 Dry gorge in Arkaroola Mt Painter Sanctuary / Mt Chambers Gorge |
 by Philip Game
Discover the story behind the oldest landscape on the planet.
South Australia’s Flinders Ranges are an uncompromising land: some of the oldest terrain on the planet. Running eight hundred km. north from St Vincent Gulf, that jagged bite out of the Australian continent, the ancient, sawtooth ridges form a teardrop around the natural bowl of Wilpena Pound, then march towards the desolate salt lakes of the interior.
Farther north, the mountains become still more venerable in the precipitous mineral-rich granite country around Mount Painter. Geologist Reg Sprigg, a pioneer of educational tourism in Australia, set up a private wildlife sanctuary and tourist lodge on the old Arkaroola Station, providing his domain with an observatory and a generous supply of historic and scientific information displayed on stone cairns.
Arkaroola’s prime attraction is the roller-coaster ride along an old mineral exploration track which hugs the ridge tops of the Northern Flinders Ranges. Radium Ridge, Uranium Workings, Mount Painter, Mount Gee - these are evocative but eerie names for any student, however pedestrian, who wandered the dusty halls of an Australian school of geology; who dreamt, however idly, of striking it rich during the ephemeral mineral boom of the Seventies.
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