From the coast we drive up to the Flinders Ranges, the largerst mountain range in Australia covering around 500 odd kilometres.The road is long and I fall asleep until J. shakes me awake. I hate being woken up from sleep, but this is worth it - it's stunning landscape. The blue mountain ranges rise to saw the blue skies and I feel that sudden thrill of being somewhere decidely foreign. It's not my country. Australia is so vast that sometimes you feel you only belong in tiny pockets of it.

We stop around 3 because J. is exhausted from driving - and he spotted an old holden wreck spray painted with 'Camping'. It's a big station called 'Almerta' - there are many of them in the Ranges. Almerta is hundreds of acres vast and owned by third generation pastoralists - the land was bought in the 1920's. Many of the stations in the area are owned by 6th generation farmers. Once it's in the blood, it seems, it sticks. For a girl like me, I'd go mad - I love country but I also need a balance of city life once in a while. But Iget it - I do. It's stunning country - on their property they have gorges, mountain peaks, natural springs. Views to die for. No one would willingly give that up.

We're charged 10 bucks to park the van in a creekbed and given firewood for the night. It's so beautiully quiet. It strikes me Ihaven't experienced quite like this in years, not since ddriving round Australia in my early 20's. The only noise is an owl once night comes, and all the stars with it. Outback stars are magnificent with no ground light to interrupt them. I've only seen stars like this here, and in the Sahara. We light a huge fire and open wine, talk about the beauty of the landscape, feel amazed we masde it this far (it wasn't our origanal plan, but we are like that. We're not good at resting, and often push onward and onward til we fall in an exhausted heap. It's nice to stop and jsut be in the landscape.

In the morning we drive onwards toward Parinchila, in the Northern Ranges. The history basically jumps out of you from the roadside - crumbling houses, telegraph poles, farmland. The Andamathanya people maintained a rich culture before Europeans came, but it is the European mark on the landscape that is most noticeable. Stone cairns and crumbling buildings mark the surveyers that extended northward from the 1830’s, Freeling first finding a baseline and true North then others after him extending the network north and west and to the shores of the Great Salt lakes.

In the 1890’s, William Evans begain surveying the the outback – his father before him had surveyed much of the Eyre Peninsula. The peaks to our right on the drive in are named for his family and survey party. His brother and son also surveyed South Australia – 100 years of outback work from townships, surburbs and civil engineering. Everything around here is three to six generations – stations marked out in the late 1800’s for cattle and sheep now are subsidised by tourism – accommodation, flights over Wilpena Pound and Lake Eyre.

The Overland telegraph line is an awe inspiring feat of engineering – poles extend 3200 kilometres from Port Augusta to Darwin – 36,000 poles and stayed in use til the mid 1970’s where microwave links replaced the bush poles, their piano wires tying them to the earth. The distance is extraordinary – in the second world war, they started up over 50 trains running north to Darwin from the previous two a week, carrying supplies to the opposite coast. Whilst now there seems little more than tourist towns in between beautiful ranges and gorges and plains, it’s easy to imagine bullock carts moving copper miners in, horsemen mustering cattle etc.

In Parachilna we stay the night in a hotel. I luxuriate in a shit ton of bubbles in the spa bath and drink more wine. J. orders the speciality dinner of 'feral'meats - kangaroo, emu and camel. He argues that it's only camel that are feral - a more appropirate 'feral' plate would be goat, rabbit and camel, which are all introducted and thus more aptly 'feral' but I'm sure the barmaid has heard such pedancy before and merely asks him if he'd like another beer. Fair call.

We regret staying there though when we see the free camping up the road - it's stunning country once you get off the gig highway and into the ranges proper. There's certainly some geology - shale, limestone and the like some 500 odd million years old. Give or take. We spot emuss, wallabies, ducks. The river red gums are beautiful against the red dirt. Today's drive is one of the best I've been on, and I've been some places, that's for sure. Simply breathtaking. I've been writing a fair bit, ready for other steemposts, so I'm out of poetry, and besides, I think the photos speak for themselves.

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