Two months after the camel trek from Blinman to Lake Frome we returned to the Flinders Ranges to walk in the Vulkathunha–Gammon Ranges National Park under the auspices of the Retire Active SA Bushwalkers. On the way to Balcanoona we stayed at Hawker in the southern Flinders Ranges and in the afternoon I went looking for the road to Lake Torrens in the locality of Barndioota. The latter was proposed as a possible site for a nuclear dump.
I found the turnoff near a bend in Hookina Creek on the Five Ways road near the ruins of the Hookina township. Hookina Creek is a drainage creek to Lake Torrens — it drains water from the area south of Wilpena Pound to Warcowie, Willow Plains and Cradock. Adjacent to the Lake Torrens turnoff and by a sweeping bend of the Hookina Creek I came across some old river gum logs lying on the floodplains above the creek.
I could sense the presence of long history. This is in the Yappala Indigenous Protected Area and Adnyamathanha country. These logs have been lying there for a long time and that is a very old creek bed, as are the southern Flinders Ranges in the distance. There must have been huge floods to cut such a broad and deep creek bed into the floodplain.
The Long Road to the North 
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