Category: history
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Sturt + the inland sea
In 1844 Charles Sturt spent a couple of years looking for the inland sea. In 1827, a former East India Company officer Thomas J. Maslen, published this map of the inland sea in his book The Friend of Australia, which provided instructions for surveying and exploring the island-continent’s interior. It was a popular colonial belief that…
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Iron Knob + history
When I made a quick visit to the Eyre Peninsula in late 2023 with Maleko, our standard poodle, we camped overnight at Iron Knob in South Australia’s Middleback Range. I wanted to spend some time walking around this old mining town to see what was left. I had briefly visited it in passing through the…
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Quorn: colonial history + photography
On Wednesday July 27th we cleaned up Nudlamutana hut in the morning, packed the Outback Subaru, and slowly drove to Blinman via the Yunta Road. We had lunch at Blinman — a pastie – -then drove onto Quorn. We stayed in a cabin in the Quorn caravan park and had a pub dinner at the…
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Blinman
We returned to walking in the northern Flinders Ranges in the winter of 2022. This time we would be on our own both in terms of accommodation at Nudlamutana Hut and walking the various trails in the Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges National Park and the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary. We stayed overnight in a motel style accommodation behind…
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Acacia Ridge walk
The view on the climb to Acacia Ridge gave you a clear sense of both the folly of pastoralism in the Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges and their sheer wildness.
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Hookina Creek: deep history
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…
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at Stokes Hill Lookout
As mentioned in an earlier post we stopped at Stokes Hill Lookout on our way to Hawker from Blinman the day after finishing the camel trek. The lookout offered a view of Wilpena Pound after the overnight rain. The deep past of the Flinders Ranges was historically defined as terra nullius: a land belonging to no…
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E.C. Frome’s expedition to Lake Frome
Three years have passed since the 2018 camel trek from Umberatana to Mt Hopeless. In early 2021 we decided to undertake another camel trek, this time to go east from Blinman through the Flinders Ranges via Chambers Gorge then follow Chambers Creek to Lake Frome. Early in 2021 I had come across some historical material…
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SA colonial photography: a note
In my search for information on expedition photography in South Australia I recently came across a book on colonial photography in Australia entitled Shifting Focus: Colonial Australian Photography 1850-1920
The Long Road to the North 