Life on Earth Started Here?

---

Today we’ve booked for the so-called “Time Travel” tour, which is being led again by the very entertaining Mick, our indigenous guide from last evening’s Stokes Hill sunset tour. We’re not quite sure why it’s called the Time Travel tour, and are now thinking that we probably should have thought to ask when we booked. Perhaps unsurprisingly, our transport isn’t something out of “Back to the Future“, it just looks like the bus we were on last night.

Mick explains that we’ll be heading north from Wilpena Pound and then turning west onto the Brachina Gorge Geological Trail. The “Time Travel” tour title is apparently a reference to the journey we’ll be taking through 130 million years of geological time in little more than about ten kilometres of road distance.

First stop is an inspection of some piles of rocks that look like they’ve got bubbles coming out of them. Mick asks us all if we know what they are, and I’m sensing that “rocks” probably isn’t the answer he’s looking for. A few enthusiastic souls in the group seem to be a bit more on top of their geology than either of us, and identify them, apparently correctly, as stromatolites. Hmmm. That’s not a name that’s ringing too many bells. Mick tells us they’ve been formed by emissions from large conglomerations of ancient bacteria, thought to be somewhere around 700 million years old. This apparently makes them the world’s oldest known life forms. They haven’t been found in too many other places, so it seems it’s quite possible that life on earth started right here where we’re standing. I’m suddenly feeling very small and insignificant.

We see a kangaroo run across the road. Hallelujah. That’s the first live one we’ve seen since we left Melbourne nearly two weeks ago, and it’s good to finally get some firm evidence that they haven’t all suddenly become extinct. We stop to take a closer look at some Yellow Footed Rock Wallabies that Mick’s spied grazing on ledges in the side of the gorge. They’re classified as “very vulnerable”, and the estimated 2,000 that live here are apparently the country’s (and therefore presumably the world’s) largest remaining population. The cats, foxes and goats that were introduced by the early European settlers out-competed the wallabies for food, and this led to their decline. Mick says that the foxes have now all been culled off; but then quickly adds that he always holds his breath when he says this and waits for one to run across the road in front of the bus. Cat numbers have also been significantly culled, but the goats remain a problem. We thought they sounded quite cute when we heard some in the distance at Arkaroo Rock yesterday, but it seems that we might now need to recalibrate that thinking.

I get chatting to the young Canadian couple, Max and Oksana, sitting next to me. They tell me that they’re professional travel bloggers who spend their lives roaming the globe (COVID permitting); they document their activities on their award-winning ”Drink Tea Travel” website. The wallabies are a long way away, and I’m struggling to see them at all through my humble zoom lens. No problem for Max however; his lens is the size of a baseball bat. I’m now jealous. I wonder if all professional travel bloggers have lenses the size of baseball bats, in which case maybe I should become one too. I think we might need to boost our follower numbers first; thirteen just doesn’t feel like quite enough.

I mention to Issy that I reckon the lady sitting next to her on the bus looks a bit like Camilla Parker Bowles. My beloved appears to have formed a different opinion. She’s convinced that she actually is Camilla Parker Bowles, albeit with a very genuine sounding Aussie accent. We’re now beginning to wonder how she managed to sneak into the country and avoid going into COVID quarantine. I guess being a member of the Royal Family would have its privileges…..

It seems that grazing land here is being progressively converted to national park almost a paddock at a time, rather than all at once, which Mick says is ridiculous. He also thinks it’s ridiculous that a lot of the fossil sites here are signposted. He says that most tourists wouldn’t know a fossil if they tripped over one, and he thinks the signs are just an invitation to trample all over them and perhaps even steal a few.

Mick’s clearly not short on passion for his ancestors and their sometimes sad history. We stop for a view of Hayward Bluff which was named after the first European to run sheep here, in the 1850s. Mick says that he was hailed as a hero back in Adelaide. He then gets very emotional as he tells the less well known side of the story. It seems that Mr Hayward slaughtered dozens of Mick’s ancestors in the process of setting up his grazing empire, and the local indigenous population did and still does regard him as little more than a cold blooded murderer. I suspect there were probably hundreds of similar events around the country in our not so distant past. We were never taught about any of these at school, and surely it’s high time that all changed, if it hasn’t already.

We drive up out of the Aroona Valley into the adjacent Buneroo Valley, and stop for some spectacular views of the Heysen Range from the Razorback Lookout.

Back at Wilpena Pond I leave Issy sleeping in our cabin while I take a short hike through Wilpena Gap into the Pound itself. It’s a massive natural amphitheatre, surrounded by mountains on all sides. It seems that it’s called a Pound because it’s more or less completely enclosed, and thus akin to something that you’d use to contain animals. I stop for a quick peek at Hills Homestead, a small stone cottage where the Hill family lived in the early 1900s. They apparently tried to grow crops here, something that had never been previously attempted. It seems they had some moderate success too, until eventually giving up when a massive flood in 1914 wiped out their only access road. I follow the trail up to the Wangarra Lookout for some spectacular views over the Pound in the late afternoon light.

We’d been told not to miss the daily traditional Welcome to Country ceremony at the resort. I understood Mick was supposed to do this, but it seems he’s been unavoidably detained, so the responsibility's been passed to his young nephew, who introduces himself as Brucey. I suspect Brucey might be new to this, and I’m not entirely sure that anyone’s briefed him on what he’s supposed to do. Fortunately a couple of his mates in the audience are on hand to remind him of a few names and other critical details of the stories he’s apparently supposed to be telling. He looks like he’d rather be almost anywhere else. He keeps telling us that he’ll have to keep it short because he has to get to a funeral, but then lets slip that the funeral’s not actually until tomorrow. I don’t think it’s helping his comfort levels that a particularly enthusiastic tourist with a very fancy looking video camera and massive hairy microphone is filming proceedings virtually from Brucey’s feet. I think Mick might want to give Brucey a fairly wide berth for the next few days…..

---