Quorn Down Under is a small outback town in Oz of around 1500 people. It’s in South Australia, roughly half-way between the Indian and the Pacific Oceans, and it’s 25 miles north of the northernmost end of Spencer’s Gulf and of Port Augusta, a town of about 14,000.

Quorn, Australia, was officially established in 1878 and named after Quorn by the state’s Governor Jervois. Quorn in Leicestershire was the birthplace of his private secretary, J. H. B. Warner. It was established to be the headquarters of a ‘nation-spanning railway system’. The town calls itself the ‘Crossroads of Australia’, because Australia’s major highways and railways pass through there. Its biggest industry is one of South Australia’s largest electricity generating plants.

Port Augusta is the regional centre, and was once a major railway town and sea port, but is now more of a road transport service centre, and a centre for tourism. Quorn these days is also a dormitory suburb for Port Augusta, since many people who work down there choose to live in Quorn - it’s only a 25 minute drive between the two towns.

The surrounding area is mixed farming country for wheat, barley, and sheep, but it’s very marginal country (average annual rainfall 13 inches) with few farms really viable any longer. The far larger grazing properties that run mostly sheep start just north of Quorn.

There is a chain of mountains that runs from south of the state’s capital, Adelaide, all the way from Cape Jervois up to just south of the giant Lake Eyre, two-thirds of the way across the state. The northern part of these are the Flinders Ranges, poking up into the desert heart of Australia like a giant finger. This is where you will find Quorn. The Ranges aren’t very high - 3,900 feet is the highest. The town is just 900 feet above sea level.

Quorn is also situated just south of the junction of three creeks, the Pinkerton, Stony, and Capowie Creeks. They’re normally dry, and run only after heavy rains. This is also the junction of three valleys, Richman’s Valley, and Pichi Richi Pass running south, and Arden Vale running west. The road to Port Augusta runs through Pichi Richi Pass. On the northern edge of Quorn is a flat semi-desert plain, the Willochra.

There are mountains all around. To the West is The Dutchman’s Stern Range, about 3000 feet high. To the south between Richman’s Valley and Pichi Richi Pass is the Devil’s Peak, and at the end of Richman’s Valley is the highest local peak, Mount Brown, 3700 feet. To the north-west is Mount Arden. To the east is the Horseshoe Range, which is an almost complete closed circle of mountains.

Matthew Flinders, the English explorer, circumnavigated Australia in the ship Investigator, between 1801 and 1803, and was the first European to reach the northern end of Spencer’s Gulf. He named Mount Arden after the Arden in the UK, Mount Brown after one of his officers whom he sent to climb it, and The Dutchman’s Stern, because it looked like the stern of a Dutch East Indiaman ship. They were the only names he gave to this country.

By Ray Wood