Our first day in the Flinders Ranges and we started our day preparing for an early morning scenic flight, but on arrival at the airstrip the flight was cancelled because of bad weather. We decided to do a hike into the Sacred Canyon. We walked along the creek bed a very pretty walk. We disturbed some kangaroos and a wild goat before reaching the historical Aboriginal etchings in the canyon. The etchings were quite simple depicting windbreak, waterhole, emu. We then drove to the Wilpena Pound Resort. We viewed the display to educate visitors on "Bounceback", a major conservation project to conserve plants and animals in the Wilpena National Park. The display featured information about the Streambank Frog, Emus, Roos, Pythons Goats, Goanna, Foxes and Andu - a very rare yellow footed rock wallaby and birds such as the Red Throat Scrubswren. We then drove to the Cazneuax Tree a 450 year old Red Gum that was named after the photographer Harold Cazneuax who first photographed the tree in 1937 his most famous image.
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| Our walking track into the Sacred Canyon. |
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| Aboriginal etchings in Sacred Canyon. |
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| The Cazneuax Tree. |
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| Looking into Wilpena Pound from the Cessna. |
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| The two travellers - plane was not big. |
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| One of the many gorges- most of the driving tracks follow the creek beds. |
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| Our navigator for the flight. |
Our scenic flight this afternoon was booked for 3 pm and we boarded a very new 6 seater Cesssna piloted by a young man (Michael) of 25 years of age who looked about 12 years old. He told us he had been flying since he was 15 so we felt very comfortable with him. A very smooth take off then we were soaring over the Ranges viewing Rawnsley Park, the Elder Range, the Hysen Range all the beautiful gorges such as Brachina, Parachilla, Glass Gorge and townships of Blinman and Parachilla, Angorichina and Wilpena Pound itself. A wonderful 45 min journey that really bought the beautiful Flinders Range to life for us.
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