The Heysen Trail: How South Australia Built a 1,200 Kilometre Walking Trail

When I look at the Heysen Trail on a map today, what I admire is the sheer audacity of it. The line begins at Cape Jervis on the Fleurieu Peninsula, works its way along the coast and through the Mount Lofty Ranges, crosses farming country and historic towns, then continues north through the Southern and Central Flinders Ranges until it finally reaches Parachilna Gorge. At around 1,200 kilometres, it is Australia’s longest dedicated walking trail, and an end-to-end journey can take somewhere around 50 to 60 walking days.

It is easy to look at that line now and think someone simply decided where the trail should go and then built it. The history is much more interesting than that, because for years there was no certainty that the Heysen Trail would ever exist in anything like its present form. Its creators had to deal with resistant councils, concerned farmers, questions about public liability, arguments over access, doubts about whether government money could legally be spent on it, and the simple difficulty of joining hundreds of kilometres of public and private land into a continuous route that people could actually walk.

What I find particularly interesting is that the hard part was not coming up with the idea. Warren Bonython did that in 1969, and people quickly recognised its appeal. The hard part was spending the next two decades turning a very good idea into something real.

The result was not the work of one person, although two names stand above the rest. Bonython imagined what the Heysen Trail might become, while Terry Lavender spent years working out how to make it happen. Between them sits a much larger story involving planners, government departments, landholders, walking clubs, volunteers and communities spread across a remarkable length of South Australia.

The trail crosses a much older Country

As with any history of a modern Australian walking trail, I think it is important to be clear about where the story begins and where it does not. The Heysen Trail was conceived as a recreational walking route in the twentieth century, but the land it crosses has a human history extending far beyond that.

From Cape Jervis to Parachilna Gorge, the trail passes through the traditional lands of the Ngarrindjeri, Kaurna, Peramangk, Ngadjuri, Nukunu and Adnyamathanha peoples. These are not simply names belonging to the past, because Aboriginal people maintain cultural connections and responsibilities to Country along the length of the trail today.

I would not describe the modern Heysen Trail as an ancient Aboriginal route unless there were clear evidence for a particular section, because that would impose the history of a recreational trail onto something much older and more complex. What we can say is that the Heysen passes through lands that were known, travelled, named and cared for long before anyone proposed joining Cape Jervis to the Flinders Ranges with red and white trail markers.

That distinction becomes more important as the trail continues to change. The Friends of the Heysen Trail now acknowledge the six Aboriginal nations and language groups whose lands the route crosses, and recent work has included consultation with Traditional Owners. When the northern trailhead at Parachilna Gorge was redeveloped in 2024, Adnyamathanha representatives were among those consulted about the project.

For me, that adds another layer to the history. The original planners were thinking primarily about land ownership, public recreation and gaining permission from farmers and other landholders, while the modern conversation increasingly recognises that there is another relationship with these lands that predates every fence, road and walking trail.

Warren Bonython had already walked the country

The clearest beginning of the Heysen Trail story comes in 1969, but Warren Bonython’s interest in the country had developed over many years before then. Bonython was a scientist, conservationist and formidable walker who had become deeply interested in the Flinders Ranges. He first visited the ranges in 1945, and one of the influences drawing him there had been a reproduction of Hans Heysen’s painting of Mount Patawarta. Over the following decades he explored extensively, including a long journey completed in stages through the length of the Flinders Ranges during 1967 and 1968.

That experience mattered because Bonython was no longer looking at the Flinders as a collection of separate walking destinations. He had experienced the ranges as a continuous journey, and at the same time he was aware that long-distance walking trails were becoming established overseas. The Appalachian Trail in the United States, the Pacific Crest Trail and Britain’s Pennine Way were all examples he knew about. South Australia already had a growing network of shorter walking routes around the Adelaide Hills through the work of the National Fitness Council, but there was nothing comparable to those great long-distance trails.

At a National Trust symposium in July 1969, Bonython suggested that South Australia could create one.

His first thoughts centred on the Mount Lofty Ranges, but his recent experience of walking through the Flinders was still fresh in his mind. The two ideas came together, and what began as the thought of a long walking route near Adelaide grew into something much more ambitious. One of the people listening at the symposium was South Australian politician Murray Hill, then Minister for Local Government. Hill took the proposal seriously and raised it with the government, which gave the idea a level of support it might otherwise have taken years to acquire.

A few months later, on 28 October 1969, Bonython met South Australia’s Director of Planning, Stuart Hart. Looking from Hart’s office in Victoria Square towards the hills, the two discussed a single long route running from Cape Jervis towards the far north of the Flinders Ranges. It is one of those small moments in history that I like because there was nothing on the ground at that point. No familiar trail markers, no through-walkers, no line on recreational maps and no network of Heysen campsites and huts existed, yet two people were already talking about a walking route that might run for well over a thousand kilometres.

Even the name had to be invented

In early 1970, the State Planning Authority established a Long-Distance Trail Committee to investigate the proposal. Its first meeting was held on 14 May, with Surveyor-General George Kennedy as chairman and Bonython, Stuart Hart and Albert Simpson among its members. Bonython became chairman the following year and remained closely involved until the committee ended in 1978.

The original proposal even included the possibility that the route might serve both walkers and horse riders. The committee soon recognised that the two activities did not always sit comfortably together and concentrated instead on creating a walking trail. Then they had to decide what to call it. An early government announcement had suggested the Flinders Way, but that never quite captured what Bonython and the committee were trying to create. The route would connect the Mount Lofty and Flinders Ranges, and there was no single geographic name that comfortably described both. Sir Hans Heysen provided the answer.

Heysen had died in 1968 after becoming one of Australia’s best-known landscape painters. His work had strong connections with both ends of the proposed trail. He was celebrated for his paintings of the great eucalypts of the Adelaide Hills, while from his first visit to the Flinders Ranges in 1926 he returned repeatedly to paint its dry mountains, red gums and open country. The connection was also personal for Bonython. He knew Heysen and had been inspired by his paintings of the Flinders, particularly Mount Patawarta. Naming the route after Heysen therefore did more than commemorate a famous South Australian artist. His work linked the two landscapes the trail itself was intended to join.

The committee adopted the name Heysen Trail at its meeting on 20 August 1970. Even the word “Trail” received some thought. “Way” sounded British, while “Track” in Australia could suggest a road such as the Birdsville Track. The American use of “trail” better described a route intended for people travelling on foot, so the name that now seems completely familiar was settled.

Planning was easy compared with getting permission

The first years brought enthusiasm, surveying and detailed planning. Government staff examined possible routes, prepared maps and standards, visited country along the proposed trail and began talking with councils and landholders. Then the problems started. A trail of this length could never be created entirely inside national parks. It would have to cross farms, grazing properties, vineyards, forests, roads, reserves and other land held under many different arrangements. In some districts there were long stretches where a useful walking route depended on the goodwill of private landholders. Not everyone welcomed the idea.

Some councils and farmers feared that walkers might start fires, disturb livestock, leave gates open, damage property or drop rubbish. There were questions about who would be responsible if a walker was injured while crossing private land. There were also concerns about vandalism and unwanted access that went well beyond the behaviour of genuine bushwalkers. Reading the early accounts, I can understand why some landholders were cautious. From their perspective, government planners were proposing to encourage strangers to cross working farms, sometimes through country where fire could have devastating consequences. Simply telling people that walkers would behave responsibly was not enough to make every concern disappear.

That became one of the defining features of the Heysen Trail’s creation. Unlike a walk built entirely within a national park, the Heysen had to be negotiated into existence. The practical work of finding a beautiful route was only part of the job. Someone also had to knock on doors, sit at kitchen tables, speak at public meetings and persuade people that allowing walkers through their property was worthwhile.

Then the legal ground disappeared beneath the project

Just as the planners were trying to resolve those access problems, the Heysen Trail ran into an even larger obstacle within government. In 1974, South Australia’s Crown Law Department questioned whether the State Planning Authority actually had the power to spend its funds creating the trail. The government agreed that new legislation should be considered, and work began on a Recreation Trails Bill that could provide clearer authority for establishing and managing walking routes.

The proposed law went quite a long way. One version stated a preference for public ownership of land forming a recreational trail and included powers that could have allowed land to be acquired. Politically, that was difficult territory. The bill was prepared but never reached Parliament, while staff shortages were also reducing the number of planners available to work on the project. By 1976 the State Planning Authority had been told that it could not spend its funds on the Heysen Trail. After years of planning, there was still almost nothing for the public to walk.

This is probably the point in the history where I began to appreciate how easily the Heysen could have become one of those ambitious ideas that survives only in old government reports. By the middle of the 1970s, the original enthusiasm had run into land access problems, legal uncertainty, missing legislation and a shortage of staff, yet the people behind the trail knew that unless something appeared on the ground, public interest would eventually fade.

So they built nine kilometres.

Nine kilometres that kept the idea alive

Work began in 1975 on a short section through publicly owned land in Cleland Conservation Park, where none of the unresolved private land problems prevented construction. Governor Sir Mark Oliphant officially opened the nine-kilometre section on 1 May 1976, with Hans Heysen’s son David among those present.

Nine kilometres seems almost insignificant beside a trail that now runs for around 1,200 kilometres, but I think it was one of the most important sections ever built. For the first time, the Heysen Trail was no longer only a proposal. People could walk it. The short Cleland route provided something visible that newspapers, walkers and politicians could understand, while also showing that the idea had not disappeared despite the troubles surrounding it. It kept the name alive and gave supporters something tangible to defend.

Behind the scenes, however, the original planning arrangement was nearing its end. In November 1977, the South Australian Cabinet agreed that responsibility for walking trails should move to the department responsible for tourism and recreation. The Long-Distance Trail Committee held its thirty-ninth and final meeting in April 1978 and was formally disbanded in June. Bonython later wrote that he felt dispirited enough by the frustrations to head off trekking in the Himalayas. Fortunately for the Heysen Trail, another person was about to take over.

Terry Lavender turns a proposal into a trail

If Warren Bonython is the person who gave the Heysen Trail its vision, Terry Lavender is the person who turned much of that vision into something walkers could follow. Lavender was an English-born bushwalker and outdoor recreation planner who had already been involved with trails through the National Fitness Council and government recreation work. He joined the Long-Distance Trail Committee in 1976, and when responsibility for walking trails moved to the Department of Tourism, Recreation and Sport in 1978, he was given the job of planning and developing the Heysen.

What followed was less glamorous than the idea of drawing a line through the mountains, but probably far more important. Lavender mapped routes, worked with government agencies, met councils and spent years negotiating access with private landholders. A proposed route might look perfect on a map but become impossible when it reached a property whose owner did not want walkers crossing it. Another route might require a new agreement, a stile, a bridge, a change to a fence line or a long conversation about how walkers would behave around livestock.

That work helps explain why the Heysen twists through such an unusual mixture of landscapes today. It is not simply following the most scenic possible line from south to north. The route reflects what could be negotiated, constructed and maintained across hundreds of properties and many different kinds of land. In 1978 Lavender received permission to develop a much more substantial 50-kilometre section between Mount Lofty and Mount Magnificent. It opened on 19 November that year, and unlike the isolated Cleland demonstration, this gave walkers a meaningful length of country to explore.

More sections followed. The route from Mount Lofty towards the Barossa Valley opened in 1979, while another section from Mount Magnificent to Newland Hill followed in 1981. Work was also advancing in the Flinders Ranges, where sections around Hawker, Wilpena and Parachilna began taking shape. The dream was becoming a collection of real walks, although those walks were still separated by enormous gaps.

People were walking it before it was finished

One of the more unusual stories I found while researching the Heysen concerns the first people who set out to walk its full length. In April 1983, Penola farmer Andrew Eastick and ten companions began an end-to-end journey as a project connected with South Australia’s Jubilee 150 celebrations. There was a fairly obvious problem with their plan: much of the Heysen Trail did not yet exist.

At that time, the main completed stretches included sections in the Mount Lofty country and another long section between Hawker and Parachilna Gorge. Across the country in between, Terry Lavender was still negotiating routes with landowners. Eastick worked with Lavender to choose a course that would not interfere with those negotiations, and the group completed the journey in stages over several years. They eventually went beyond what became the northern end of the Heysen, continuing into the northern Flinders Ranges and finishing on Mount Babbage on 27 October 1986.

Three members, Eastick, Bob Nicolle and Dick Grant, completed the entire journey. I really like this part of the history because the first end-to-end walkers were, in a sense, walking an idea rather than a finished trail. Their journey followed the intention of the Heysen across places where the familiar markers and established route had yet to arrive. It also reminds me that the northern end of the trail was not always imagined exactly as we know it today. Early proposals reached farther into the northern Flinders, with Mount Babbage and even the country towards Mount Hopeless appearing in early discussions, while the route eventually settled on Parachilna Gorge as its northern terminus.

The Friends arrive at exactly the right time

As the amount of completed trail increased, maintaining it became almost as significant a task as building new sections.

Lavender began calling on walking clubs for help with construction and marking during the early 1980s. Volunteers carried posts, installed markers, built stiles and bridges, cleared routes and returned to repair places damaged by fires, floods and ordinary wear. On 1 July 1986, around 150 people representing walking clubs, scouts, schools, conservation groups, orienteers and other interests attended a public meeting called by the South Australian Minister for Recreation and Sport. The gathering agreed that a new organisation should be formed to support walking trails, and seventeen people volunteered for the steering group.

From that meeting grew the Friends of the Heysen Trail and Other Walking Trails.

I don’t think the Heysen could have become what it is without them. A 1,200-kilometre trail does not stay open simply because someone finished marking it once. Signs disappear, vegetation grows, stiles break, bridges wash away, fire alters routes, land ownership changes and agreements that once provided access have to be revisited. The Friends organised volunteers into teams responsible for particular parts of the trail rather than sending people out in an ad hoc way. They learnt construction and maintenance skills from Lavender and government staff, then began taking responsibility for increasingly large amounts of work.

That arrangement has endured. The Heysen Trail is still maintained through a partnership between the South Australian Government and the Friends, with walking clubs and volunteers continuing to play an important role. There is something appropriate about that, because the Heysen was never really a trail that government alone could create.

Private land remains part of the story

One of Terry Lavender’s great achievements was persuading enough private landholders to allow the route to become continuous, but those agreements did not turn private property into public land. Walkers are guests on many sections of the trail, and that remains visible in the way the Heysen operates today. Much of the route closes during the South Australian Fire Danger Season, generally across the warmer months, although dates vary between the Mount Lofty Ranges, Mid North and Flinders fire districts.

That seasonal closure can seem unusual to walkers accustomed to national park trails that remain available for most of the year, but its history makes much more sense once you understand how the Heysen was created. Continued access depends on relationships with landholders. The same farmers and pastoral properties that made the trail difficult to establish also made the finished trail possible. The route passes through working country because generations of landowners have agreed to let walkers through, and current trail guidance still makes clear that access depends upon respecting closures, remaining on marked routes and treating private property appropriately.

For me, that is one of the things that makes the Heysen quite different from many other famous Australian walks. The trail is not simply infrastructure laid across public conservation land. It is an agreement stretching across South Australia, and parts of that agreement have to be renewed through goodwill every time a walker passes through a gate and leaves it as they found it.

Twenty-four years after the idea, the trail was finally complete

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the gaps were steadily closing as Lavender, government staff, the Friends, walking clubs and landholders worked their way through the remaining country. The trail was substantially completed and marked by 1992, and on 4 April 1993, Premier Lynn Arnold officially opened the completed Heysen Trail. Twenty-four years had passed since Bonython first suggested the idea at the National Trust symposium.

Terry Lavender received the Medal of the Order of Australia the following year for his contribution to recreation and walking in South Australia. He later wrote about the experience with characteristic humour in The Last Post, or How to Build the Heysen Trail in 400 Years or Less, a title that probably says quite a lot about how those years of negotiation and bureaucracy must have felt from inside the project.

Lavender died in 2004, but the trail remains the work for which he is best remembered. Warren Bonython maintained his association with the Heysen for decades and served as patron of the Friends until his death in 2012. I find it difficult to assign ownership of the trail’s creation entirely to either man, and I don’t think the history asks us to. Without Bonython, there may never have been a Heysen Trail to build, while without Lavender it is entirely possible that the idea would never have survived all the practical problems involved in building it. One imagined the line. The other spent years finding a way through.

Finishing the Heysen did not freeze it in place

The official opening in 1993 did not mean that the route suddenly became permanent. Land access changes, conservation priorities change, roads and property boundaries change, while walkers and park managers sometimes discover that a better route is possible. Sections of the Heysen have therefore continued to move and develop since the trail was declared complete.

A good example came near Victor Harbor. For years, walkers could not follow part of the spectacular coast around Newland Head because the necessary access was unavailable. After negotiations and government acquisition of key land, a new alignment was established along the Waitpinga cliffs. The four-kilometre reroute opened on 29 April 2001 and also helped protect a significant area of remnant vegetation that was added to Newland Head Conservation Park.

More than twenty years later, the southern end changed again through the Wild South Coast Way on the Heysen Trail. The project upgraded roughly 74 kilometres between Cape Jervis and Victor Harbor with improved walking routes, campgrounds and visitor facilities, creating a five-day coastal walk while retaining the Heysen as the underlying route. The completed Wild South Coast Way officially opened in 2023.

At the other end of the state, the northern trailhead at Parachilna Gorge was substantially redeveloped in 2024 through a Friends-led project involving government agencies, local communities, landholders and Adnyamathanha representatives. These later changes are worth including because they stop the history from ending neatly in 1993. The Heysen Trail was finished, but it has never stopped changing.

The Heysen Trail today

The modern Heysen Trail runs for around 1,200 kilometres from Cape Jervis to Parachilna Gorge, crossing an extraordinary range of South Australian country along the way. It follows the Fleurieu coast, passes through the Mount Lofty Ranges and Adelaide Hills, crosses the Barossa and Mid North, and eventually reaches the drier mountains and gorges of the Flinders Ranges.

Someone completing the whole route now encounters national parks, conservation reserves, forests, roads, vineyards, farms, pastoral country, old mining areas and historic towns, sometimes within a few days of one another. Yet knowing how the trail came about makes that modern route much more interesting to me. A red and white Heysen marker beside a paddock is not simply showing the way to the next town. It is also the result of conversations that may have begun decades ago between trail planners and landholders who were being asked to trust people they had never met.

A stile across a fence represents something similar. The fence belongs there because this is working land, while the stile exists because someone managed to persuade the people on either side that a public walking route could pass through it. Then there are the volunteers who kept returning after the original builders had gone, replacing markers, repairing bridges, clearing routes and keeping agreements alive so the trail could remain continuous.

I think that is why the history of the Heysen feels so different from the history of the Overland Track or the Larapinta Trail. The Overland gradually grew from older routes through Tasmania’s mountains, while the Larapinta was deliberately planned as a modern walking trail across Tjoritja. The Heysen required something else again: the creation of a public walking journey across a huge patchwork of land that was never going to belong to one park or one land manager.

Its great achievement is not simply its length. The remarkable thing is that it connects at all.

What began with Warren Bonython thinking about overseas long-distance trails in 1969 survived more than two decades of legal difficulties, political uncertainty, reluctant councils, private property negotiations and enormous amounts of practical work. Terry Lavender and those around him then turned that idea into a route, while the Friends and generations of volunteers helped ensure that the line did not disappear once it had been created.

More than half a century after Bonython first raised the idea, people can leave Cape Jervis and keep walking north until the country has changed from southern coastline and green hills to the dry ranges around Parachilna Gorge. When I look at the Heysen Trail now, that is the part I find most impressive. Someone first had to believe that all of those places could be joined on foot, and then thousands of conversations, agreements and hours of work had to follow before the rest of us could simply put on a pack and walk the line.

Sources

• History of the Heysen Trail, Friends of the Heysen Trail. A current overview of the trail’s origins, Warren Bonython’s proposal, Terry Lavender’s role, private land negotiations, formation of the Friends and the 1993 completion of the trail.
• The Heysen Trail: The First Steps, Stuart Hart, Friends of the Heysen Trail. A detailed first-hand account by the former South Australian Director of Planning, covering the 1969 discussions, Long Distance Trail Committee, naming of the trail, early landholder opposition, legal difficulties, Cleland opening and transfer of responsibility in 1978.
• History of the Heysen Trail, January 1987, C. Warren Bonython AO. Bonython’s own account of conceiving the trail, the overseas walks that influenced him, the choice of the Heysen name and the difficulties faced during the first eight years.
• A Patron’s Walking Life: C. Warren Bonython, Friends of the Heysen Trail. Background on Bonython’s Flinders Ranges journeys, his connection with Hans Heysen and the experiences that helped inspire the proposed long-distance trail.
• The First End-to-End Walk of the Heysen Trail, Andrew Eastick, Friends of the Heysen Trail. Records the staged 1983 to 1986 journey undertaken while large parts of the proposed route were still unfinished and land access negotiations were continuing.
• A Look Back in Time, Friends of the Heysen Trail. Provides valuable detail on the 1986 public meeting, early Friends volunteers, walking clubs and the practical work involved in marking and maintaining the route.
• Terry Lavender OAM: Bushwalker Leaves Trail of Memories, Friends of the Heysen Trail. Biographical information on Lavender and his contribution to South Australian walking trails.
• Sir Hans Heysen OBE, SA History Hub. Historical background on Heysen, including his repeated visits to the Flinders Ranges from 1926 and his importance as a South Australian landscape painter.
• Hans Heysen, Australian Dictionary of Biography. Detailed biographical information about Heysen and his work in the Adelaide Hills and Flinders Ranges.
• Heysen in the Flinders, Art Gallery of South Australia. Includes historical information and a 1927 photograph of Heysen working in the Flinders Ranges.
• Bushwalking in South Australia’s parks, National Parks and Wildlife Service South Australia. Current government information confirming the approximately 1,200 kilometre route between Cape Jervis and Parachilna Gorge.
• Walk the Heysen Trail Independently, Friends of the Heysen Trail. Current information on through-walking, the 50 to 60 day journey, private land, seasonal access, water and the character of the trail.
• Heysen Trail Reroutes and Closures, Friends of the Heysen Trail. Current information explaining Fire Danger Season closures and the continuing importance of cooperation with private landholders.
• Department for Environment and Heritage Annual Report 2000–01, Government of South Australia. Records the acquisition of land and opening of the Newland Head and Waitpinga cliffs reroute on 29 April 2001.
• Wild South Coast Way on the Heysen Trail, Department for Environment and Water. Records the planned 2023 opening of the upgraded southern walking experience between Cape Jervis and Victor Harbor.
• Explore the New Northern Gateway to the Heysen Trail, Department for Environment and Water, 2024. Details the redevelopment of the Parachilna Gorge trailhead and consultation with landholders, local communities and Adnyamathanha representatives.