Flinders Ranges maps one tree: the river red gum that Harold Cazneaux photographed alone on a bare plateau in 1937 and called The Spirit of Endurance, a picture that made it internationally famous and gave the tree its name. It stands inside Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park, reached by an easy trail from Flinders Ranges Way. Published alone here because the tree, not a town, is the destination.
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The Cazneaux Tree
River Red Gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) · not documented · Flinders Ranges, near Wilpena Pound
A photograph made this tree famous, and then the photograph named it. In May 1937 Harold Cazneaux, camping in the Flinders with his wife and son, pointed a camera at a river red gum standing by itself on a flat, dry plateau. He called the picture The Spirit of Endurance, it brought him international recognition, and the gum has been the Cazneaux Tree ever since. The naming is credited to George Hunt, the last pastoral leaseholder of Wilpena Station.
It earns the billing. The trunk runs 11.4 metres around at the base, and the state gazetteer puts the tree at 29 metres tall, though a recent parks description calls it nearer 25. Cazneaux wrote that the passing years had left it "scarred and marked by the elements" and that, "unconquered, it speaks to us of a Spirit of Endurance". The scarring he described is the tree's own record of storm, fire and water on a plateau with no shelter on it.
The National Trust of South Australia lists it as significant tree number 239, for its aesthetic quality alone. Cazneaux's grandson, the entrepreneur Dick Smith, paid for the plaque placed here in 1991, and since 2025 an easy 90 minute trail runs out to it from Flinders Ranges Way.
Nobody has ever put an age to it. If you know of a measurement, tell us.
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