KEY POINTS:
Tracking down decent food in Outback Australia can be hard work. Long days on the road or trekking in the bush are often rewarded with nothing more appetising than a gristly pie, deep-fried dim sim or the ghastly chiko roll.
Fresh fruit and vegetables are as elusive as
summer rain.
So it was a relief, after another long, hot day driving the dusty back tracks of South Australia's Flinders Ranges, to pull into the Prairie Hotel.
The restored 19th century pub is pretty much all that remains of the once-thriving little settlement of Parachilna, on the western side of the ranges.
Parachilna was once a stop on the Great Northern Railway, or Ghan, from Adelaide to Alice Springs. But the track was so frequently flooded that in 1980 it was re-routed, taking with it Parachilna's raison d'etre.
The village now boasts a population of around six, including pub owners Jane Fargher and her husband Ross, a fourth-generation pastoralist.
The pub, built in 1876, offers real coffee, good wine and such delicacies as pumpkin and walnut ravioli, camel mettwurst and emu liver pate.
It is renowned for its Flinders feral mixed grill - a carnivore's dream of camel sausages, emu patties, goat chops and juicy kangaroo steaks, all smothered in a rich, dark sauce. It comes served with freshly baked damper bread and is enough to satisfy the most famished traveller.
The Prairie also offers award-winning accommodation in a corrugated iron and timber extension which blends in with the original building.
It's an attractive spot, notwithstanding the occasional dust storms and venomous brown snakes, and a shakily written sign on a nearby gate which reads: "The owner is a vicious foul-tempered bastard - keep out."
The Prairie also provides a good base from which to explore the Flinders Ranges, a chain of rust-red mountains which stretches for 500km from north of Adelaide, deep into the South Australian desert.
Named after the 19th century British navigator and explorer Matthew Flinders, the ranges' best known feature is Wilpena Pound, a massive crater which looks as though it was formed by a meteorite. It is, in fact, the eroded remains of ancient mountain peaks.
Shaped like a giant soapdish, it is 17km long and 7km wide. It looks like a giant has smashed his fist into the earth.
The local Adnyamathanha people believe the pound was created by two enormous Dreamtime snakes, or Akurra, which lay still and willed themselves to death.
Clambering around the area on the first day of my trip, it was easy to see a serpentine quality to the steeply sided sandstone ridges which enclose the feature.
The wind was blowing hard and the sky was a flawless blue as I picked my way along the saw-tooth rim of the crater-like depression, being careful not to tread on the painted lizards scurrying across the path. Quartzite rocks sparkled in the sunshine. Below, the floor of the pound was covered in acacia and mallee bushes, and beyond, the tawny brown hills of the Flinders looked as if they went on forever.
The nearby Wilpena Round Resort, a low-key affair, occupies a pleasantly shady spot just outside the entrance to the pound. There's a restaurant, visitor centre, cabins, backpacker accommodation and a camping ground.
The resort's manager, Bevan Roberts, showed me around the old Orapirina homestead, from where the Hunt family ran sheep until 1985, when the station was declared a national park.
A classic outback farmhouse, it is surrounded by mulberry, fig and almond trees. The garden contains the gravestones of much loved pets, including, "Stumpy, a mighty sheepdog, 1938-1953".
"The early settlers were amazing people. There's not a flowing river between here and Adelaide and drought hit them every few years. Their courage was incredible," Roberts said as we gazed out over the ABC Range, so named because it consists of 26 hills, one for each letter of the alphabet.
The native pines which dot the tawny brown hillsides give this part of Australia a hint of California or New Mexico.
Lizards skittered across the path and red-rumped parrots chattered in mulga trees as I climbed to the top of Mt Ohlssen Bagge, one of the bluffs overlooking the Pound.
In the distance lay the forbidding-looking Elder Range.
"There are peaks which you could name after yourself if you could be bothered to climb them," Roberts said. "The place is chock-a-block with Aboriginal engravings which have yet to be discovered."
From Wilpena I drove north, along white gravel roads, to a series of gorges for which the Flinders are justly famous.
Parachilna Gorge is distinguished by craggy red cliffs splashed with the tell-tale white droppings of birds of prey like kestrels and ospreys. At Brachina Gorge, swallows swooped over green-blue waterholes, where yellow-footed rock wallabies can sometimes be seen.
From the tiny village of Angorichina, I followed a 12km return walk up a beautiful creek to Blinman Pools, an oasis of life in the middle of the desert. North of here lies the picturesque old copper mining town of Blinman. Copper was discovered there in 1859 by a one-legged shepherd, Robert "Pegleg" Blinman, who stumbled, literally, one would think, over a lump of ore.
Today Blinman consists of a handful of attractive stone buildings dating from the 1860s, a pub and a village store offering pies and cold drinks.
It's a good place for a break before pressing on north to another one of the Flinders highlights, Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary.
Once a huge sheep station, the property was bought in 1968 by a renowned geologist, Reg Sprigg, and his Scottish-born wife Griselda, who was the first white woman to cross the Simpson Desert. They cleared out a huge numbers of feral goats, camels and donkeys and turned Arkaroola's 61,000ha of cinnamon-red mountains, water holes and twisting gorges into a private wildlife reserve.
The reserve's name recalls the mythical Dreamtime figure Arkaroo, a giant snake which, legend has it, drank dry nearby Lake Frome, became bloated with all the water, and then gouged out gorges and ravines as he slithered north to the even more distant Gammon Ranges.
The resort consists of a 20-room lodge, self-contained cottages, a swimming pool and a large caravan and camping ground.
The atmospheric Pick and Shovel Bar, at the centre of the tiny village, is decorated with black and white pictures of camels being used to cart supplies around the region in the early 1900s. Old rifles and rabbit traps adorn the solid timber bar.
The highlight of my stay was the Ridgetop Tour. Along with eight other visitors I was bundled into a safari-style four-wheel-drive truck and taken on a 42km, bone-jangling tour of Arkaroola's spectacular hills and ravines.
The rough tracks were hacked out of the mountainsides by miners prospecting for uranium 40 years ago.
From Coulthard Lookout, which is named after a local Aboriginal elder, we could see the distant smudge of Lake Frome, the whitest and driest salt lake in Australia, according to ranger Paul Mellor. "It's only flooded three times in the last century - the last time was 1974."
To the left, amid a jumble of peaks, was a hill known as The Armchair.
"A lot of people reckon it looks more like a beanbag," said Mellor.
"Personally I think it's a dead ringer for Jabba the Hutt out of Star Wars.
"Use your imagination."
We thumped past magnificent ghost gums and along stony creek beds, rattling from side to side.
"This is a freeway compared with what's coming up," said our driver, a relentlessly cheery bloke called Dave Eason. "The next bit of the track goes over bedrock."
Chunks of pink rock resembling turkish delight poked above spiky looking porcupine bushes, home to rarely seen hopping mice and other small marsupials.
Another 15 minutes brought us to the 610m-high Sillers Lookout, a flat-topped mountain overlooking a vast plain.
The track leading up to it is so steep that vehicles have to pause and then race up at top speed.
It felt as though we were about to take off until at the last minute Dave eased off on the accelerator and squeezed into a space no bigger than a ping pong table.
Fifteen centimetres more and we'd have plunged down the side of the crumbling red cliff.
After gazing out over more crumpled hills and the distant Gammon Ranges National Park, it was time to head back down the track to the resort for a much-needed beer.
With studied nonchalance, Dave inched the truck off the summit and back down the pitted track.
"Don't worry if I missed any of the potholes on the way up," he yelled over the sound of the wheezing engine. We'll make sure we get them second time round."
He was as good as his word.
