ALPANA HOMESTEAD: In the Outback region of South Australia
As you drive across Alpana Station with owner John Henery you drive across time……past the strange geological formations which are a feature of the northern Flinders Ranges…..and passed the Blinman and Wurta Creeks which sustained the original inhabitants…..the Adnyamathana people. And at some point on one of John's four wheel drive tours…..you'll end up here…….where the Henery story begins.
It was built by Paddy Henery…..John's great grandfather…..who came from Ireland to the northern Flinders.
His original pug and pine cottage still stands…..and it offers a window into another time when people like Paddy settled here and began growing cereal crops for the bullock teams which were hauling copper ore from the nearby Blinman Mine to Port Augusta.
“Well for a place that's built in the 1870s old Paddy knew how to build something pretty solid…the slate, where's this from?”
“The slate is local from the creek and local quarries........this part of the Flinders structure there's a lot of slate…..within the Flinders Ranges.”
“Yes, so from here the Henery story starts does it?”
“That's it......he was the original Henery………and started here. His son John Henery took up droving as a career and he was involved in droving cattle and sheep from Birdsville right through to Adelaide……prior to the railway line and then it was Birdsville to Maree. He settled here when Paddy died. Paddy got to run the property and he settled here in the early 1900s.”
“So you must feel very connected to this piece of dirt?”
“Oh yes, this is it.”
“Yes I bet.”
“I love it.”
“Yes.”
As we head out from what's now called the new homestead…after all it was built in the 1930s…..we soon pass through stands of native pines……..and it's not hard to see where old Paddy got the original timbers for his pug and pine cottage.
It was near here that Paddy Henery first grew his wheat crops. By the early 1870s Paddy was rounding up sheep on these hills and no doubt he took his trusty horse to where we're headed for the eagle's eye view of the northern Flinders.
From the top of the Bald Range you look south towards Wilpena Pound.
“So out there…is the great bowl of Wilpena Pound is it.”
“Yes, that's right…St Mary's and Mount Bonney and all these other eastern faces of the bowl of Wilpena.”
And all about you stand these geological corridors of time. The exposed pages of a story which goes back millions of years.
“And John, as we move along that layer there….that really gives you some indication of what's happened here in the Flinders geologically.”
“Oh it sure does…..that shows the great settlement of sediment that was laid down around about six hundred and thirty…….six hundred and forty millions years ago.”
“So all of that is in a sense, a sea bed?”
“It was all a sea bed at one stage. Yes, it was a shallow sea……or nearly always a shallow sea in this area.”
“And then what? Bang - it goes up?”
“Then it was an upheaval, a general upheaval….by movement of plates….. a shifting of the continents caused a major upheaval….and the pressure created rock….and that's about it.”
“Pretty amazing stuff…….did Paddy get up here?”
“He would have been up here for sure.”
“Yes, on a horse……I wonder what he thought?”
“I think he liked the land…. I really do…..he put all his life into it right from 13 years old……right through until he died on the property.”
The old rock cairn that Paddy started all those years ago has certainly grown.
And no doubt he felt small…..swamped by it.
