The area we were walking through in the northern Flinders is known as South Australia’s Far North, which starts from the town of Blinman. The region has low rainfall mainly in winter, and averages about 200 mm/yr. It has very old hard rocks that were deposited between 500 million and 1,000 million years ago when shallow sea that stretched into central Australia from Kangaroo Island.
Just before we turned to walk along the creek beds of the Hamilton Valley on Day 4 we came across an old stone shepard’s hut on a pastoral station (large grazing property). Unfortunately I cannot recall which one, but I gather that most of this land in the northern Flinders Ranges was leased from the State government and not privately owned.
We hung around the site a bit using it for a morning break. The lack of rain meant that there was little water in the hut’s water tanks. The camels were very patient and they linked us back to the early 19th century and the Afghan culture before motorized transport replaced camels as a method of transport.
The hut itself appeared to be deserted, in the sense of it having been little used for quite some time.
The Long Road to the North 
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