The Flaneur tradition started as a way of looking at the rich urban landscape of Paris in the 1800’s. It might be hard to reconcile that with the wide open spaces of Australia and indeed, on our first walk to Pringle Farm, we only saw half a dozen other walkers.
In the Australian tradition, all time, past, present and future, exists at once. If you consider that the Kaurna people lived here on Mikawomma for some 50,000 years and were one of the most populous communities in the country before European arrival, it’s starting to look crowded.
Maybe that is why everyone seems to know everyone around here, why you’re always bumping into people you know and there only seems to be two or three degrees of separation. It was on the Fleurieu Peninsula that two world explorers bumped into each other at Encounter Bay and Nicholas Baudin named the Fleurieu after a mate of his back in France.
The place already had plenty of names though. A crowd of names.
On our first Pringle Farm walk, we saw the multitudes. Clouds hung over the Adelaide Hills, threatening rain and ants, red and purple with exertion, rushed across our track and crushed in and out of their tiny subway entrances getting ready for the change.
The land itself directed us, it seemed, and we couldn’t not walk.
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