced Beau Val butter, a shortened version of the town’s original name Beautiful Valley. The two storey butter factory still exists opposite the school. The town never got a railway station of its own until 1915. Prior to that the nearest railway was at Hammond. The railway line closed in 1969. By the 1920s with rural depopulation, increasing farm mechanisation, and the rise of motor transport the industrial activities of Wilmington declined and disappeared. The main outstanding building of more recent years in Wilmington is the fine stone Country Women’s’ Association building which was erected in 1953.
In Parachilna Gorge east of the town some land was donated to the Soldiers’ T.B. Aid Society to establish a tuberculosis sanatorium in the pristine air there. Partly due to the efforts of Ella Cleggett the Angorichina hostel opened in 1927 and treated patients until 1973. It is now a hostel for travellers.
Attractive construction method used in the building of Kanyaka Station in the Flinders Ranges. Inside-out view of a section of this historical, outback, cattle and sheep property, near Quorn.