The Heysen Trail - 25 Years Down the Track: In the Adelaide Hills region of South Australia
From the deep blues of the Southern Ocean at Cape Jervis, through the yellows of our rich wheat and barley country in the mid-north and on to the rusty reds of the ancient bedding stones of the ruggedly beautiful Flinders Ranges, it weaves its way through the colours of South Australia. It comes quite close to the Big Smoke too, following a bush path over the summit of Mt. Lofty to offer a panorama of Adelaide’s tall city cluster and endless suburban sprawl hemmed in by the gulf. Diving down into Cleland Wildlife Reserve and Conservation Park, and then turning northward along the ranges, the Heysen Trail is simply one of the great walking tracks of the world.
It weaves a magical path about 1500 kilometres long past Nature’s creatures great and small. Over many brief Postcards encounters along its varied course, we’ve gathered memorable video of gargantuan river red gums and miniature middle-earth-like orange fungi, skittish deer herds and sleepy bluetongue lizards. Twenty-five years on from the dedication of the first hard won fifty-kilometre section in the Adelaide Hills, the walkers and workers, The Friends of the Heysen Trail, will gather to celebrate on Sunday 23rd November 2003. They’ll welcome two very special contributors. The father of the idea is the conservationist and bushwalker extraordinaire, Warren Bonython, who is still enjoying the Trail at 87. Back in 1969, he spoke to a National Trust seminar.
“I started off by saying there should be a long distance walking trail through the Mt, Lofty Ranges along the lines of the Pennine Way and the Appalachian Trail that were being developed overseas,” he told me, adding that he then spent several years on a state government committee investigating the issues.
The idea needed government backing, which it gained, but it also needed an architect, a peg puncher, an advocate to get this walking track through 500 landowners’ properties and along unmarked road reserves. (It even passes through a prospector’s tunnel at the Jupiter Creek Goldfields.) For fifteen years, Terry Lavender was that miracle worker. He loves it all, including the far southern end.
“That whole area has some wonderful seascapes and it travels through dense scrub and open woodland with a lot of wildlife. It’s a world class trail of its own,” he told us previously.
Terry’s tales are legendary and some are in print. In Mr. George Conservation Park near Bridgewater, a thank you plaque for Terry sits appropriately next to the Tiersman Bridge which he helped build. During a test crossing, he fell into the raging Cox’s Creek, and he claims only his kayaking skills (without a paddle?) saved him from a long and soggy trip down the Onkaparinga to Mt Bold.
In the 1980’s, Terry Lavender pushed the famous path northward through Mt. Crawford Forest Reserve and the Barossa, deliberately linking historic accommodation and hilltops with inspirational views where possible. Beyond Burra, at Tooralie Homestead, the owner recently showed Postcards the sheep station and bush hospitality they offer. It includes an opportunity to experience a spectacular mid-north section of the Heysen Trail.
“It comes straight up the front of Mt Bryan,” she said, gesturing to the dominant dome on the nearby range. “And then it heads down the other side into Hallett.”
The pretty town of Melrose provides a breather before an even more vigorous and rewarding climb up to the peak of Mt. Remarkable, rising suddenly from the vast Willochra Plain to the east of this heavily wooded feature of the Southern Flinders. The views across the wheat plains to the silos of Orroroo, and through the trees in the opposite direction to the light blue shallows of the top of Spencer Gulf make it a dramatic highlight for the keener walker.
These are panoramic views from high places that lift the spirits and put our petty concerns in perspective. We are but specks in the landscape. We can feel the country beneath and beyond. The Heysen Trail, however, is also about small miracles and surprises. It can thrill us as we turn a corner or clamber over a scrub surrounded outcrop to find our own secret and feel the comfort and joy of our own special place. Ophir Falls was mine. Only a few hundred metres down the creek from the Bridgewater Mill and pretty village oval, a long reef of exposed and tilted quartzite forces the stream to tumble and rush its way down to a deep pool. In an unmarked and natural pocket of the hills, it’s hidden unless you’re on the Heysen Trail.
In the Flinders Ranges, where the big pictures will fill a trail walker’s album, there are intimate experiences too. Up the creek that has carved the “V” known as Black’s Gap, a walking guide showed Postcards a broad slab of mudstone that clearly showed its ancient origins.
“If you look just here, you’ll see the ripple marks quite clearly. They’ve been preserved under great pressure and then tilted skywards.”
After the journey up the trickling creek bed, the Heysen Trail broaches the Flinders’ biggest and best known phenomenon.
“It goes up the side there,” our Wilpena Pound Resort pilot recently pointed out on an eye-popping light aircraft flight taken by many visitors. “The track goes over what’s called Bridle Gap and then cuts right through the centre of the Pound.” Here’s Aboriginal Dreaming country that is spiritually evident to all, and European settler history too, as the path takes walkers across clearings for wheat crops and past the Hill family cottage on the inner floor of the Pound next to the creek that cuts the narrow entrance in and out.
The Heysen Trail approaches its northern end along a glorious path beneath the defiant ramparts of what were once Himalayan tall mountains in the Flinders. From atop St. Mary’s Peak, line after line of resistant ridges beckon in blues and purples. The famous painter who had based himself and his paintings amid the gums of his property, The Cedars, in the Adelaide Hills out of Hahndorf was drawn to these very different ranges by a chance observation.
An old shearer told Sir Hans Heysen, “The blue hills would fairly knock your eyes out”. After his first trip in 1926, the revered painter obviously agreed, and his new works opened Australians’ eyes to a different beauty. The trail brings together two distinct and different, yet geologically continuous features of South Australia. As Sir Hans celebrated both and unveiled a deep awareness of their beauty, the Heysen Trail rightly honours him.
Twenty-five years on, 101 people have walked all 1500 kilometres of it, and they say you need about 60 days to do the lot. A couple of hours are all you need, however, to mark the celebration of 25 years since it was begun and 10 years since it was all done. It is, as Terry Lavender calls it, one of the world’s longest footpaths…what a way to go - on the Heysen Trail.
Friends of the Heysen Trail
10 Pitt Street,
Adelaide, South Australian, 5000
Ph: (08) 8212 6299
Department for Environment and HeritageThe Cedars, Hahndorf
Home of Sir Hans Heysen
Open everyday except Saturday
Ph: (08) 8388 7277
Web: www.visitadelaidehills.com.au/thecedars
