Bush Sense
Take To The Eyre - Air Touring The Outback
Outback travel is a funny thing. As an experienced ground-based traveller who's used to daily distances of around five hundred kilometres in good going and as little as fifty when following a faint line in the sand, it's something of a surprise to see a week's worth of views in just one day. But that's the experience of a series of Sunday flights that have been departing regularly from Adelaide airport during the last few months.
Back in late-August I accepted an invitation to join a fifty-strong audience of seasoned international holiday-makers from Melbourne-based Croydon Travel's "Captain's Choice" clientele, on a day-trip through South Australia's outback. The draw card was of course the spectacle of seeing Lake Eyre in flood, a rare event that resulted from the huge rains that fell across the Centre in February, turning the normally dry and dusty tributaries of the continent's remote inland river systems into raging torrents. But whilst seeing Lake Eyre was certainly a highlight, it was but one of a series of superlatives that made for an astounding day.
The aircraft used is National Jet Systems fifty-seat "Dash-8" twin turbo-prop, with all the features you'd come to expect of a commercial jetliner. Being a high-winged aircraft it offers fantastic uninterrupted views below. During the week it earns it keep ferrying passengers to the oil and gas fields of the Cooper Basin at Moomba, in the State's far north-east, so it and it's crew are no strangers to the outback.
Take-off from West Beach was at 8.30am, initially following the suburban coastline before running parallel with the ranges up the gulf toward Port Augusta. The mix of market gardens, wheat fields and vineyards that line the route north along the hills and plains looked especially green after what has been a good winter with consistent rains. But even more impressive are the panoramas of the upper gulf and the start of the Flinders near Telowie Gorge and Horrocks Pass.
The jagged saw-tooth of the Flinders rates with the best as a tourism destination and as we swung north we were rewarded with a seldom-seen sight that made what was a stand-out day even more special, snow on the ranges. The previous night's chill coupled to a blanket of cloud cover, had left a carpet of snow over the Ulowdna, Chace and Druid Ranges, which was a brilliant precursor to the birds-eye loop that followed, around Wilpena Pound and St. Mary's Peak. From up above you get a true sense of the forces that have combined over millions and millions of years to buckle and twist the earth in a fashion that defies belief.
We followed Arkaroo's ancient dreamtime journey, the mythical serpent who carved the Flinder's gorges and waterholes as we flew further north, with the lengthy expanse of Lake Torrens in clear view to the west. After overflying Parachilna, Leigh Creek and Lyndhurst, you get a sense of how big the outback is, flat uninterrupted views stretching off to the horizon, a perfect canvas for the still mysterious Marree Man.
Seeing Marree Man in the flesh for the first time brought the scale of his creator's vision sharply into focus. In what had to have been an incredibly precise undertaking, mapped out with earthmoving equipment with specialized survey gear, Marree Man is still an awesome sight. Nature is slowly reclaiming the ground disturbed by the carving, but Marree Man will be with us for years to come yet.
In a morning that so far had been jam-packed with highlights, nothing quite prepared me for the sheer size and volume of the lakes from up above. The Lake Eyre basin accounts for around one-sixth of the continent's land-mass, around one and a quarter million hectares surrounded by desert and gibber plain, at what is the lowest point of the Australian mainland. At its peak this year, the flood achieved around 80% coverage, the waters fanning out to mere centimetres of depth on the fringes, not much good for watersports but just the ticket for sustaining outback life. The waters will be around for quite a while yet, mid-summer's evaporation will likely shrink the lake's surface to a fraction of its former self by February and the miracle will be no more.
Seeing remote watercourses like the Neales, Warburton, Kallakoopah and Macumba as a string of deep and connected waterholes and streams is an astonishing sight, but the most stunning and distinctive feature of Eyre is the north-south channel of the Warburton Groove. This deep-water channel cut into the lake's north-western corner looks man-made, yet it is ancient floods that have carved a very symmetrical feature in a region littered with twists and turns.
The Kallakoopah guided our way further north-east across the southern fringe of the great Simpson Desert. The ephemeral lakes of Peera-Peera Poolanna that I've driven across in the past whilst on the Rig Road were this time awash with water, their surrounding red dunes covered with a patchwork quilt of vegetation. This was the desert as I'd never seen it before, glittering and shimmering in the midday sun.
Lunch beckoned at Birdsville, that not-so lonely outpost on the Diamantina River. Any visit to Birdsville would be incomplete without a stop-off at the pub, standing cheek-to-jowl with local stockmen and other tourists, swapping yarns and telling a few fibs. The town's main event is the annual race meeting, when thousands descend on the place in planes, four-wheel-drives and buses. It looks like tourism-generated prosperity and development has supplemented that of traditional local industry very nicely. The pub's benefited, with a new dining room and accommodation that's lost none of the rustic charm of the original.
The return leg should have been an anti-climax after what had disappeared beneath our wings earlier in the day. But with the sun sitting lower in the sky, that other jewel of the South Australian outback came into view near Innamincka, Coongie Lakes. Life for desert dwellers is a little easier here with permanent water from the Cooper Creek supporting a huge resident population of waterbirds and fish, the creek dominated by sentinels of ancient river red gums. That wasn't to be all.
Lucky last, the sun now casting long shadows on the land, those of Arkaroola's Gammon Ranges were to stretch nearly to the shore of a damp Lake Frome. Looking muddy and brown instead of a usually crystalline brilliant white, Frome too has been touched by an exceptional season. With the onset of dusk, everything takes on a golden hue as the sun sinks to the horizon and slips away. Barely an hour later, Adelaide's lights and the airport's runway are ablaze with a different sort of colour, touchdown at 6.30pm, ten hours and 2,500 kilometres later.
