On the road with Sophie Matterson
When I got the call from Australian Geographic to track down Sophie Matterson and...
Among the backroads and unmarked trails of South Australia, tuck away, there is a freedom of remote living. It’s a feeling you can’t communicate to other humans it just has to be walked.
Alongside death and taxes sits flat tyres and empty fuel tanks, however there’s always a set of helping hands amonst the valleys and gorges that make up the Ikara Flinders Ranges.
The Village also has the only coin operated public phone in the area which doesn’t sound like much but it’s pretty impossible to purchase a pre paid Telstra phone card anywhere in the area.
COLINISED HISTORY
On 18 June 1927 the Governor, Sir Tom Bridges, opened the TB Hostel at Angorichina in the Flinders Ranges. The hostel was situated on an undulating plateau on the road from Parachilna to Blinman. Angorichina is derived from the Aboriginal janaritjina meaning ‘open place’ or ‘wide valley’. The land was given to the Tubercular Soldiers’ Aid Society by the owner of Angorichina Station. The Society raised money, which was subsidised with a grant from the government, to build the hostel.
The first chalet was a large room with a fly-proof verandah around which were the patients’ bedrooms. Staff were accommodated in another small building. Other buildings were added in later years. As the TB sufferer improved in health he undertook certain chores – in the garden, poultry farm, milking the cows, and other light work. The men also made furniture from the local red gum and this was sold in Adelaide. Much of the work of building and maintenance was carried out by volunteers.