The Flinders Ranges

In early winter last year I embarked upon the lengthy trek from Melbourne to the tiny outback town of Copley in South Australia. Copley is situated in the Northern Flinders Ranges just off route B83, a road also known colloquially as the Outback Highway. This has become a familiar journey for me, but it had taken some time before I discovered the outback for myself, despite having relatives in South Australia. When visiting, I would base myself in the capital city Adelaide, occasionally skirting around the edges of more remote areas on day trips to old mining towns like Kapunda or exploring the Clare Valley, but always tending to retreat back toward urbanisation before nightfall. When I finally did venture into this vast hinterland, I was irreversibly enchanted, and consequently have spent much time traversing it over a span of nearly two decades. Lacking first-hand experience, one might assume the regions within to be roughly of a kind, but they are quite distinct. All the seperate districts of the ranges encompass a plethora of specific wonders of diverse antiquity and uniqueness.

The Northern Flinders Ranges is an area I’ve come to know better than others, having established a history with it over several visits, with my initial trip occurring back in 2005. I’d never heard of the place prior to a peculiar series of events transpiring. A friend was en route north to Alice Springs planning to participate in an exhibition when her car broke down in Copley. Forced to an abrupt halt while the car was repaired, she was sidelined by a state of numinous wonder and became victim to a type of abduction by landscape. Enraptured, she ventured no further and elected to remain permanently. Perhaps a year or two after this, I found myself in Copley through similarly chance events. While in Adelaide, I heard word from a friend travelling Australia; he was on his way to Copley and planning a stopover there as many travellers opt to do, given the scarcity of towns with services in the outback. My curiosity having been raised to a feverish pitch thanks to intriguing and wondrous tales relayed by the friend now resident, I arranged a spontaneous rendezvous. Although Adelaide and Copley are by no definition close, when practiced in covering the wide distances required for much interstate travel in Australia, the seven-hour drive involved seems a relatively short day trip.

I set out not knowing exactly what I’d find—I suppose given my limited conception of what a desert entailed I was expecting flat terrain and lots of sand, but it was far more than that. I had never seen country like it. Majestic does not begin to describe its spectacular and imperious nature. A hint of the grandeur to come emerges while driving along the Port Wakefield Highway towards Port Augusta. The rugged ranges appear for the first time and loom in the distance to the right like a defensive wall sheltering a parallel world. That first time I took the turn off to Quorn at the southern end of the ranges I had to pull over to give myself time to digest what was before me. I was overpowered by the sight of jagged slabs of rufous rock rearing up like massive waves upon a wild sea, with undulating ridges and valleys splashed with spiky green vegetation. However, at this point, the preponderance of green hues still bear the hallmarks of more bucolic landscapes. It’s really only after passing through the town of Hawker that one has penetrated far enough to be seized by the understanding that you are about to encounter a place unlike any other, one of almost non-terrestrial uniqueness. The colour balance begins to shift to dominant reds, browns, oranges and yellows, and the greens begin to retreat — becoming accents rather than proportionate. This unfolding awareness occurs not just because of visual impact—additional stimuli ensnares the other senses too. Time seems to slow as the spaces between outposts stretch out. About an hour past Hawker, I began hearing a buzzing noise I couldn’t identify. Pulling over to listen more intently, I could have sworn I heard the crackling of electricity, as though currents were arcing against an otherwise deeply hushed background. I could not see any power lines though or other similar obvious causes—nothing seemed awry. In the end it seemed almost sensible to drop the matter and chalk it up to quotidian sounds of space/time distortions in this land in which the prehistoric appears to have been yesterday, so little seems changed. A place like the outback stands alone, and ideas that seem unequivocal elsewhere should be held in respectful abeyance when surrounded by evidence of the seemingly impossible: the confounding intricacies of evolution and so much else beyond the scope of easy comprehension. The country encourages leaps of imagination, and in so many ways, you would be more foolish not to suspend your disbelief.

The formation of the magnificent Flinders Ranges began around 800 million years ago. A primeval sea covered the entire area and, over time, deposited sediment into a basin complex now known as the Adelaide Superbasin. About 500 million years ago, a collision of tectonic plates caused the sediment to be folded upwards into mountains during a period known as the Delamerian orogeny (mountain building period). Substantial buckling and faulting of the strata resulted in the creation of a major mountain range that, over many millions of years, has undergone significant erosion, resulting in what are now relatively low ranges in a landscape filled with sandstone, limestone, shales and quartzite and rich in lucrative resources such as copper and coal.

The Flinders Ranges contain elements of natural and cultural history that are of global significance. Not only are they unfathomably rich in human history, their wealth of extraordinary geology and fossils make them the only place in the world where 350 million years of earth history and the evolution of life itself can be seen in a near-continuous geological sequence. The fossils  discovered in 1946 in the Ediacaran Hills of the Northern Flinders Ranges contain the world’s finest example of the Ediacaran explosion of life, which began about 635 million years ago, when the creative principle inherent in all living things discovered how to merge cells and so instigate the evolutionary leap of single-celled life forms combining to shape the earliest forms of more complex multicellular animal life.

The Adnyamathanha people are the Traditional Owners of the Flinders Ranges. Comprised of many groups with distinct territorial boundaries, they have inhabited this epic landscape for millennia. In 2016, new evidence was found at a site in the Northern Flinders Ranges called the Warratyi Rock Shelter. These discoveries included complex tools, animal bones—including those of some megafauna—eggshells, ochres, and remnants of cooking fires. Dating methods such as optically simulated luminescence (OSL) and carbon dating were used and revealed that the shelter was first occupied about 50,000 years ago, which proves that humans occupied Australia’s arid interior and began developing sophisticated tools 10,000 years earlier than previously documented. The findings from the Warratyi Rock Shelter show it to contain the oldest evidence of Aboriginal occupation in South Australia. Based on the available evidence and the limitations of what is considered reliable when utilising available dating methods, it is a widely held view by the academic and scientific community that humans first arrived in Australia at least 65,000 years ago. However, the timing of their settlement in arid regions had been uncertain. These discoveries at the Warratyi Rock Shelter push back the assumed date of settlement of the outback by at least 10,000 years, showing that people were living and hunting in the Flinders Ranges long before the end of the last ice age. Evidence of ochre discovered also suggest that people were at that time already decorating their bodies and utilising ochre pigments for art, revealing that an innovative material and spiritual culture existed much earlier than previously recorded for Australia and South-east Asia.

The country of the Adnyamathanha people is rich in valuable stone and ochre and thus contains prized resources for cultural and trading purposes. Ochre is the name given to a family of natural coloured earth pigments found all over the world that contain iron oxide. It forms naturally as clay deposits and sediments in the ground. Ochres are a product of great sacredness and utility for many cultures around the world. For tens of thousands of years, First Nations people mined ochre at various sites around Australia for their own use but also traded it across other regions as a highly regarded commodity in one of humanities earliest known trading systems. The various types of ochre extracted from different deposits across the country were sought after, and ochres of many different colours, textures and qualities were carried and traded across thousands of kilometres by large trading parties travelling by foot. Bush tobacco (pituri) was a common item to trade, as were tools, weapons, ceremonial items, foods, and other ochres not available locally.

On my most recent visit, I was privileged to see firsthand a site extensively quarried for ochre over many thousands of years—a place replete with evidence of the colossal scale of industry involved in this sort of spiritual economy. A friend took me to a place called the Ochre Cliffs, just a few kilometres north of Lyndhurst, which is in turn about twenty minutes from Copely. I had overlooked this site on several occasions, driving past the small, nondescript sign on the outback highway that signalled their location. I had heard at one point that there was a quarry near Lyndhurst; if I had any sense of what might be there, it was of something vaguely industrial, perhaps sufficiently scenic to warrant a marker. Likely, I made this haphazard connection due to nearby Leigh Creek being known for its coal mine and there being several other mines throughout the ranges. I was tired from travel and slightly disoriented as I reckoned with my usual need to adjust to the immense scale of open space out here. Expecting something slightly mundane, I found instead something genuinely breathtaking. With level ground surrounding it, there was little hint of the quarry from a distance. However, when it became apparent, the sight of the colours glowing from this chasm in the earth had me practically trembling at their beauty. Their shocking brilliance and disparate variations set against both the sandy tones of the surrounding plains and the slate autumn sky were almost irresistible; I was struck by an urge to race to the bottom and roll around, coating myself in the shades of sublime, secret earth.

Ochre pigments range from whites to yellows, oranges, reds, pink, black, and even purple. These hues occur due to different types and amounts of iron oxides. The red-brown colours are comprised of high levels of oxidised iron in very fine-grain haematite or limonite. Yellow is created by a mix of white and iron oxide. The white colour itself comes from kaolin, which consists primarily of a clay mineral called kaolinite. In many First Nations communities around the country, ochre was and remains frequently used for various purposes spanning the spiritual, creative, medicinal, and practical. It was central to the preparation of many medicines. Some ochres have been noted to have an antacid effect when ingested, while those rich in iron oxide can assist with fatigue. Due to its rich mineral content, red ochre can be used to protect the skin from the weather and insect bites and is effective for treating wounds.

The use of ochre for spiritual and decorative purposes remains prevalent in art, ceremony, and body decoration. Colours are usually associated with particular meanings and implementation. White is frequently utilised to reflect the spirit world and used during times of grief. Yellow is affiliated with women’s ceremonies, while black ochre is mainly used for men’s ceremonies. Red ochre has many associations but is commonly used to represent the blood of sacred ancestral beings, in times of celebration, and also when conflict is occurring. In art, the ochre is applied dry or, alternatively, mixed with water. Animal fat or birds eggs are also sometimes mixed with pigments for binding purposes. Ochre was traditionally applied in decorative patterns to ritual objects used in ceremonies and to adorn hunting tools such as spears, shields and boomerangs, as it is believed to both bestow spiritual powers upon these artefacts as well as act as a preservative.

The Ochre Cliffs are extensive and spread out over approximately one square kilometre, but the deposit of ochre not visible is known to extend over an area far greater than that which has been mined. Rich seams of cream, orange, pink, yellow, and red ochre line the walls of the quarry. My friend spoke of their radiant quality at dawn and sunset, but I felt well favoured to see them after rain, with the sky pale and stilled, and with every softest subtlety of hue picked up without being overpowered by any other. There are large sections where iron oxide dominates, and the thin veins of cream and yellow that run through brought to mind marbled flesh—raw meat and fat—an open wound exposed to the sky. As though the earth had been cleaved apart—earth made flesh—the sacred and vital colours of living processes, change and renewal. I thought of a resting place of a warrior giant, collecting themselves before rising again, anointed by the surrounding colour. Trying to conceptualise the enormous effort gone into this industry which had continued for aeons for sacred and creative purposes was humbling and deeply affecting. All that work expended for such noble purposes—the ongoing preservation of practises necessary to sustain the conditions for flourishing life.

It was a short trip to the Flinders this time—just a few days. As I began the journey home, I was awestruck anew. Because of the unusually prolific rains earlier in the season, the air was full of moisture and the light diffused; this acted as an ethereal filter, which rendered the entire terrain slightly foreign and the usual colour spectrum differently hued. Instead of a vaguely martian-like topography bathed in vibrant red and burnt orange, things had shifted to blues, mauves, emerald, and deep russet. The ranges were shadowed and indigo, shrouded in twisting mists. Water had induced a magical metamorphosis, and the country was transformed. Rather than seeing an arid landscape, I was reminded of the peat rich hills of Connemara. Everything seemed so inexpressibly softened, benevolent and gentle—pliable almost. And so the same astonishment and wonder hit me again, as it always does when I greet this inexpressibly luminous ancient landscape.  A quietening occurs which quells and slows. The antiquity seems to allow a kind of invisibility, as though the boundaries between physicality and that of the land are permeable and I have a new sense of myself as a translucent bundle of eternal particles, hardly substantial yet intimately connected and enduring.