Wide Open – Day 35 – Part 1: Byngnano Range

27 June 2026 – 10 kms? – Byngnano Range Track, Mutawintji National Park

Pantjikali, Wanyuparlku, Wiljakali, Barkindji and Malyangapa Country

I walk up the sandy creek bed with the red sandstone creating rounded walls on each side. Trees grow from cracks, and flat surfaces on cliff walls and under overhangs reveal yet more aboriginal rock art. Water has pushed the sand into thick mounded hills in the creek bed and sculpted the rock where sand has not settled. The landscape is an oasis of water, vegetation and protected valleys that lie in the middle of the desert and its flat, open expanses. It is no wonder it has been sacred to the First Nations peoples for thousands of years.

This morning I am doing the Byngnano Range walk. It’s a Grade 5 walk that requires some rock scrambling, steep slopes, a very short rappel and a ton of rock hopping. It incorporates the Homestead Gorge and Waterholes Loop walks. It seems like each sign and brochure gives a different length and time estimate – the longest being 13 kms and 6-8 hours. So I start early and walk pretty fast to ensure I can complete the walk, have lunch, pack up camp and be on the road by 2pm or so. I’ve decided to try to get in 30 or so road kms back toward Broken Hill today to be on the safe side.

It is foggy when I head off, following the link track from the campground to the start of Homestead Gorge. There, large river red gums arch over the wide sandy expanse of the creek where the fall in grade lessens. Another stony gorge joins here and the rock walls are fairly low.

We stop for a moment at Wright’s Cave – a rock art site that’s been vandalised by white folks over time. From here, you follow little trail markers back and forth across the sand in the creek bed to follow a trail above it among the rocks. There is rock art, marked and unmarked along the way.

There is a loop walk that passes by several rock art sites that sends you up a narrow set of stairs over a few rocks before you climb on rock faces past two deep waterholes swirled into the solid rock. The rockholes formed over tens of thousands of years where fractures in the rock platform channelled water flow, and pebbles and cobbles were washed in and scoured out depressions.

You clamber through sand and rock in this side gorge before climbing almost straight up the side of the angled rock wall. Up top there are great views down Homestead Gorge and over to the Byngnano Range and the trail ahead.

You meander about the top of this rock wall before following the track signage back down another angled rock face to the gorge below.

A bit further up the gorge, we then climb up a very narrow rock gully, again on an angled rock face that dips to a v-shaped crack being eroded into an eventual new gorge. The water stains the rock as it runs from little pool to little pool. This is a really fun hike, but not for anyone afraid of heights or with poor balance.

I’m trying to keep moving but also trying to appreciate the geology. We move back in time in the early Devonian as we go. You start out in the Old Coach Road Formation, move into the Homestead Gorge Formation and then climb up into the New Tank Formation.

The composition and colour of the rocks change subtly as you move through the formations and go back in time. The Old Coach formation is fine-to-coarse grained sandstones and siltstones with some mudstones. It is where you find the best examples of cross-bedding and ripple marks. The Bengoro Ridge formation is more coarse quartzose sandstones, pebbly sandstones and localised conglomerates.

Once on top of the range, we find ourselves in the New Tank Formation whch is the oldest we’ll encounter today. It’s a hard quartz sandstone with calcium carbonate, or limestone, embedded in parts. It’s a very pebbly sandstone and the quartz within it would have been used to make tools.

I am most excited about the deep gouge you look over once you get to the top of the range. The gouge is part of the Amphitheatre Fault, one of the main faultlines in the park.

I am in a little bit of awe looking down into all those interconnecting gorges, just imagining all the artefacts and rock art that must be down in all of those crevices.

The fog is hanging about so I don’t get all of the great distant views that you might on another day, but I still can appreciate that we are just seeing one geologic period – just 20 million years in time – on this walk. The park contains much older rock and so many more gorges and ranges. What an amazing place! And none of my co-workers had ever heard of it… and I’ll never mention it again. It will be our secret. They don’t read my blog. 🙂

We drop back down off the New Tank Formation, back into the Old Coach Road formation, as we come off the top of the range. At one point, the track seems to come to a dead end… but no, it just drops straight down a rock face into another crevice. There’s a rope there to help you make a short rappel down that 15-foot vertical drop. How fun!

Beyond this, you skinny between two vertical faces of rock and then have to push your hands and feet against another two vertical faces while you find move forward. You then step down onto some upturned rocks and skinny your way between the narrow boulders again.

We continue to drop down until we make it into another creekbed. Here it is all rock hopping and sand slogging along long expanses of carved rock interspersed with flat and rounded boulders amongst the sand. You want good balance for this bit, as there is no even ground.

I’m impressed by the power of the water and how its carved the long expanses of rock into smooth, long curves and cavities. I’m inspired by the amount of rock and cobble and sand that the water has pushed down and through.

I really enjoy jumping from rock to rock at speed – like negotiating some sort of natural Ninja Warrior course. This is the best walk I’ve done in ages. It says its Grade 5, but I would have absolutely loved this even as a kid. It’s a bit like the ravines of Shades and Turkey Run State Parks my folks took me to when I was a kid – just on a much, much bigger, rougher and remote scale.

But all too soon, it’s over. What? We’re already back to the main gorge? It’s only been 2.5 hours. It said 6-8? I know I was trying to keep moving, but damn, if I knew what I know now, I could have gone 3/4 speed and had more of a closer look as we went. It’s been heaps of fun, but I am definitely going to have to come back some day and do all the bits I won’t get to on this trip and do this walk again but in slow-mo.

Back at camp, I wait for the sun to come out before I pack up the tent. In the meantime, I cook up a big pot of rice and lentils, enjoying my main meal now as I’ll be riding til dark and will just have some peanut butter and crackers for dinner.

One of the couples I did the tour with yesterday stop by on their way out. They are going to do the Mutawintji Gorge walk before they head back to Broken Hill. They think I’m on an e-bike (I get this a lot now, people think the battery is in the frame bag). They are impressed I rode out here on that. When I tell them it’s not an e-bike, they are even more impressed. The woman asks if I get lonely.

I reply, “Oh my goodness, NEVER. I like being alone and my job involves liaison with lots of people and keeping lots of people happy and in the loop with things. I really enjoy not having to talk to anybody!”

The man nods in acknowledgement. I thought he was a farmer, but maybe some organisation he’s involved in requires the same sort of work. They say they’ll see me down the road later after they’ve done the hike and I’ve gotten a head start.

I pack up reluctantly and am sad to leave so soon. Still, I’m grateful the rain and road closures allowed me to get out here and at least see a bit. It’s been exactly the sort of thing I love to do.