There's nowhere I know in the Eastern States of Australia that is quite like the Flinders Ranges region of South Australia. The jagged terrain and the flora, dominated by native cypress trees in many places with massive red-gums along creek-beds that are dry most of the year but flood into torrents when it rains make the Flinders unique.
Still, it's a landscape that is remarkably familiar, largely because of the work of Hans Heysen, the popular landscape artist of the first half of the 20th century, whose prints hang in a million homes and public buildings, who made the study of this region his specialty. Harold Cazneaux' photographs of the Flinders, too, from about the same time, have also helped give the region a special place in Australians' visual imagination of their country.
I can't say that these images, taken over about 5 days in late May, 2023, strongly recall the paintings of Heysen or the photographs of Cazneaux. Because of the weather during our brief visit, we didn't see the magnificent brightness that fills Heysen's canvasses. But I hope you find some of these images of interest despite their rather more sombre tone.
As always, please download the PDF file (about 24MB) from my Google drive and view it on your tablet or desktop computer in a program like the free Adobe Acrobat. You will be able to view the images even on a phone. But please don't.
You can also access the PDF by clicking on the thumbnail images below.