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When Animals Began: Flinders Ranges, South Australia
The world in five volumes
…everything looks so old that it belongs to a different world…
Artist Hans Heysen, 1926, Flinders Ranges, South Australia
It is a two hour drive from Port Augusta to the Prairie Hotel at Parachilna in the Flinders Ranges. You head south for a few kilometres, across shimmering salt pans, and then turn east onto the Flinders Ranges Way. The road cuts across plains of wiry grass and grey-leaved shrubs, and winds through a gap in the hills near Saltia, passing over and under the narrow-gauge track of the Pitchi Ritch Railway on the way to Quorn. At Hawker, you leave the Flinders Ranges Way and travel the Outback Highway. From here, it is an hour to Parachilna.
Parachilna is a blink-and-you’ll-miss it town. It was formerly a railway siding — the original town had been established 10 kilometres to the east, at the entrance to Parachilna Gorge, but had been abandoned because of the inconvenience of being so far from the railway line and, more importantly, because the hotel was built at the siding. It was one thing to transport goods to and from the railway, but quite another thing to live that distance from the pub.
The Prairie Hotel opened in 1876. The current building, made of local…
