From Wilpena Pound to Bunyeroo Gorge the drive is through so many White Cypress (Callitris glaucophylla) trees that you’d think they were plantations had they been in lines. Decoratively shaped and clearly hardy, growing on the stoniest ground, these trees were very useful to the Adynamantha people, the wood for woomeras and spears, the gum and resin for adhesives and medicinal purposes.
But by this photo I felt I was heading into the real Flinders Ranges, with such rugged beauty lying in wait.
Native daisies abounded: the white ones are Showy daisy-bush (Olearia pimelioides ssp. pimelioides) and the yellow are Showy Groundsel or Camel weed (Senecio magnificus).
Probably the most common flowering plant everywhere I have been in these arid places has been the Hop bush, the Dodonaea. I assume that the greenish-yellow ones will mature to pink, the Lobed-leaved Hop-bush (Dodonaea lobulata). But here for the first time I saw a few bushes with much darker red flowers. I have now been able to check that the leaves are the same, so they are not a different species. But why some bushes nearby flower earlier, so have already matured to a darker red, I do not know.
These small bushes were common, and I think they are Silver Mulla-mulla (Ptilotus obovatus). Incredible what plants can survive in these harsh stony ’soils’.
For this Bunyeroo Gorge has a whole walk dedicated to its extraodinarily varied geology; I did half of it, which is how I can identify the many odd and smoothly rounded slopes of ultra-fine stones near where I am camped. It is ‘Bunyeroo Formation’, with cypress trees sometimes growing out of it and sometimes with larger stones scattered over it.
The Bunyeroo Gorge walk itself follows a mostly dry and of course stony creek bed, with the gorge rising beside it, well signposted for the different formations… and often beyond my ability to discern the object of the sign.
These ranges must be a geologist’s dream, and I feel guilty for not appreciating enough the ancient history laid down here in the layers.
Instead it is these mighty River red gums (Eucalyptus camaldulensis).that catch my eye time and time again; I could have done a whole post on their amazing trunks. I have to force myself to stop taking photos of their many varied shapes and markings, let alone their incredible ways of coping, being such grand survivors of both flood and fire… another sort of ancient history.
Speaking of history, at my campground there was one other group, a doctor and his family from Iraq, but originally from Palestine. What must they feel as their homeland is destroyed and the world does not stop it?! Unimaginable…
They had hoped to see some Aboriginal rock art here, but I explained it is now more protected… except in places where industries like Woodside’s gas projects still take priority. They said that similarly in the Middle East, much history has been destroyed.
But as the sun came up, we moved onto the more immediate topic of our tiny and annoyingly clingy bush flies, suddenly appeared. What are they after on our faces and where do they go at night? I wished I knew more…