Walking the Heysen Trail, South Australia: Episode 2.

The Heysen Trail is a 1,200-kilometre walk from the rugged coast of South Australia to its arid inland. We are looking forward to the slow meditation that is long-distance walking but are a little apprehensive. We have walked long distances before but mainly in Europe, where there is a cafe every few kilometres and a warm bed each evening. On the Heysen Trail, we need to be self-sufficient and carry our own shelter, warmth and up to six days’ food. Do we have such a walk in us, we wonder?

Winding between Cape Jervis at the southern end of the Fleurieu Peninsula and Parachilna Gorge, the trail traverses beaches, national parks, farmlands, vineyards, historic towns and the ancient, rugged peaks of South Australia’s largest mountain range. It is named for the artist Hans Heysen, renowned for his paintings of majestic gum trees and the strikingly beautiful Flinders Ranges.

Our Heysen Trail is in two episodes. In the first and much shorter four-day episode we walked southwards from Parachilna Gorge to Wilpena Pound with our companions Marcus and Miranda [Episode 1]. The second and much longer forty-two-day episode we will walk by ourselves, tracking northwards from Cape Jervis to keep the winter at our back and the sublime beauty of the Flinders Ranges as our journey’s end.

Following the Coast: Cape Jervis to Victor Harbour

A morning still and sultry with anticipation. We leave the Cape Jervis Tavern in the half-dark and walk into the unknown.

Dark storm clouds hanging low in the sky, white caps on the ocean, a pod of dolphins swimming eastwards towards Tunkalilla Beach. Sponges, cuttlefish and driftwood washing in on the turning tide. Two of the Peninsula’s 70 surviving hooded plovers scurrying along the sand in front of us, like escorts. A storm breaking out to sea obliterates Kangaroo Island. On through rolling downs where the hills dip and sway and offer up glimpses of the deep indigo-blue sea. Late in the day, just as we clear a hill of grass trees burnt black by a bushfire two summers ago, the rain comes. We surrender to its ferocity. 

A night of wild rain squalls at Balquhidder Camp. A morning of rainbows. Storms breaking and subsiding, white foam engulfing the shoreline. Sea eagles, herons and pacific gulls battling the winds. Coastal heathland flowering with banksias, tea tree and correas. Eucalypts with pale twisted trunks blossoming lemon and rose pink. The sea cliffs sheer and spectacular. The rocks blacken with the rain and gleam like onyx in the fleeting sunlight. Wild dramatic seascapes and clearing storms. The walking exhilarating.

Into the South Mount Lofty Ranges: Victor Harbour to Hahndorf

Out of Victor Harbour and into a morning perfect for wandering down tree-lined country lanes, across paddocks and past weathered timber shearing sheds. Red-capped robins, musk lorikeets and lingering glimpses of the wild Southern Ocean. A feeling of great contentment; just the landscape, the elements and us, walking in companionable silence.

A smudge of a rainbow as we walk out of Myponga Conservation Park. Past beehives and walnut farms and a small vineyard, the harvest in, the air musky with the scent of wine being made. An apple tree by the side of the road, stripped of its fruit except for two perfect dark-red apples. A gift from the trail. We meet two walkers completing the Heysen Trail by way of a slow waltz, an accumulation of afternoons and days over a number of years.

Mt Cone, the sky all around us, night falling and the arc of Victor Harbour twinkling with lights in the distance. In the morning great flocks of galahs, lorikeets and sulphur-crested cockatoos. Grazing kangaroos pay us little attention in national parks but in farmland, they take fright and flee. We walk 35 kilometres to Jack’s Paddock where an eccentric couple invite us to dinner in the rustic Tinjella Hut. A small fire burning, a large pot of slow-cooked chicken & vegetables to take generously from and an evening of stories. In their small caravan are many and wondrous things, including an inflatable bathtub and the means to heat water to fill it. 

Mopokes calling then, closer to dawn, the boom-boom of a shooter’s gun. Deer tracks and the footprints of elusive walkers. A group of brightly clad Russians out foraging for mushrooms. Under a morning sky, red with warning, we walk into autumn; the Adelaide Hills a swirl of golden rain as the wind shakes the leaves from the trees. 

The Adelaide Hills: Hahndorf to Tanunda

A rest day in Hahndorf, tasting Adelaide Hills wine and cheese and lingering in front of Hans Heysen’s stark and beautiful Flinders Range’s paintings and his daughter Nora’s compelling portraits. 

The morning air, cool as menthol. The afternoon air, warm with the scent of liquorice. Sun slanting through the autumnal splendour of the Mount Lofty Botanical Gardens. The sad remains of once-gracious summer houses of the Adelaide establishment, burnt in the catastrophic Ash Wednesday bushfires and never rebuilt. An evening at the Scenic Hotel in Norton Summit where, in lieu of any other accommodation options, the generous proprietors allowed us to pitch our tent in a green, secluded corner of their garden. An open fire, good food and fascinating stories on tap at the bar.   

Winding around the spectacular stone cliffs of the Morialta Conservation Park, the Torrens estuary a silver shimmer in the distance. The shadow of a tree and a bird creeping up its trunk. The sun warms, the air holds some coolness; a perfect duality for the walker. Into wilder country, where backwoods people lurk just out of sight in their tumbledown shacks. An afternoon of climbing up and down steep rough tracks then, in fading light and with gratitude, arriving at Grampa’s Camp. A waxing moon, pale in the sky above the trees.

A cold night and a damp start to the day. A koala crosses the road in front of us as we walk into Cudlee Creek and find a cafe with a warm fire, good coffee and a Babette’s feast of homemade cakes. Sustained, we walk on, past trees laden with the fruits of autumn; quinces, pears and a rambling persimmon orchard, the leaves turning golden, the fruit ripening and glowing.

Lunch on a clear, sunny day in the lee of Mt Gould. Through grassy paddocks scattered with ancient, gnarled gums where we lose the trail for an hour or so in a desolate wasteland of clear-felled and charred pines before arriving at Scott’s shelter with its welcome bunks and picnic table. 

A star-bright midnight sky clouds into a cold, grey, early morning. Not a day for lingering. We walk through stringybark and box woodlands, rocks sparkling with mica, to a soundtrack of thrush, crescent honeyeater and white-throated treecreeper song. We stop at the Old Schoolhouse for water and a chat with two affable members of the Adelaide Border Collie Club; they and their five border collies are the advance party for 100 people and a chaos of collies. We gladly take our leave, walking on to find a sheltered site with sweeping views high up in the enchanting Wirra Wirra Peaks.

The ridge track winds among scraggly gums with tantalising glimpses of the valley below. Kangaroos leap over fences, a red-capped robin sits pretty on a wire fence. Out into a folding green landscape of conical grassy hills and into the granite country of the Kaiserstuhl Conservation Park where a friend once roamed as a boy. After five days and 135 kilometres of traversing the sometimes steep and rocky backwoods of the Adelaide Hills, we walk off the ridge and down into the green and verdant Barossa Valley. The vines on the turn, the valley glowing in the soft afternoon light, the harvest almost in. 

The Barossa Valley: Tanunda to Kapunda

The sun shining, the air warm. An engaging couple of hours at the Barossa Regional Gallery, the guide playing his guitar while we look at the art. We wander past the coopers’ workshops still turning French and American oak into wine barrels and into the arms of two lovely New Yorkers. They invite us to join them on their private tour of the Tanunda Chateau to experience the alchemy of grapes being transformed into wine, search for the names of legendary makers scrawled in chalk high up on the beams and taste some top-flight vintages.

Musk lorikeets and western rosellas in flight. Topknot pigeons trilling. An undulating landscape of vineyards and olive groves. Under fences, through paddocks and down a palm-fringed road to the Seppelt family crypt and onto Seppeltsfield to taste some luscious fortified wines. A slow amble to Greenock and, as soon as the chill descends, into the Tavern where a man sits perched at the bar writing in his diary, another is crocheting and a young woman with a dark wispy beard relaxes by the fire. The beard is a trick of the light but magic realism does take hold some nights in these country hotels far from anywhere. 

The cry of a rooster at 4 am then the slow build of the dawn chorus. An orchestra of birds tuning up for the first light symphony. After a coffee and apple crumble at the early opening El Estanco we walk past the Lutheran cemetery and out of town. A pied heron in a green paddock, a murmur of swallows. The sun bright and warm, the soil pink and the occasional car leaving a trail of rose dust in its wake. By mid-afternoon, we have left the fertile Barossa Valley behind and are in cereal country. The smoke from burning stubble, a ghost blowing across fire-blackened hills. Pale grey moths feeding on cream gum blossoms. The long-abandoned Kapunda copper mine, a moonscape of bright green, blue and sulphurous yellow. 

Copper Country: Kapunda to Burra

An early morning sky coloured grey and pink with birds and storm clouds. After a weekend break, we are sluggish up the first of the rolling hills. Blackened paddocks, winding red dirt back roads and old drovers ways. Wild roses, olive trees as old as the first European settlers and abandoned stone buildings falling in on themselves. A large flock of ground parrots rising from the grass as we pass. We walk 35 kilometres and by the time we clear the ridge and drop wearily down to Marschall’s Hut, the kangaroos are mere shadows moving across the almost-dark hill.

‘Walkers follow creek’ is an absurdist directive when the creek has been ploughed into a wheat field and its course is no longer even a breath on the land. We lose and find the scent of the track a couple of times before heading up the Tothill Range. A mist-shrouded early morning. The sun an orange orb in the smoky sky, the air all shades of magenta. With a song in our step, we walk across a landscape of pale luminous plains, shimmering salt lakes and ethereal mountains. Short, sharp climbs, the country becoming rockier, the gum trees more monumental. Red kangaroos and yellowtail windmills in the paddocks, wind turbines along the ridgeline. At Huppatz Hut we are pleased to take off our boots after walking close to 95 kilometres over three days. Then in the logbook, we read of David Turnbull’s average of 90 kilometres a day on his (successful) attempt to break the Heysen Trail record.

A brilliant night sky ablaze with stars, planets and satellites. The wheat fields pink in the early morning light. The country, sparse and beautiful. A big sky morning. Following fence lines and appreciating the craft of the fencer, their distinctive knots and flourishes held artfully in the rusty steel wire. 

Into the dry, stony country of Worlds End Conservation Park. Callitris pines, dry rocky creek beds, a snarling eastern bluetongue lizard. Along a dirt road until the sun is low in the sky and we nestle down for the night in a clump of trees just inside a farm fence. 

The landscape glowing deep red, the sky scattered with clouds that vanish within an hour. Small burnished grass birds, fresh wombat tracks. The earth cleft by clearing and overgrazing. Church bells ringing as we walk into Burra to enjoy a rest day and while away an evening at the Burra Hotel, drinking aged stout and listening to a whirl of fabulist stories being spun by a shambolic gentleman farmer.    

The Mid-North: Burra to Crystal Brook

A cool, blue fog morning. The deciduous trees lining Burra Creek glowing golden; the grass glistening silver with spider webs. Out past old stone churches, whitewashed cottages and the historic jail which starred in the film, Breaker Morant. At the intersection of two backroads there is a strangely perfect art installation; a floral lounge suite in a grove of trees. For hours we follow frayed fence lines up and down the pale rounded hills, some of the climbs almost vertical. The wind blows in from the desert. There are no trees, just hillsides of broken rock where the soil has been blown or washed away. Emus and kangaroos race across the bare slopes. Wedge-tailed eagles ride the thermals. A modern-day shepherd’s hut, a white and orange caravan, lies tucked in behind a low grassy ridge, awaiting the return of its nomadic owner. We see no other sign of human movement all day, not even the dust trail of a farmer’s ute on a backcountry road. 

Racing clouds and winds from the south-west. The crumbling ruins of a sandstone house glowing in the early morning light. Big mobs of red kangaroos moving through the landscape, two of them stopping and squaring off against each other. Frogs croaking in the reeds of Dustbowl Creek, yellow ringneck parrots and red-capped robins. On to the wooded Caroona Creek Conservation Park and through Tourille Gorge with its red rock walls, spinifex and coolibah trees. Views of Mount Bryan, the highest summit in the Mount Lofty ranges, as we walk in fading light towards the old Mt Bryan East School, alma mater of polar explorer Hubert Wilkins. 

We criss-cross the Goyder Line that delineates the northern boundary of arable land, a line that is shifting southwards with climate change. We climb Mt Bryan and sit in the sun at the summit, revelling in the infinite views and reading of the life of Hubert Wilkins, not just polar explorer but stowaway, daredevil adventurer and pioneer filmmaker. Then down through the green rocky Mundy Valley to the struggling town of Hallett; the general store just reopened after an eleven months closure, the Wildongoleeche Hotel closed for two years and now open a few days a week. We settle in front of its open fire, chatting to the only other customer in the bar, a grazier just back from a shearing industry conference on the mayhem that ice (the addictive drug) is causing in Australian shearing sheds. 

A mid-north heartland day. Great expanses of grasslands, ridges and ranges. Wind turbines like great white stylised trees in an otherwise treeless landscape. Sheep the colour of the earth. A cloudless blue sky and an old dry stone wall that we follow up and down the grassy hills of Brown Hill Range. Farms off in the distance. Hawks and kestrels in the sky, willy wagtails on fence wires. The sun holds and we walk further than we anticipated, finding shelter late in the day in an olive grove where we watch a farmer round up some strays by the headlights of his ute, the sheep illuminated and surreal in the dusty, dusk light. 

The sky a drama. Sun tinged storm clouds and rain in the distance. A rainbow, then a reflection of the rainbow. Walking along back roads lined with olive trees and following the Morgan-Whyalla pipeline and the Bundaleer Channel into Spalding. We arrive in town before the Barbed Wire Hotel opens so we make ourselves at home at a laminated table in the general store and work at charming a coffee and some conversation from the reticent storekeeper. The publican is less work and walker-friendly. He allows us to use the hotel laundry, makes us a toasted sandwich and shows us a sunny, sheltered place to sit and while away the warm afternoon. The local footy team are playing an away match and it is a quiet Saturday afternoon in this town of ghost shops with their dust-covered, cobwebbed window displays of paisley housedresses, typewriters and rusting kitchen utensils. Towards sunset four cyclists riding the Mawson Trail limp into town, their tyres punctured by sharp burrs. We spend an enjoyable evening talking to them about their adventures and ours.

Rain beating down on the tin roof of the hotel; an exquisite sound when you’re lying in a warm dark room and it’s hours until dawn. A convivial breakfast with the Mawson crew before we head out into a day of uncertain weather. The rain comes not far out of Spalding and then stops; a performance repeated every couple of hours throughout the day. A cold wind blows across the pale grasslands. The natural contours of the country determine our path as we follow Freshwater Creek, Bundaleer Channel and Never Never Creek. The reedy fringes of Never Never Creek sheltering elegant grey herons; its pools holding water.  Farmers out working, their commands to their dogs carrying across the hills as a guttural and untranslatable language

From Curnows Hut the world is lost in the morning mist. Out along old stone walls and thinking ourselves to be in the damp west coast of Ireland. From New Mount Campbell we see only fleeting glimpses of the valley below. Green paddocks and corrugated iron shearing sheds are illuminated for a minute or two by narrow shafts of sunlight that break through the cloud.  As the sky clears there are views of the pale rounded hills of the mid-north on one side and, on the other, flat ploughed plains extending all the way to the Gulf. To the north, way off in the distance, we can make out the southern peaks of the Flinders Ranges.

We stop for lunch in Georgetown, population 100 and declining. The General Store is more wunderkammer museum than shop, with its wooden cabinets of curiosities and half-century-old stock. Through the gloom of the store, we spy a gleaming espresso machine and a taciturn storekeeper who eventually acquiesces and makes us a double shot espresso.  

A still night, the lights of Port Pirie glowing in the sky to the west. Then in the early morning, the wind comes and with it the rain. We climb Sams Hill as mist swirls around us and walk down into flat plains country, its rectilinear geometry broken only by creeks weaving their way across the vastness to the sea. The day clears and our spirits soar. We come upon Friends of Heysen volunteers out bettering the waymarking and generally making life easier for Heysen Trail walkers. We cross the Goyder Line once more and follow a dirt road into Crystal Brook, a silo town ‘where the Flinders begins’. A good place to stop, restock and turn our minds to the steeper, wilder country that lies ahead. 

The Southern Flinders Ranges: Crystal Brook to Wilmington

Stars glittering like diamonds in the night sky. Sun shining all day. The birds on song. Following crystal brook out of town, past Bowmans Run with its stone barns and stone walled gardens, then up and over Tank Hill and on through the green Beetaloo Valley. A wild orange grove with fruit ripe for the picking. Across the flat plains, we can see a teepee of smoke rising from the low hills of the Eyre Peninsula. Pouch shaped, grass-lined, wasp nests; rams with magnificent horns spiralling like ancient headdresses. The occasional farmer, solitary in their work habits outside of the chaos of the shearing season. From Hallet, the trail tracked southwards then swayed westward. From here it heads due north, deep into the heart of the Flinders Ranges.

Owls calling as we lay in the darkness of our tent. Another icy morning, the sun beckoning from high up on the ridge as we walk up from the frosty valley floor. Spencer Gulf blue in the clear morning light, its bays and inlets delineated on the flat watery landscape. Scarlet heath and grass trees in flower. Rugged mountain country, contouring our way over the Bluff and along the edge of Telowie Gorge. We sit in the sun high up on the edge of the gorge and watch the gulf become silver, then golden. A still, deepening, orange twilight. From our secluded eyrie, we can see the lights of towns strung out along the gulf and the headlights of cars travelling along its dark highway. 

The earth’s shadow an ethereal blue. The sky pearly pink. Two wedge-tailed eagles performing a slow, balletic, courting dance, swooping upwards, stalling, then tumbling through the sky together. A trio of black-faced cuckoo shrikes churring. Past stone ruins and graceful homesteads with their steep pitched roofs and deep, shady verandahs. Along country roads and past farms to Murray Town, once a bustling place at the eastern end of the Port Germein Gorge route and now almost a ghost town.

Our tent is covered thick with ice when we wake at dawn. The water in the stock troughs is frozen. Along Wild Dog Road, through a rocky gorge, then across Willochra Plain and onto Melrose. Sheep almost knocking each other over in their anxious rush to be away from us. Horses standing their ground. Clear flowing creeks and a symphony of birds; Adelaide rosellas, galahs, kookaburras, red-rumped parrots, grey fantails and scarlet robins. The air, hazy as the day warms. A rock face etched with 650 million years of geological history including the fossilised waves of a beach on the inland sea. A slow afternoon in Melrose, sitting in the sun and talking to mountain bike riders. The population of this now funky town is less than four hundred but cyclists flock here to ride the mountain trails, making the town not just viable but vibrant.

Trees blossoming white with corellas as we walk out of town before sunrise. A well-graded climb up through peppermint gums and across the steep, scree slopes to the summit of Mt Remarkable. Bright green native cherry trees, sugar gums, ochre ridges and deep gorges. A couple of old man kangaroos; their red fur thick and shaggy, their bodies slow to move. A herd of deer leaping across the track in front of us and, later, a single antler lying amongst the rocks. We stop at Grays Hut for a short break; a modern corrugated iron and timber hut that honours its origins as a highland creamery. Quandong trees growing by the side of the track. Green rounded hills folding in on each other and then a rocky and beautiful area of bush close to Alligator Gorge. One of our toughest days; hilly, rugged and 33 kilometres long. At the end of the day, we walk into Wilmington. Its Billiard Club is closed and the verandah of its only hotel is loud with desperados drinking, cursing and playing country and western music.

Into the Arid Lands: Wilmington to Wilpena Pound

Through Horrocks Pass as the sun rises. Fog lying low and drifting through Beautiful Valley. A thousand corellas rising out of the trees, a great white arc moving across the land and resettling as we pass. Climbing up and over grass tree-covered hills then walking along a ridge on top of the world. Rounded hills rolling down to the plains, spinifex pale in the afternoon sun. We come upon two blood-splattered men, out in the Never Nevers docking lambs. It’s a darkly gothic scene, made less alarming by their broad smiles and warm banter. On and on through the warm afternoon. Yellow splashed lizards basking in the sun. Up and down gullies, following fence lines and crossing creeks lined with ancient, gnarled river red gums.

The moon almost full now and the sky clear. The Milky Way a pearly trail across the sky at dawn. We climb Mt Brown, named by Matthew Flinders for the botanist on the Investigator. Wildflowers blooming violet, mauve and pink along the trail. An abundance of mountains and sky from the lookout tower and then down and along Waukarie Creek with its blocky red rock walls and stony creek bed. We come upon two caravaneers sitting in the sun and stop for a chat and a kindly offered cup of tea before climbing up into the wild, rocky, spinifex covered Pichi Richi Hills. An uncertain track down through sheoaks, native pine trees and prickly acacia then along the Pichi Richi railway line into Quorn, once the crossroads of north-south and east-west rail travel in Australia, its fine stone buildings and wide streets a ready-made set for Sunday Too Far Away, Gallipoli, Wolf Creek and other films. The sewing machine and 1950s haute couture fashions on display in the shop window of the Great Northern Emporium could have been a scene out of The Dressmaker. 

A murmur of corellas. Small puffs of cloud forming over the mountains then dissolving into thin air. Corrugated iron shearing sheds outlined on the ridgeline. The Horseshoe Range almost obscured in a purple haze. Sharp featured, black-faced magpies and bright green parrots. Sidling around the ochre red rock terraces of Dutchmans Stern, kangaroo tracks imprinted into the red sand, the air fragrant with peppermint. The solitude immense. Our bodies leaner and more ragged now. Our minds set loose. 

Deep within the gorge, the sweet music of songbirds. Then out into clear air and a vista of plains, salt lakes, claypans and the tabletop mountains of the Eyre Peninsula. A country of mirages. On through the hot afternoon until the flat, shimmering horizon gives way to red ochre ranges, native pine trees and a pale waxing moon. Farms long abandoned. Across the sage-green saltbush plains and on through Wilkatana Pastoral Station; native purple potato flower in bloom, the warm breeze stirring the sheoaks lining the creeks. The moon rises early, a silver orb hovering over Depot Hill. The jetstream of a plane caught in the moonlight becomes a silver ribbon wavering in the sky.

Water held as the colour blue in the rocks of Depot Creek. Finding a slow path through wild and remote country: tunnelling deep narrow gorges, clamouring up waterfalls, skirting dark pools that rarely see the sun. Coming out into greenness and then climbing up to the dense spinifex covered summit of Mt Arden with views through to Lake Torrens 40 kilometres to the north-west. Rocky ranges extending all the way to Wilpena Pound. More narrow creeks, dry waterfalls and fallen trees to navigate, through Buckaringa Gorge with glimpses of yellow-footed rock wallabies high up on its glowing red cliff face. Rugged, beautiful country. White trunked river red gums, northern cypress pine, great mobs of kangaroos. A smooth-surfaced red dirt track, a gift at the end of a 35-kilometre day.

The moon still full and bright in the sky the next morning. Walking across the bare bones of the country. The after-sweep of a bird’s wing; ancient spirits stirring in the land. The rising sun lighting up rocky outcrops, ridge tops and an eagle’s nest high up in a dead tree. The fence wires wailing in the wind. Willochra Creek stark white, surreal and beautiful. A Saturday walker, walking the Heysen Trail a day at a time; half a day in one direction, then retracing her footsteps back to her car. Walking the trail twice over. Twisted gums painted white and silver and red. Desert sheoaks and Callitris pine. The afternoon warm and made for walking into and beyond. 

Kangaroos and emus moving about our campsite during the night. The full moon casting shadows on the walls of the tent. The tent stiff with ice at first light. Fog lying low in Wilson Valley and striating the dark ranges. An ethereal dreamscape. The country recreating itself at sunrise; a miracle that plays out each morning. On down a dusty white track towards Hawker. Almost nothing stirring on this most silent of Sunday mornings. A long, slow afternoon of doing little followed by dinner at the Hawker Hotel over a bottle of soothing Jesuit-made shiraz.

Out of town along the highway by the old Ghan railway line. Then along Wonoka Creek and on through the warm afternoon. Ancient river red gums wreathed with flood debris of leaves, branches and feathers. Three biblical camels on a barren hillside. We arrive at Mayo Hut with enough of the afternoon left to sit in the sun and revel in the stillness and the silence. Peter McInnis, the farmer on whose land the hut sits, comes by with his friend Nigel. Both genial and humorous men, they regale us with stories and lament the lack of winter rain.

A waning moon and a clear morning. The walking leisurely, following creeks and open valleys between the great folds of geological history that are the Elder and Red Ranges. Holes dug in the dry creek bed by kangaroos searching for water. Through Akbana Wildlife Conservancy where destocking and control of feral animals are allowing the country to regenerate. There are grasses and saltbush and young Callitris pine now, as well as a myriad of small birds.

At Red Range Camp the tank yields no water until we think to blow air into the tap and clear whatever is blocking the flow. It’s a relief as we are relying on this tank water to see us through the next 30 kilometres.  We follow stony creeks and fence lines and, just as the sun is setting, come upon two walkers camped in a dry creek bed. They are the only other  “through-hikers” we meet in our 46 days on the Heysen Trail and the first people we share a campsite with. They are four days into their Heysen Trail and heading southwards from here, towards an end at Cape Jervis. 

Our last day on the Heysen Trail. Water flowing in Bunbinyunna Creek and a heron gracefully picking its way upstream. The sound of trickling water, a rare melody. Up through Bridle Gap with views back across the Elder Range and Wonoka Station. Feeling euphoric and a little wistful as we walk through the Pound towards the trail’s end. 

The Heysen Trail is a grand 1,200-kilometre walk. A slow, mesmerising journey from the wild south coast to the ancient and beautiful Flinders Ranges, through a myriad of alluring landscapes and country towns, some thriving, some hard up against it. A walk we couldn’t have done without the efforts of all those that maintain the Trail, the kindness of farmers and publicans and the advice of fellow walkers we came to know through email exchanges and logbook entries. A walk we wouldn’t have wanted to do without each other. Walking together, alone. One step at a time, over days and weeks, into beauty.  

 

You will find an account of Episode 1 of our Heysen Trail, from Parachilna Gorge to Wilpena Pound, here.