Watering Place

It’s a demanding track to depot creek, on the western edge of the southern flinders ranges.

- Ron Moon

The view hit us suddenly, and completely by surprise. I had been concentrating so intently on the rough, rocky track we were following that the top of the ridge was seen as nothing more than a change from driving upwards to careening downwards. But as the view hit me, I instinctively jammed on the brakes and got out to admire the panorama that surrounded us.

I was hemmed in by ranges; at my back was a particularly rugged part of the mountains, while to my front the path of Depot Creek wound between two hills before suddenly spilling out on to the flat plain which seemed to stretch away to eternity. In fact, the flat plain does stretch for quite a distance with hardly a hill and certainly no mountains all the way to the WA border and beyond.

We had been exploring the southern Flinders Ranges, poking around in a few places I knew and loved well, and finding other spots that I hadn’t been to for 20 or more years or had never even seen before. Depot Creek falls into the category of a place I hadn’t been to in a long time and, recently, access to this historic spot has changed and been made easier.

We had heard about the change in access earlier and so after wandering around Orroroo, Quorn and Hawker, we headed out on the dirt through Yappala Gorge towards the old deserted town of Hookina. For much of the way you pass through the Yappala Properties Indigenous Protected Area (IPA), and while this area of once pastoral leasehold land was declared an IPA back in late 2013, only recently are there any visible signs of that appointment.

The IPA covers 10,886 hectares and features acacia shrub lands, open eucalyptus woodlands, the imposing Yappala Range and the artefact-rich floodplains along Hookina Creek where more than 30 archaeological sites have been recorded.