Flinders Ranges, South Australia — Big & Little Adventures

Flinders Ranges – possibly Australia’s most underrated natural wonder and coming from Queensland, it wasn’t really on our radar.

What a beauty. The most beautiful scenic drives from start to finish with jaw-droppingly good views around every corner.

Here are our highlights -

We arrived into the national park just in time for lunch at Wilkawillina Gorge. It’s clear this gorge has not seen water for some time and the whole area surrounding the gorge is quite barren due to over grazing of rabbits in past decades. With the rabbit population now under control, the habitat is slowly restoring itself.

Wilkawillina Gorge is a great lunch stop.

After lunch we set about planning our route for our time in the ranges. We decided to set up camp for our first night in Brachina Gorge. This was a beautiful spot and would definitely be a cooler option for camping in summer due to its shady areas (in the shadows of the gorge walls for a large part of the day). Once again, this gorge was dry but still beautiful. Much to the girls delight, there was an old hollowed out tree right next to our camp (campsite no. 3) so they soon turned it into their cubby house for the duration of our stay.

Spending some time in their ‘cubby house’ writing in their travel journals. These travel journals are available via our online shop. Click here to purchase - https://www.bigandlittleadventures.com.au/shop

That evening we walked up the rocky hill directly behind our camp (you will need good walking shoes for this) and enjoyed a beautiful champagne sunset while the kids ran absolutely wild (and we mean wild) around us.

Sunset views from the top of Brachina Gorge.

One of the visitors to our camp at Brachina Gorge.

We rose bright and early the next morning as we had a lot to cram into our day. Our plan was to take the scenic drive from Brachina Gorge down to Wilpena Pound.
Wow, so beautiful. The views were simply breathtaking! Bunyeroo Valley Lookout was a stunner. The early morning sun shining onto the range was unbelievable - all we could do was just stand there and stare.

Just one of the many different views of the ranges. This photo was taken around 9am and it was a beautiful, clear day.

From Bunyeroo Valley we took a slight detour to Sacred Canyon which is well worth a look. There is some evidence of Aboriginal Art but it’s not mind blowing or well preserved. The canyon itself is pretty cool though and if you walk through to the top of the canyon, there is a flat plain with a city of rock cairns that have been added to by travellers along the way.

A city of rock cairns on a plain at the top of the canyon.

From here we drove to Wilpena Pound for an early lunch before embarking on a hike to Hills Homestead and Wangara Lookout. This walk was about 8km return. Pretty flat for the most part but the walk up to the top of the lookout from the homestead was quite a work out! Kids as young as 4 or 5 will find it challenging but most should be able to handle it.

There are some beautiful walks from the Wilpena Pound Visitor Centre.

A well-earned ice-cream back at the Wilpena Visitor Centre was just the ticket after our walk and we made our way to Rawnsley Park Station that afternoon.

We gave ourselves the night off cooking and had dinner at Rawnsley’s Woolshed Restaurant which heavily featured their own lamb on the menu. The caravan park shop also stocks quite a selection of the lamb in their freezer which we have enjoyed throughout this trip.

Rawnsley Park Station has a beautiful campground offering powered and unpowered sites.

Our friends (who are currently doing a lap of Australia - you can find them on Instagram @fists_of_five) so kindly and thoughtfully left us a letter treasure hunt when they were there the previous week. Beth sent me a message with a list of clues and we all had so much fun following the clues to find the letter at the end. We hadn’t seen this family for more than 6 months and it was so lovely to receive this letter from them, nestled between some bark in a tree!

Coming from the East, the route we took is in black pen.

Happy Travels!