The Flinders Ranges

Dust jacket "This unusual book on the Flinders Ranges combines the talents of the well-known Flinders Ranges historian, Hans Mincham, and the artist, Bill Walls. Together they have taken a new approach to depicting the area in words and paintings. Instead of concentrating upon the bold and colourful ranges, gum-lined gorges, and distant purple peaks, they have taken as their theme the subject of 'Man in the Flinders'. The works of man are scattered throughout these wild and rugged highlands. The wanderer through the Flinders may find ghost towns, crumbling lonely ruins, and old mine workings, as well as buildings which still function for various purposes. They are relics from the days of pioneer pastoral settlement and early copper-mining, and from the succeeding years when wheat farmers strove to establish themselves in the area. Numerous towns were laid out, but most of them declined and died. Much older than these works of European settlers are the numerous relics of Aboriginal tribal settlement. All are material links with the past and part of a fascinating but often melanchloly history. This book presents a wide selection of the diverse works of man in the Flinders. A few of the subjects are well off the beaten track, but most may be seen on a drive through the ranges. Bill Wall's paintings, specially commissioned for this book, are vivid portraits of these memorials to our colonial past, while much of the history related in Hans Mincham's text is based on his recent original research and is presented in this form for the first time."