Wilpena Pound Flinders Ranges | Add to Lake Eyre Trip | Gekko Safari

People ask me all the time whether they should combine the Flinders Ranges with Lake Eyre. My honest answer is yes if you’ve got the days, and here’s why. The Flinders is where you get mountains, gorges, and wildlife like yellow-footed rock-wallabies. Lake Eyre is where you get scale and emptiness. Together they show you two completely different faces of outback South Australia.

Wilpena Pound is the centrepiece. It’s a huge natural basin ringed by quartzite ridges, and the Adnyamathanha people know it as Ikara, which is often translated as meeting place. From the right lookout, the shape makes sense: a great bowl of country surrounded by a wall of rock. The ranges themselves are very old, formed from sediments that are hundreds of millions of years old.

Planning it in

• Allow at least a full day and night at Wilpena itself
• The walk to Wangara Lookout is manageable for most people and gives a great view
• Spring and autumn are the most comfortable times to visit
• The drive from the Flinders up to Marree and Lake Eyre makes a natural route

If you’re tight on time, pick one. If you’ve got a week, doing both is one of the best ways I know to see what South Australia’s outback is really like.