Desert Brushstrokes

In the Badlands of South Australia, Mother Nature has painted the ragged outback landscape in bold and ancient colours.

- Bruce Newton

What had been dull pre-dawn outlines of weathered hills are now coming to glorious, vivid life. As the sun hits the peaks they turn pink and gold, seeming to catch fire as iron deposits react to the soft, creeping light.

Quickly, we park our SUV in the designated area and follow the well-defined path towards the nearest summit. My guide is Nick Crase, a retired geologist, who’s spent much of his life in outback South Australia. But he’s never been to the Painted Desert before.

“It’s amazing,” Nick says, his awe a mix of a tourist’s delight and geologist’s understanding. “Brilliant!”

We reach a high point and look west. The sun is now spreading across the flat, bare plain, stretching towards the grove of trees where Arckaringa Station homestead is located. The Painted Desert is just a small part of this giant 2745sq.km pastoral leasehold.

The homestead is roughly two-thirds of the way from Coober Pedy to Oodnadatta on a good-quality gravel road. It’s the logical place to spend the night if you want to watch the dawn show, because camping is not allowed in the Painted Desert itself and there is no accommodation available there.

This place is a dramatic contrast to the drive from Coober Pedy across the famous Moon Plain. Red and strewn with gibber rocks, it’s so barren and flat that it was used as the backdrop to the apocalyptic film Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and was the perfect foil to the colour and glamour of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.