Walking the Flinders From End to End
Early this month two men stood on Mt. Hopeless north-east of the Flinders Ranges and looked over the arid landscape of salt lakes and gibber that had once daunted explorer Edward John Eyre and prompted him to give this desolate hill its melancholy name.
For one of them, conservationist and geographer Warren Bonython, this moment on Mt. Hopeless was one of satisfaction and enjoyment despite aching joints and fatigue from a long hot walk.
South-west he could see the rugged outlines of the Northern Flinders Ranges over which he had just made a remarkable journey.
For, during the past 18 months, Mr. Bonython, in a series of carefully-planned stages, had walked and climbed 632 miles—the complete length of the Flinders from Crystal Brook, which Eyre has also found in 1839, to Mt. Hopeless.
MR JOHN BECHERVAISE, who went on three stages of the walk, on Pompey’s Pillar, Wilpena Pound.
Mt. Hopeless, it seemed to Mr. Bonython, should be the appropriate place to end his walk.
And while it’s only 291 miles as the crow flies between the two points, Mr. Bonython took the hard and interesting way that you’d expect of a man who likes mountains.
He went along the main access of the range, walking along the backbone where practicable, but mainly walking along the valleys and branching off to climb the principal peaks.
He climbed more than 60 individual summits, some of them precipitous and testing, but all of them satisfying. He climbed a total combined height of 86,000 ft., about three times that of Everest. It took 74 walking days.
He had various companions. He said this week: “The Flinders is not a place to go walking on your own for days at an end, particularly when the country is rough and the weather is hot.”
On three stages he had former Australian Antarctic expedition leader John Bechervaise as a companion. On other stages there were Melbourne artist Charles McCubbin, Dr. Christopher Game of Melbourne, Dr. Tommy Norman of Adelaide, schoolmaster Mr. Ken Peake-Jones, of Adelaide (also with Antarctic experience) and a WRE scientist Mr. David Strahle.
On the last hard slog, which began on October 28 and ended on November 4, from Yudnamutana Bore to Mt. Hopeless, Mr. Bonython was accompanied by Cdr. Gil Hitchens of the Royal Navy and they walked 89 miles in heat that lifted over the century. They had to carry two gallons of water each and Mr. Bonython’s pack at one stage (he’s a wiry 52) weighed 89 lb.
They had to replenish their water from a well in which floated a dead sheep.
“We boiled a number of billies of tea after that,” said Mr. Bonython reflectively.
Walking during the day became so trying that they completed one day’s haul in the moonlight.
The heat became so intense that, when they finally found a waterhole, they stood in it up to their necks for two hours.
On the last leg (and there were some tired legs by this time) the two men walked the 17 miles from the Moolawatana station across a hot gibber plain to Mt. Hopeless.
Why He Did It
Why did Mr. Bonython make the walk?
He said this week: “Mountains mean a great deal to me. I have an inner urge to walk among them and the Flinders have their own mystery and beauty.”
Mr. Bonython planned the journey in nine stages, each of seven to 10 days—Crystal Brook to Wilmington, Wilmington to Quorn, Quorn to Hawker, Hawker to Bunyeroo Gorge, Bunyeroo to Oratunga, Oratunga to to Mt. Serle, Mt. Serle to Arkaroola, Arkaroola to Yudnamutana Bore, and then the final walk to Mt. Hopeless.
It wasn’t possible, because of other commitments, to do the walk in one single expedition.
Mr. Bonython said: “I’ve always wanted to walk over the Flinders. This, I think, is the first time anyone has set out to walk from one end to the other, although some of the old prospectors probably walked an equivalent distance. My idea was to go beside the main chain of the range and to climb the principal summits.”
“And I found it was necessary to get into training at least a month before I made each stage of the walk.”
Mr. Bonython trained like an Olympic athlete. He started off with 35 lb. of lead in his pack and built it up to 70 lb. Nearly every morning he went climbing around Morialta and Waterfall Gully, or hiking through Cleland National Park.
IN FULL WALKING ORDER . . . Mr. Warren Bonython and the kind of pack he carried across the Flinders.
He started his first walk on May 15 last year, setting out from Crystal Brook.
He won’t forget that section of the walk.
He said: “I found I’d inadequately trained myself, and, after the fourth day, both my Achilles tendons became inflamed. I had to walk on them for a further three days. When I arrived at Wilmington a local dog sank its teeth into the more inflamed of the tendons, ensuring I didn’t go any further. It took months of medical attention and physiotherapy to cure them.”
But it didn’t stop him. And each successive trip became more fascinating as the mountains grew more rugged and the weather changed, sometimes in an hour, from throat-parching heat to saturating thunderstorms that brought creeks down with a roar.
Mr. Bonython and his friends experienced temperatures from 30 degrees (when the water in their plastic containers froze) to above 100.
The walks went through all seasons—from the driving dust of last year’s drought to the saturated plenty and wildflower-decked ranges of this year’s good season.
The weather played some ironic tricks. Because of water difficulties on the arid Willochra Plain section of the Hawker-Bunyeroo leg, Mr. Bonython and a companion made careful preparations for the walk in January, by carrying a number of one-gallon cans on their backs up the ranges.
There they placed the water supply for when they came walking through the area later.
Unexpected Meals
When they finally made the walk, three and a half inches of rain fell.
The winter rains brought some unfamiliar sights to the top of the barren ranges.
There were unexpected meals of mushrooms.
Mr. Bonython said: “We found the mushrooms on the top of the range during the walk along the high country between Bunyeroo and Oratunga in May.”
It was on a training walk before he tackled this section that Mr. Bonython slipped on a rock and broke a rib. That date, he noted ruefully, was April 1.
On the Oratunga-Mt. Serle walk in July this year it rained every minute of the first 24 hours. It was on this trip that the walkers suffered the intense cold.
And on this trip Mr. Bonython met Mr. Keith Nicholls, of Warraweena Station, who was going to service the bulldozer of an enterprising middle-aged couple who were looking for gold in the area, using the bulldozer to clear the surface of their claim.
At Mt. Serle Station he stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Jim Smith, who were among the hospitable people who helped him.
Then on August 29 he set out with John Bechervaise and Dr. Game on the rough, rugged walk through the Gammon Ranges to Arkaroola.
The Gammon Ranges have always fascinated Warren Bonython.
They are primitive and remote—a 3,000 ft. plateau of horizontally-lying quartzite rock forming many deep and narrow gorges. The scrub on top is extremely thick and difficult to penetrate.
The there was the water problem—the problem of either carrying it up or climbing down from the top of the ranges to the gorges to look for it.
Helicopter Helped
Earlier Mr. Bonython had been the guest of the Army in a helicopter, watching Army exercises in the area.
He asked whether the Army could perhaps leave a few gallons of water in a dump of the Gammons. The Army obliged and a helicopter left 20 gallons, which the walkers were able to use for washing as well as for drinking.
From their high camp on the Gammons the three men went down to Cleft Peak basin and climbed the peak itself which Warren Bonython had named and was the first man to climb 20 years earlier.
MR. WARREN BONYTHON (left) and Dr. Christopher Game on the summit of the Gammon Ranges overlooking Cleft Peak basin, with Lake Frome on the horizon.
Cleft Peak is a precipitous peak of shattered quartzite split down the middle by a steep valley with, on one side, one of the grandest Flinders’ precipices, a sheet 1,000 ft. face of rock.
Mr. Bonython said: “On top of the peak I looked for the tin and a note I’d left 20 years ago, but couldn’t find it.”
“But in a rusty meat tin open to the weather on a cairn on the north ridge we found a note from an unsuccessful climb we made 21 years ago. The writing was still legible.”
There was another dizzy climb on the next walk in September from Arkaroola Station to Yudnamutana Bore. The first three days of this walk Mr. Bonython was on his own in the wild tangle of country around Mt. Painter where the Exoil exploration party is looking for uranium. He took special precautions to keep the local people posted of his movements in case of possible accident.
Later he had arranged to meet Cdr. Hitchens and Mr. Strahle at Yudnamutana and there they returned to climb the Armchair, a great boss of granite with two wing-like protuberances like the arms of a chair.
“I’d climbed it 18 years before and knew the way up. But there was one spot where a slip could send you hurtling hundreds of feet,” said Mr. Bonython.
As a conservationist, he was alarmed to see the number of wild goats living high in the ranges.
1,300 Wild Goats
He said: “I saw groups of about 40 goats and they pose a threat to the marsupials like the euros and rock wallabies that live in this high country. One local resident told me that he had seen one flock of about 1,300 wild goats.”
Mr. Bonython looks back on his trip with much enjoyment. Certainly he is fit for another.
He remembers the kindness of people along the route—Mrs. J. Whitford, of Quorn, Mr. and Mrs. Max Fargher of Oratunga Station, the Smiths of Mt. Serle, and Mr. Gerald Sheehan and Mr. Michael Sheehan, of Moolawatana.
Mr. Bonython is now writing a book about his experiences, the country and the people he met.
About the Flinders he says: “One of the most important things for the mental well-being of people in a civilised society is to be able to go back and to commune with Nature. The more pristine or primitive the Nature the better. But unless we take positive steps, it won’t remain this way. We must see that the unusual qualities of this magnificent country are not ruined by lack of thought in development. Conservation must be understood and applied by all of us.”
This, from a man who has just walked through the mountains he loves, is something to ponder and heed.
