Wilpena Pound

Wilpena Pound is an extraordinary geological formation, an amphitheatre of mountains - Its name suggests a place of bent fingers, cupped hands and you will soon understand why. The Adnyamanthanha tribe talk about the Pound- Ikara, the meeting place being formed when two dreaming serpents went there and gorged on people along the way and finally fell asleep there forming the scene we have in front of us today. St Mary's Peak and Beatrice Peak representing their heads. We took off from a small airfield. Kangaroos and emu dads with their young grazed in the field next to the runway. We saw forests of Northern Cypress pine, Callitris and witnessed hazy smoke rising from them - it turns out they are the spores being released into the air. 

I have reproduced this photo from https://misstourist.com/wilpena-pound-south-australia-flinders-range/as it is a good overall view of what we saw and experienced on our own adventure except that in our case the whole of the Pound and surrounding areas were so green due to recent rain. 

The Cypress Forests - Callitris trees, native to Australia, releasing their spores in the middle of this photo.

 

A view of Wilpena Pound from the side as we flew around. 

The bowl in the middle where unbelievably at some point in the past, some of the land was cleared for pastures. Attempts at farming here failed. See the bottom right of the photo. How did they even get there?!

The bowl in the middle - the whole area was unusually green and lush because of the rains.Normally this area is semi arid and receives very little rainfall. 

The two tallest peaks - said to be the heads of the dreaming serpents 

The Flinders ranges are the largest and longest in South Australia and were formed some 800 million years ago when an ancient sea deposited sediments in the Adelaide Geosyncline. Around 300 million of years later, the sediments were folded and literally pushed up into mountains during a mountain building period. You can see how they are pushed up in this next photo. 

Later in the day as we were driving away we were still in awe of what we had seen.