OZ9/4: Flinders Ranges, Poisoned Kangaroos, & Ribbons of Color in Rocks

We left Adelaide and headed north.  We all had a few ideas of some places we wanted to visit along the way to Darwin, but the distance from Adelaide to Darwin was so huge that we didn’t know how we could break it up.  There were only a handful of things to do along the way.  We saw signs to the Flinders Range National Park and we took the road, excited that there was something to see.  The detour would add some time to our drive, but we really weren’t in too much of a hurry.

We found a free campsite on WikiCamps just outside of Flinders at a place called Arkaroo Rock.  We found the area, but not until after dark.  We were a little jumpy after our first night in the middle of some unknown town behind a building in a park, so we were nervous that this parking area would be risky as well, especially because there might be rangers about so near to the park.

It turned out to be great in the end.  We showed up in the dark, which meant that we could set up in the dark and then break down early in the morning before rangers’ rounds started.  But even better than that was the security in numbers, when we saw several cars full of people camping there as well, one or two of which even had campfires.  We spread our tents in amongst the trees.

We did a small hike starting from there in the morning that led to some cave paintings.  They were a little disappointing, but still really cool.  I especially liked their use of different colors.  That seemed rare.  While we were up there, we found ways to do some pull-up practices.

We were bummed when we had to pay to enter the park, but it was a minor payment anyway, so we did it.

Along the way in the park were some ruins from houses that were a few hundred years old.  There was a story-line that they followed of this man who had built up a ranch that was successful, but then had it slowly taken away from him on technicalities.  It seemed like a typical white man sob story.

In a couple spots on this little walk through the ruins there were dead kangaroos.  The first was outside along the path and I smelled it before I saw it.  I had to look the other way as I went past, because I am way too soft and sloppy in the heart.  The second was actually in one of the rooms of the ruins.  It reminded me of the moment when Dances With Wolves finds the moose in his “freshwater” pond.  Like I was walking along enjoying the scenery when my vision suddenly, and with an audible sound-track-like noise, zoomed in on the remnant deteriorating skin stretched over bones of a full-sized kangaroos.  Gross.

We were seeing a lot of these little melon things that were all along the road on our drive through Flinders.  Joe had read that these were poisonous to the kangaroos and had therefore been planted on purpose in order to control the populations, and especially around the roads where they caused lots of damage and safety risks to cars and people traveling the area.  I think those melons may have caused the randomly dead kangaroos on the path we took that day.

Sadly, the views weren’t even that great at the Flinders Range.  I think part of the problem was the weather.  With the right weather, a gravel pit can look romantic, but it was grey and windy while we were seeing Flinders.  There were some cool side profiles of the rock layers, like ribbons that were waving in the wind.  It was nice, but it did seem a bit overrated.  Maybe Grampians were just that cool, that it was hard to feel impressed after that.

As we were driving out of the park that evening, we were able to catch a very beautiful sunset from up on a hill.  There was an information station there with a roof, but only half-walls, that we were able to use for a tiny bit of shelter while we cooked dinner.  We drove a ways into the night until we were able to find a ravine with huge trees, river stones, and a few outback “glampers” (glamour-campers, or Aussies with the full hook up like multi-roomed tents, pop-up outhouses, outdoor equipped dining areas, and all the other bells and whistles).

We had heard that in the outback you can basically camp anywhere without anyone giving you any real trouble.  The only warning that we read was to not park too close to another Aussie camper, since they came out to the outback to really get away.  We saw those few rigs along the way, but finally found a spot out of sight of any of those glampers, so it looked good.  We collected wood, built a fire, cooked some dinner, and set up our tents.  We stayed out by the fire maybe way too long, but that would be a recurring theme in our time together as well.  Marco pushed for a fire every single night we could get away with it.

When we went to sleep, Joe and I heard rocks shifting outside.  We got nervous, so we said Jojje’s name loudly to check and see if it had been him.  When he didn’t answer, we figured he might already be asleep.  And sleep came for us pretty early anyway, even though the noises had made us nervous.

In the morning we saw goats on the hillside and figured that must have been what was making the noise.  It was a relief.  We made another fire, cooked breakfast, and got on the road.

We were taking turns driving and the day before had been mine, but today it was Gwen’s turn.  We realized pretty quickly that she was not the most confident driver.  It would scare us basically every time she got behind the wheel.  She was so slow too.  She went over every bump using the brakes and crawling over them.  This made the dirt road we were on last FOREVER.  And any time she saw another car coming, she would slow way down and move way over.

Jojje had found a few things in some pamphlets that he wanted to see, including what he called “Talc Alf,” which sounded like something entirely different in his accent.  It turned out that Talc Alf was an older man who had made a persona around the art he made out of soap-stone.  Once you got him started finding the meaning in letters, he could describe the meaning of any word or name as if there were omnipotent creators of language linking everything in the universe to everything else.  He seemed to have a set method for a lot of important words, but even when we gave him our names, which were new to him, he was able to pull meaning out of them.  It was honestly pretty impressive, even though it was bogus.  English is not related to Egyptian or the hieroglyphs he was deriving meaning from.

He was really interesting to listen to, however.  He had some funny opinions on things like Obama, which was interesting to hear as Americans.  He made pretty amazing art in a style all his own. 

He is explaining us in circles

Joe was totally amused--"Take my photo with him!"

Getting to Talc Alf had been funny though, as we were discussing having to turn around and take a turn we had missed.  Gwen seemed to think we were joking, like, what, you guys really want to go see this Talc Alf guy?  She just smiled and nodded as if we really were joking.  We had to convince her that yes, we wanted her to go back and take the turn to Talc Alf.  It was a weird moment.

For lunch we waited for somewhere that would afford us some shelter.  We had already reached the part of the drive where there was nothing, for miles and miles and miles.  We finally found some ruins near the road and it took another bout of trying to convince Gwen that when we said, yes, turn here, we really meant that she should in fact turn there.  She drove us around in literal circles several times thinking we were sort of joking about parking the car.

We cooked lunch in the ruins, which felt pretty hobo.  We thought it was a little weird at first, but we were all so hungry that we didn’t care.  It wasn’t until we heard the sound of another car or two pulling up and having to face other tourists that we realized, wow, it’s a little shameful to just commandeer these ruins to make lunch in.  It was quite funny.

We just sort of took over the ruins for our own use

After lunch we saw a pretty big pack of emus, which was cool.  This was near the abandoned town where the lunchtime ruins were, and it was interesting to look at the graceful emus in a natural habitat with an unending horizon, and then look down at your feet and see remnants of humans among the rocks—screws, bits of iron, glass, bricks.  It was like they had taken a junkyard of twisted steel, put it through a grinder, and then blown the pieces evenly out over miles of space, it was so evenly distributed.

Look, Frank!  Emus!

There must have been a lot of civilization here at one time, as along the way we found iron junk put to artistic use.  Someone had taken old motors, gears, and other scraps and put together a vast park of junk sculptures.  Very cool, but the sculptures felt like ghosts.

Exploring the junk sculptures

We found a place to camp in the middle of nowhere (everywhere was the middle of nowhere in the Red Center of Australia), where there were again many rigs brought together and parked in their own little section of the nothingness.  We found a place near some old iron structures that had a bit of shelter from the wind.  I think Joe and I ate only a bit of food, but slept pretty early.

In the morning I realized that the water tower we had parked by had a fully-intact ladder, so I climbed it.  It was easy at first, but then it got higher and higher and I started feeling like I had to hold on tighter and tighter as the consequences of falling became bigger and bigger.  But it was so neat to get to the top!  The view was awesome.  After I came down, the others climbed up as well.  Even Joe, whose fear of heights he feels like he has to challenge as often as possible, climbed to the top.  We also explored what looked like a grain silo just next to the water tower.

Marco the Monkey climbs the water tower

Part way up the rusted silo