Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase "collect memories, not things." In my opinion, family travel is one of the very best ways to accumulate a collection of unforgettable memories. A special trip is truly the gift that keeps on giving and something to consider instead of disposable items that can’t possibly be as cherished as much as a shared adventure can be.
A trip to a far away land like Australia is, for most of us, a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It had been on our bucket list for a long time before we decided to get serious about making it happen. As we've done in the past, a conscious savings plan was a key part of realizing this dream. What better way to motivate your family to get excited about a big trip than to get everyone on board with contributing towards the travel fund?
It can be as simple as setting up a 'trip fund' jar (to be regularly emptied and deposited into a savings account, of course). Calculate what you've saved each week by avoiding luxury purchases such as movie tickets, trips to the candy store, take-out food or restaurant meals, and add it to the jar. Any unexpected small windfall like a gift of birthday money or a lottery ticket payout can boost the total and you'll be surprised how quickly your travel fund can accumulate. And don't forget about air travel rewards for points you are collecting - it can be a great value to use them for a long haul trip like this.
As part of our first ever trip to Australia, we enjoyed a four day journey through the Flinders Ranges, one of the most majestically rugged places on earth. Even as a seasoned traveller, I suspect this is one region that will haunt me, in the best possible ways, for years to come. Soaring mountains, vast desert plains, parched canyons, and an abundance of intriguing plant and animal life make visiting the Australian Outback an unforgettable experience. While it’s not the ideal place to travel with young kids, there’s much to impress tweens and teens.
The bonus? You can soak in all the majesty of the area while giving yourself a pat on the back for enriching your kids in a truly meaningful and memorable way.
Should you be fortunate enough to plan a trip to this beguiling place located in the state of South Australia, I encourage you to consider booking a tour. There are several companies who offer multi-day, customizable tours of the region. I really appreciated the skill and experience of our guide, Paul Douglas of Just Cruisin’ 4 Wheel Drive Tours, who offered us a perceptive insider’s view of the Flinders Ranges. Driving through the area on your own can be problematic as many of the roads are unsurfaced, very rough, and sometimes not well marked; in addition, most car rental companies do not even permit you to drive their vehicles on this terrain.
Road closures are common, particularly due to flooding, so knowledge of alternative routes not often found on maps is vital. Paul was not only an expert driver whose rugged yet comfortable vehicle was well-suited to the Outback, he also had a wealth of knowledge about botany, geology, history, aboriginal culture and more to share with us. On top of all this, he was a delightful travelling companion whose unending stories often caused us to laugh till the tears ran down our cheeks.
Here are ten reasons why a family trip to the Australian Outback can be an absolutely unforgettable family experience:
Offering stunning vistas at almost every turn, the Flinders Ranges is an artist’s delight. The area is a great place for kids to experiment with digital photography, as the varied terrain means that the sights are always changing, and even from day to day things look different - depending upon the light, the weather, or your vantage point.
Beneath the region’s beautiful façade lies an impossibly rich geological history that has been much-studied. We had a bit of an idea we were heading into very significant territory after visiting the South Australia Museum in Adelaide, which offered insight into the explorers and prospectors who traversed this area over the past century and a half, but it didn’t really prepare us for what we’d see with our own eyes. In Brachina Gorge, Paul delivered a tremendous surprise when he poured water over what looked like an ordinary rock to reveal Archaeocyatha fossils – the remains of 530 million year old sea sponges from warm waters of inland sea. As multi-celled oxygen breathers, they are the ancestors of many life forms. We later traced our fingers across stromatolite fossils dating back 640 million years, understood to be the oldest fossils in the world. Gazing at 20,000 year old rock etchings in Chambers Gorge was also a breathtaking experience. Who knows – visiting these world-renowned sites just might inspire your child to delve deeper into the fascinating world of geology!
One of the best ways to get ‘the big picture’ of the vast Flinders’ landscape is to take the Ridge Top Tour at Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary. This fantastic four and half hour experience puts you in the back of a ‘Ute’ (truck), bumping along narrow, rough tracks established decades ago by mining companies. Our driver, Rick, took care to point out many interesting birds, desert wildflowers, shrubs, and trees along the way, as well as significant geological and topographical features. He carefully steered the truck over boulders, climbing ever higher until we reached Sillers Lookout, where we truly felt like we were standing on top of the world. To our great delight, he produced mugs and flasks of hot water for making fresh tea, hot chocolate and coffee, along with Lamingtons (chocolate and coconut-coated squares of cake) for an impressive mountain top snack.
The Outback’s parched landscape is home to some impressive plants including the rare yet beautiful desert rose, bottlebrush trees, and mulla mulla wildflowers. Spot a grove of river red gum trees – majestic eucalypts – and you’ll know you’ve found a creek bed. The red river gums have developed a remarkable adaptation in that they will shed a limb if stressed, such as in times of drought.
Dotted sparsely across the dry fields are other towering eucalypts that from a distance resemble giant heads of broccoli. There are also the native pines that will tremble violently to shed their own seeds, allowing new trees to sprout when the rains finally come. The saltbush plants are another fascination – dusty, half-desiccated looking things that are actually an important food source for grazing animals and desperate humans. Then there’s dangerous spinifex – clumps of grass favoured as sleeping grounds for ‘roos because of the safety offered by the grass’ skin-piercing spiny tips. That a land so dry – ten year droughts are not uncommon – can support such a diversity of life is truly amazing and serves to reinforce how lucky we are to have such an abundance of fresh water at home.
Watching Kangaroos hopping jauntily across a field never gets old. Seeing alpacas and silly looking emus skittering over the dusty landscape is equally amusing. There are so many other creatures to be found in the desert, including prehistoric-looking shinglebacks (a blue tongued skink), bearded dragons, wallabies, wedge-tailed eagles (the largest birds of prey in Australia), snakes and so much more. The bunnies and feral goats which roam freely in abundance over much of the continent are cute, despite being considered a nuisance by most farmers.
The trees everywhere teem with colourful birds including parrots, cockatoos, magpies and ditzy galahs, whose songs are often the only sounds to be heard in the dusty Outback. You might even be rewarded with a sighting of the elusive yellow-footed rock wallaby. A bonus of the abundant animal life in the Outback is that your guide may teach your kids to become experts at identifying various kinds of scat (animal droppings) - something which youngsters seem to find ridiculously interesting.
As the indigenous people of Australia, Aboriginal culture has many deep roots in the Outback. It’s fascinating to learn about their many Dreaming Stories or legends, particularly when related by either an Aborigine or a learned guide like Paul Douglas, who has completed a rigorous program of study to earn his Respecting Our Culture certification. There are numerous plaques at various sites throughout the Flinders Ranges that offer brief summaries of some of the most significant dreaming stories; it would be a fun exercise to look for comparisons between these tales and those of the First Nations of North America.
If you’re lucky, you might get to visit Iga Warta, an important Aboriginal centre in the heart of the Flinders. Getting to meet and speak at length with the eloquent Cliff Coulthard of the Adnyamathanha People was a highlight of our journey and helped us appreciate his people’s rich culture, historical struggles and present situation in a truly meaningful way.
We enjoyed encountering travellers from all over the world as we wound our way through the Flinders. Each had different reasons for being there, but all seemed as entranced as we were by the place. Those who choose to work in the region – and they also came from all corners of the globe – do so because they have fallen in love with the Outback and they are eager to share their knowledge of the area. It was fun to listen to a wide range of languages being spoken everywhere we stopped, and to find out where others had travelled from and what they had enjoyed seeing.
The people who run the businesses scattered throughout the region are truly passionate about the Outback and it’s reflected in their desire to make visiting the Flinders an exceptional experience. As a counterpoint, the chance to connect with the ghosts of the past – by visiting abandoned homesteads such as Kanyaka, Appealinna and Wilpena Pound or the semi- ghost town of Beltana – offers a poignant reminder of the dire challenges faced by Australia’s European settlers.
One of the most exciting things we discovered in the Outback was the abundance of ‘bush tucker’ – food that grows in abundance in the wild. As we learned from our capable guide, there’s a whole grocery store out there, if you know what to look for. Some of the delights include sweet quandong (native peach), bush bananas, whose tuberous roots as well as tree borne fruits are edible and delicious, native oranges (called Iga by the Aborigines), the yakka or grass bush with its kangaroo tail-like flower stalk and so much more.
On top of these outdoor discoveries, we were pleasantly surprised to be served some of the best meals we’ve eaten anywhere at the accommodations we enjoyed along the way. Of note were the Dingo Dogs (also called Drover Dogs) on many café menus; they’re large hotdogs with fried onions, cheese, Aussie mustard, and BBQ sauce. A few meals deserve special mention, including the grilled Kangaroo filet at the Rawnsley Park Station, the Cornish pasties and sweet quandong pie at Copely’s Quandong Café and the grilled Scotch fillet (the Aussie term for a rib eye steak) at the Blinman Hotel. We’d packed lots of snacks for the trip, expecting to find only the most basic sustenance in the Outback. We couldn’t have been more wrong.
Throughout Australia, there’s a beguiling selection of locally-made soft drinks, including sarsaparilla soda and ginger beer and not to mention a unique treat – frozen Coke! And although it feels a million miles away from anywhere, the Outback’s proximity to Adelaide and its three surrounding internationally-renowned wine regions (the Clare Valley, the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale) means there is no shortage of great wines to be found almost everywhere. Most eating establishments have a generous ‘bring your own’ policy with only a modest corkage fee. In addition to the good wine selection, there is lots of cold beer on tap and in bottles, a welcome refreshment after a hot, dusty day on the trails. If you choose to stop in the Clare Valley on your way to or from the Outback, note that many wineries in Australia have a box of outdoor toys and games on hand to keep the kids happy while parents do a little sampling.
Collecting phrases is a fun way to capture some of the local colour. While Australia will seem incredibly exotic, it’s also very accessible for younger travellers as an English speaking nation. Having said that, the Aussies are nevertheless famous for their unique accent and a vocabulary unlike anywhere else in the world. Before you know it, the kids will be asking you to find a dunny (outhouse) or listening with rapt attention to tales of brumbies (wild horses) or the local poddy dodgers (cattle rustlers). They might end up celebrating each other’s accomplishments with a hearty good on ya, mate or asking everyone they meet how’re ya goin’?
Give your kids a map to follow, and they’ll have fun charting your course through the Outback whether in a vehicle or on one of the many excellent hiking trails to be found throughout the region. Challenge them to try to pronounce some of the unusual place names they’ll encounter, such as Bardioota, Parachilna, Nepabunna and more. Watch the amazement on their faces as four wheel drive vehicles do what they were actually designed to do, which is carefully pick their way along roads that would impassable in regular vehicles. If there are train buffs in your family, the storied history of the creation and operation of the ‘Old Ghan’ heritage railway is also quite fascinating.
There’s something for every taste and budget in the Flinders, ranging from unserviced and serviced campsites, to motels, luxurious eco-villas, and glamping (fancy camping) facilities. Comfortable lodgings with good restaurants are available in a number of places, including Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary, Wilpena Pound, and Rawnsley Park Station. Or perhaps you’d prefer trying out the shearer’s quarters at Merna Mora and Beltana Sheep Stations?
Another great spot is the historic North Blinman Hotel. Built in 1869, it’s a semi-subterranean structure (to keep things cool) in a former thriving copper mining town now home to just 19 people that exists independent of the electrical grid (they run everything via generators).
Being on vacation as a family is a great way to break established patterns and savour new experiences. You might be able to get your sleepyheads to wake up at dawn, if only to watch the sun rise extravagantly over the red desert mountains. Similarly, staying up late together to star gaze in a sky unspoiled by ambient light will be worth every minute of lost sleep.
Pack a southern hemisphere constellation map, a flashlight and a piece of red plastic to cover the beam and you’ll all have fun trying to identify unfamiliar constellations such as the Southern Cross. In addition to creating amazing new memories there is another added benefit of travel and it’s a lesson kids are never too young to learn. While other destinations are alluring, sometimes it’s only when you leave home that you truly learn to appreciate it. I hope your family finds travel as rewarding as mine does.
PS: You can whet your appetite for a family trip to the Outback with a couple of movies, including the famous ‘A Cry In the Dark’ or ‘One Night the Moon’.
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