Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Quorn
POP 1210
Is Quorn a film set after the crew has gone home? With more jeering crows than people,
it's a cinematographic little outback town. Wheat farming took off here in 1875, and the
town prospered with the arrival of the Great Northern Railway from Port Augusta. Quorn
(pronounced 'kworn') remained an important railroad junction until trains into the
Flinders were cut in 1970.
1
Sights & Activities
Quorn's streetscapes, especially Railway Tce, are a real history lesson, and have featured
in iconic Australian films such as
Gallipoli
and
Sunday Too Far Away
. Pick up the
Quorn Historic Buildings Walk
brochure from the visitor centre. A fragment of the long-
defunct railway now conveys the Pichi Richi Railway (
Click here
) between Port Augusta
and Quorn.
Derelict ruins of early settlements litter the Quorn-Hawker road, the most impressive
of which is
Kanyaka
, a once-thriving sheep station founded in 1851. From the
homestead ruins (41km from Quorn) it's a 20-minute walk to a waterhole, loomed over
by the massive
Death Rock
. The story goes that local Aborigines once placed their dying
kinfolk here to see out their last hours.
Pichi Richi Camel Tours
CAMEL TOUR
( 0439 333 257, 08-8648 6640;
www.pichirichicameltours.com
)
Saddle up for two-hour sun-
set rides ($85), breakfast rides (55), or a longer half-/full-day camel-back tour ($75/125)
through the country around Quorn.
ADNYAMATHANHA DREAMING
Land and nature are integral to the culture of the traditional owners of the Flinders
Ranges. The people collectively called Adnyamathanha (Hill People) are actually a
collection of the Wailpi, Kuyani, Jadliaura, Piladappa and Pangkala tribes, who ex-
changed and elaborated on stories to explain their spectacular local geography.
The walls of Ikara (Wilpena Pound), for example, are the bodies of two akurra(gi-
ant snakes), who coiled around Ikara during an initiation ceremony, eating most of
the participants. The snakes were so full after their feast they couldn't move and
willed themselves to die, creating the landmark. Because of its traditional signific-
