Hike Arkaba Station: a refreshing stroll through the Flinders
By Lara Picone
The first night of camp at Arkaba Station was met with a light rain and the beauty that followed. (Photo by Lara Picone)
After the showers, hiking the Arkaba Estates became a journey through the changing landscapes, the struggles of the colonists and the revival of beautiful nature.
"A lot of times on foot is about luck." Jenny said wisely, while removing her binoculars from her astute eyes and quickly changing into a DSLR camera.
Just a few minutes ago, a crimson cormorant suddenly appeared, interrupting our party of seven. It took me a few minutes to focus my loose eyes on this small, cute bird, and I couldn't help but wonder if having good eyesight at 1.0 would play an important role in this good fortune.
But I couldn't help but hold my breath when I finally saw this little creature with proud, crimson chest flying around; its beautiful color was like an exclamation point in a bush.
This time we hiked the Flinders Ranges in South Australia with a guided tour, past Ikara (the former Wilpena Pound) and the 25,900-hectare Akaba sheep farm. Luckily, we had Jenny and her entomologist husband Peter (both of whom are huge bird watchers) who introduced us to a variety of birds along the way.
Another piece of good luck was that our plane finally broke through from the rain after a second attempt and landed in Port Augusta without having to mourn and return to Adelaide. And the rain thing, according to everyone's different point of view, may also be a kind of luck.
During the 3-day hike, the rain is not always pleasant. A week before we arrived, it rained a little, and as we walked through the Sliding Rock and into Ikara, guided by our guide, Tim Worcester, the light rain still fell and stopped.
"I've been a tour guide here for over a year and I've never encountered this kind of weather." Tim looked up at the leaking gray sky and shook his head in confusion. Rainfall is uncommon in this area; the vast majority of hikers will see red and earth-gray landscapes, intermittently scattered with a few yellow-brown shades of grass.
While "drought," "dry," and "inland" are the descriptions commonly used in titles, we are confronted with brilliant color cards that can be imagined to appear in different shades of green. The stream trickles and sometimes rushes; thick moss covers the slate rubble under your feet like fur; and even the natural "sunscreen" of the trees that usually appear white frost," the resin, looks like it has faded its coat and revealed the precious emerald trunk.
In parts of the Akaba Estate, the rolling hills are covered in soft grass, which inevitably makes you feel like you are wandering in an English village. In other places, you may feel like you're in a cypress forest in southern Italy or Greece, until a herd of kangaroos jumping in the distance breaks your illusion.
Walk through Vipinnapon
The Crimson Grebe had seen it, the photo had been taken, and the task had been crossed off Jenny's to-do list, and we followed Tim on the first day of the hike.
Ikara has only recently been restored to its original indigenous name, which was once the meeting place of 4 different tribes. But when colonists arrived, they named the natural amphitheater the Wilpena Pound basin and used its enclosed structure to keep livestock in captivity.
Many people mistakenly think that the crater here is caused by meteorites, but Tim tells us that it is only due to crustal activity that causes the rock to bulge upwards from the Earth's interior.
We are now walking past what was once the east coast of Australia; the oceans of the past are long gone, but the sedimentation of the past thousands of years has created different layers of surrounding mountains.
If you study the geological angles and strata, the evidence becomes clear, as if this extremely serious rock bulge is suspended in the middle segment, and the ancient energy is trapped in the rock, waiting to be released, so that it can continue to rise upwards.
We walked quietly through a forest of cypress pines, occasionally stopping to observe the birds, or to be struck by the bright orange lichen, or to watch the kangaroos observe us with lesser-than-defined interest.
Not only is Ikara very quiet, but my heart is also very quiet, as if the hustle and bustle of everyday life cannot penetrate the ancient walls. I always fail when I do meditation, but here it's easy to think nothing and just think about your next steps. I didn't even think about looking at the time, and before I knew it, hours had passed.
Crossing bridle Gap
With a slight change in geology, the vegetation has changed dramatically. The cypress pine forest gave way to a forest of eucalyptus trees, and the scenery immediately became beautiful, slightly messy. Their slender pink trunks gathered together, and the bark peeled off its limbs and hung to the ground like a streamer.
Looking around, the sight of these trees is like the scene after hundreds of birthday parties, as if the revelers are hurrying away and not cleaning up.
Tim tells us that the trees "deliberately" shed their bark to make fuel, "pleading" for the fire to burn. The ultra-high eucalyptus oil content also helps to burn, so eucalyptus is the "arsonist" of the plant world.
Once again, I felt lucky because of the rain. But no matter how hard eucalyptus searched for a fire, Ikara had not ignited a fire of any kind since 1988.
We continued on the dirt trail; by the time I reached the finish line, I was already stained with an extra 3 kilograms of dirt. After quickly clearing out the mud, we set off again, climbing and crossing the Mahler Ditch before returning to our first camp.
We fell into silence again, but this time it was not a contemplation without distractions, but a necessity. On steep hills, we must suck in as much air as possible with our mouths and call on other functions to find a firm foothold. If the herds hadn't been driven away here, I would have grabbed one and ridden it.
Generational degradation
After crossing the Mahler Ditch without the help of goats, we were greeted with amazing views. If we haven't been dizzy along the way, this beauty can also be breathtaking. Perhaps feeling that our efforts should be rewarded, the sun lifted the clouds and illuminated the incredible landscape before us.
In the distance, the ridge of the cascading Elder Range arches like a scene from Game of Thrones, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a dragon swooping down into a deep ditch below. Even though our camp was there, it would be a bit unlucky.
Looking back at Ikara behind us and the Akaba Estate in front of us (which encompasses the magnificent Red Range and part of the Elder Range), we find it strange to drop a flock of sheep here and hope for good luck.
Tim agreed: "I never understood why anyone would think they could raise livestock here, but seeing this place in the rain today, I think if they also arrived here in the rain, it would make sense." "
The colonists watched as all the crops dried up and withered until the earth returned to its usual dry state. Realizing that the land was not suitable for farming should have been a terrible thing for them, but the farmers of the Ikara and Akaba estates chose to persevere and made many tenacious efforts to tame the uncared for land.
First, in 1851, the Brownes came. They are all doctors. They became the owners of the Acaba estate, raised sheep and arranged for herders, and had the courage to survive the great drought.
In the 1890s, the estate changed hands several times and was finally entrusted to the care of Otto Bartholomaeus. He spent a lot of money and effort to fence the manor to protect his flock from local wild dogs. Tim told us that the fences were removed shortly after due to ongoing land restoration works.
In 1984, the Rasheed family took over the estate and embarked on an ambitious campaign to use bulldozers and explosives to expel hares. This method came into effect, and the number of sheep raised doubled.
By the time Charles Carlow of travel company Wild Bush Luxury bought the Akaba Estate in 2009, it was a veritable war zone — more than a century of being invaded by machines, exotic pests and livestock.
The number of native wildlife that have been eliminated and threatened by introduced species has been greatly reduced. Projects to restore and protect the estate's environment are massive and go hand in hand with tourism to create a self-sufficient model that is conducive to environmental and commercial development.
Warm welcome
We arrived at the camp and found our support guide, Charlie Eager, untouched by the dragon, and offered us hot towels and soft cheese. It was the perfect welcome for the exhausted hikers, and the promise of a warm shower and a glass of red wine made our already jubilant group laugh even more.
Dinner was 3 courses and we exchanged as we ate, deepening our understanding of each other. I knew that my buddies were all very focused wanderers. I'm curious how such a diverse group of people all love to hike.
John, a neurosurgeon, found that throwing himself into nature was the perfect antidote to the extreme stress that came with his profession. Helen, an Irish lawyer who has been living in Australia for a few years, uses hiking as a way to enjoy the beauty of the countryside and use it to draw a picture of the landscape in her head. Jenny and Peter's children are adults, so they find that in recent years they have had more time to enjoy nature and develop their bird watching hobbies.
I looked down at my first pair of hiking boots, and just the day before I laughed at its design as anti-fashionable, and now I think it's pretty cool. These boots are made for hiking, and perhaps, in the future, I will wear them to continue hiking.
Stroll along the Heysen Trail
The next morning, we said goodbye to Charlie and followed Tim deeper into Akaba, through the riverbed, the fields that were being restored after the livestock were relocated, and more cypress forests.
The road on the Hesse Trail is winding. It's an epic road that anyone can join, stretching from the Parachilna Gorge in the Flinders Ranges to the Fleurieu Peninsula.
In the dim sunlight, the surrounding landscape looks like a watercolor painting, as if you can get too close to it and you might get it dirty. The Hesse Trail is named after the German-born Australian artist Hans Heysen, who is famous for his watercolor depictions of the Flinders Mountains. And walking along this road feels like swimming in a gallery in Hesse.
If your eyes aren't specially trained for wedge-tailed eagles and ring-necked parrots, you'll really fall behind when you think deeply about the miniature details of plants and rocks. The bark itself has a dizzying array of colors and patterns, ranging from pearlescent to silver, to twisted versions that resemble swirls.
When Tim inspected one of the cameras their Akaba Guide used to monitor wildlife, we paused our art appreciation tour. The collected footage allows them to keep a close eye on native species living in the area, and any predators that could be a threat.
Conservation projects have been hugely successful in trapping foxes and hares, but feral cats are more cunning. They are a big problem across Australia, with an estimated total of 20 million feral cats posing a threat to our native animals.
"Wildcats here can be hunted seven times a day. Because they had to hunt, they didn't look like regular cats and were particularly muscular. They look like small Staffordshire bull terriers. Tim said.
These wildcats sound like villains. Luckily (again by luck) we didn't meet again on our way. However, a few days later we were driving back to Adelaide and I did see one. It looks like a Garfield cat that took a stimulant.
Aside from the ongoing feral cat problem, Akaba's wildlife conservation is well done. By 2013 they had removed all sheep and had made constant efforts to expel harmful animals such as foxes and goats, and even the heavily threatened yellow-legged rock rats had paid off.
Today, they are struggling to adapt to more than 5,000 species of animals that have grown rapidly from as low as 60 in the 1990s to the present. Every day, we witness the ubiquity of red kangaroos, Western grey kangaroos and European kangaroos, as well as a smaller number of their clumsy family companions, the emus.
The shackles of the manor
One afternoon, golden sunlight sprinkled the earth, and such wonderful weather used to make Hans Hesse hold up his easel. After our small group climbed a tiring hill, the Akaba Estate below appeared in front of us and welcomed us.
Suddenly, I found myself not thrilled by the long hot baths that were coming and the various other material pleasures I was expecting. That meant I had to leave my watercolor days and return to the real world. As the end of the 3-day trip drew nearer, all of us were silent.
With each step forward, the real wonderland behind us fades a little, while the everyday reality becomes clearer. Time flies so fast that we are at the back door of the Homestead Hotel, where Charlie is waiting for us with a smile as he has prepared the hot towels we've been expecting and the warm and sweet milk tea that helps us soothe the transition between the worlds.
Fresh rock cakes with cream and homemade jams made us more comfortable, followed by a warm fireplace and free-flowing whiskey, followed by a 3-course dinner by the chef and a sumptuous fluffy bed.
Well, the real world does have some temptations that we get used to. But I treasure the beauty and serenity of the past few days in my memory so that I can remember the good in the future when I need to remember them— after the calm is often rewarded with a dazzling prize, such as a touch of crimson on the robin's chest; good luck sometimes seems to be just a matter of angle.