Rarkang, Deep Creek
Bought in 1998 to give it back
The word Naiko means Mother
It is a Ramindjeri word, and the name of the inlet the retreat stands above. This country carries deep connections to Dreamtime, and long predates everything below.
In 1802 Matthew Flinders and his French counterpart Nicolas Baudin charted this coastline within weeks of each other. Baudin named the peninsula for Charles, Count of Fleurieu. Whalers and sealers worked these waters afterwards, and a number of them made fortunes doing it.
In 1862 the McLeod brothers, prospecting for gold, found an outcrop of silver-lead ore instead. They named the lode Talisker after their home on the Isle of Skye. The Talisker Mining Company brought out Cornish miners who built the town of Silverton — population around three hundred, with a Cobb & Co post, a hotel, a post office and a school that doubled as a chapel. The ruins sit in Talisker Conservation Park, on the boundary. You can walk to the shafts from the front door.
What is left of the Talisker workings, a short walk from the retreat.
Over a hundred and ten bird species
Brown falcons, emu-wrens, superb fairywrens, galahs, New Holland honeyeaters, thornbills, spinebills, yellow-tailed black cockatoos, grey currawongs, fantails, sooty oystercatchers, rosellas and the inevitable willie wagtail.
A pair of wedge-tailed eagles
They nest high in Campbell Gully and are regularly overhead, surveying what is theirs.
White-bellied sea eagles
Numbers in South Australia are dangerously low. A pair nests along these cliffs, and guests occasionally get lucky.
Kangaroos, echidnas, goannas
Western greys in mobs across the property. Short-beaked echidnas ambling after ants. Blue-tongues and bandicoots if you look down.
Whales, May to October
Southern right whales migrate up from the sub-Antarctic to calve in warmer, sheltered water, and the retreat has a front-row seat to it. Dolphins are far more regular than that — the local pod comes right into the cove below the house. The water is thick with fish, sometimes in shoals dense enough to be mistaken for drifts of seaweed.
Four trails, and nobody on them
All four are for the exclusive use of guests, and all four start and finish at the retreat. Routes are described properly in the compendium inside. Wear real shoes, carry water and a windbreaker — the weather here changes its mind quickly.
The Heysen Trail crosses the property on its way from Cape Jervis to the Flinders Ranges, 1,200 kilometres north. Walkers on it are the only people you are likely to see.
