The Eyre Peninsula's interior hides some of Australia's largest granite monoliths — wave-shaped, billion-year-old rocks you can climb at sunrise.
Everyone knows Wave Rock in Western Australia. Far fewer know that the central Eyre Peninsula has its own family of granite giants — older, quieter and, many would argue, just as spectacular.
Mount Wudinna is the headline act, one of the largest granite monoliths in the country, rising in a great pale dome from the wheat country. The walk to the top is a steady climb up bare rock, past rock holes and tenacious lichens, to a summit with views that run clear to the horizon in every direction.
A wave of your own
Nearby, Pildappa Rock offers the photograph everyone comes for — a curling, wave-shaped overhang of pink-and-grey granite, formed as the rock weathered along its base. Climb up and over it, find the gnammas (rock holes) that hold water after rain, and you will likely have the whole place to yourself.
These rocks are more than a thousand million years old, slowly emerging from the surrounding plain as the softer earth around them erodes away. Climbing them at sunrise, with the granite warming under your hands and the mallee stretching out below, is one of the great underrated experiences of inland South Australia — and a reminder that the peninsula's wonders are not all on the coast.
