Inland from the oyster bays lies a 1,500-million-year-old volcanic landscape of organ-pipe rock columns, rock-wallabies and deep red gorges. We headed into the Gawler Ranges.
Beyond the coast
Most visitors come to the Eyre Peninsula for the sea. But turn inland from the grain belt and the country changes utterly — the green gives way to red, and the horizon fills with ancient, weathered domes of volcanic rhyolite. This is the Gawler Ranges, one of the oldest and least-visited landscapes in South Australia.
Organ pipes and ochre
The signature sight is Kolay Mirica Falls, where the rhyolite has fractured into towering hexagonal columns that look for all the world like the pipes of a vast stone organ. The rock here is around 1,500 million years old — among the oldest volcanic landscapes on the continent — and the colours at dawn and dusk are extraordinary.
Wildlife of the arid edge
Gawler Ranges National Park shelters yellow-footed rock-wallabies on its rocky slopes, along with emus, red kangaroos and a surprising richness of birdlife around the old pastoral waterholes. Stone ruins and rusting machinery tell the hard story of sheep stations that tried, and mostly failed, to tame this country.
Going prepared
This is remote touring. Roads are unsealed and rough, mobile coverage is patchy, and there are no shops once you leave the highway towns. Carry water, fuel and recovery gear, travel in a high-clearance vehicle, and let someone know your plans. The reward is solitude in a landscape that feels older than time.
