Wilpena Pound

Wilpena Pound, also known by its indigenous Adnyamathanha name of Ikara, meaning “meeting place”, is a natural amphitheatre of mountains located 429 kilometres north of Adelaide, South Australia, Australia in the heart of the Flinders Ranges National Park.

Just to the South of Wilpena Pound, Rawnsley Park Station provides the perfect base for exploring South Australia’s beautiful Flinders Ranges.

Rawnsley Park offers a range of accommodation options, from the eco-villas (with retractable ceilings in the bedrooms offering night-sky viewing while you drift off to sleep) to a caravan park.

You can also stay at the Wilpena Resort

The lovely folk at Rawnsley Park have a range of tours you can experience. We took the two hour Sunset on the Chase tour, a 40-minute drive to the top of the stunning Chace Range. Here we enjoyed sparkling wine and some gourmet canapes, all while watching the sun set over the ranges.

We spent a day driving around inside Wilpena Pound.
There are some spectacular natural rock formations that surround the valley floor. Early European settlers found the area as an ideal enclosure for their animals, which was how the pound was in fact used by early pastoralists. You can still see the remains of some of the structures of the old Wilpena Station (or farm) which operated in the area for 135 years up until 1985.

The indigenous people have lived here for thousands of years. There is a tour of some of the aboriginal rock art sites available from the Wilpena Pound Resort.