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Published: August 31st 2012
23
rdAugust 2012
After a leisurely breakfast of pancakes, we made our way to Desert Park. This is a lovely natural park set against the MacDonnell Ranges, with lots of wildflowers. We started by seeing the bird show, where trained birds including a barn owl, pink and grey galahs, a curlew, brown falcon, whistling kite and black kite flew around the audience for food treats. Then we walked around to see the very good, large nocturnal house, kangaroos and lot of local birds.
After lunch we went to the cultural centre, where we saw Albert Namitjira paintings and the natural history museum, which had a very good large prehistoric bird skeleton (Dromornis stirtoni, 8m years old), minerals, and some good skeletons and preserved current wildlife.
My uncle and aunt, Kevan and Jillian, joined us for a drink after dinner as they are also travelling in the area.
24
th August 2012
We packed up and travelled out to the East MacDonnell Ranges. We stopped to see Emily and Jessie Gaps, which both have rock art depicting, apparently, caterpillars although I must confess I don’t quite see them.
We walked around Corroborree Rock, which is a very impressive rock weathered into a narrow shape, and continued on to our campsite at Trephina Gorge ($15 for two nights).
After setting up camp and having lunch, we had some quiet time and then went for a walk along the gorge rim, then back through the dry riverbed. The gorge and surrounding hills are a lovely orange colour and there are a lot of ridges in the rocks. The ghost gums stand out white against the orangey red rocks. We saw some spinifex pigeons on the gorge rim, one of whom was putting on a show for his girlfriend.
Later we took a short drive to see a 300 year old, 33m high ghost gum, the largest known one in this area, and a beautiful specimen.
Mike and the boys had corned beef and vegetables for dinner and I had a tofu salad.
25
th August 2012
Happy birthday to my brother Peter today!
After breakfast we took the 4WD track out to John Hayes rockpool. The road was a bit rough. The rockpool is set in a
small gorge of orange coloured rock. The water level is fairly low at the moment. We then did the 90 minute “chain of pools” walk, which took us up to the top of the gorge, then down along the base of it for a while, back up to the top and down to the starting point, in a loop. In the sand of the dry riverbed, we saw a track of a perentie (big goanna) and lots of rock wallaby tracks. We saw some zebra finches feeding on wild figs. We tried the wild figs, they are actually not bad and taste a lot like normal figs, but drier. It was a lovely walk as the weather was fine and not too hot, and we had the place to ourselves. In the afternoon we walked to Trephina Gorge to look for birds.
26
th August 2012
We packed up camp and drove out at about 8:15am. It takes us about an hour and fifteen minutes from waking to leaving, on a good day, and if we don’t have the awning up. On a slow day or where we have lots of extras unpacked it can take
an hour and forty-five. The sun was gorgeous on the MacDonell ranges as we drove back towards Alice. We stopped in to see my Uncle Kevan and Aunty Jillian and arranged to meet up later, then did some grocery shopping and fuelled up.
We met Kevan and Jillian at Simpsons Gap, a short walk leading to a dramatic gap in the ranges and small waterhole. We saw a rock wallaby on the way back. We also did the walk at Standley Chasm, which is on private land so cost us $25 for the family of four. This is a walk along a valley, with some unusual plants for the area including cycads. There were also attractive gum trees and small flowering wattles along the way. At the end of the valley is a chasm between two orange rock walls, which is very striking. We had lunch, and Kevan and Jillian returned to Alice Springs.
We drove on, stopping briefly to look at Ellery Creek Bighole, a very attractive large waterhole (cold at this time of the year though). We arrived at our Ormiston Gorge campsite at about 4pm. The campsite has solar showers (only one for each gender
though), water and gas barbeques. Mike was listening to the Dockers on the radio, we think they were winning when the reception faded out! Mike, Alex and Kyle had rissoles and vegies for dinner and I had a nice tofu and avocado salad. We played Phase 10 after dinner and Nanna and Kyle won.
27
th August 2012
It was very windy this morning. We did the Ormiston Gorge Ghost Gum walk, which climbs to a lookout near a ghost gum on a cliff, then winds down to the gorge floor. The gorge has very striking sheer red bluffs, with a few ghost gums growing in small crevices or on ledges. We walked back along the boulders, rocks and sand in the riverbed at the bottom of the gorge, the walk made easier by the low water level. There are some attractive pinkish boulders on the riverbed. We saw some martins, I think (or they may have been swallows) flying to and from their mud nests on the cliffs.
We also took the short drive to the Ochre Pits nearby, where aboriginals used to mine ochre for personal decoration and rock art. This ochre
Dromornis Stirtoni
Alice Springs museumwas traded for other goods. The pits contain white, yellow, pink and red ochre and are very striking.
We had some quiet time after lunch, then went to Glen Helen, a nearby resort and caravan park, to look at the Glen Helen Gorge and purchase our pass for the Mereenie Loop road which we plan to take tomorrow. This gorge is also very striking and has long grass around the waterhole, with egrets and swamphens using the waterhole too. Alex and Kyle went wading in the waterhole.
A dingo wandered through camp in the evening.
28
th August 2012
We left camp at about 8am and headed for Kings Canyon via the Mereenie Loop road, past Mt Sonder which looked very imposing in the early morning light. We passed two dingoes, one of which was quite near the road so I took a photo of him (her?). We saw a camel in the distance. The Mereenie Loop road is gravel, and we proceeded at about 60-70km/h and I was thinking it wasn’t too bad, then at around 10:20am Mum and Dad said over the CB that they were stopping to check
Spinifex Pigeon
East MacDonnell Ranges their vehicle, and then that they had a problem, so we turned back to where they were.
A plate supporting the hitch on their caravan had sheared, so the caravan was leaning forwards towards the car. This motion had put the caravan handbrake on too so the bearings were very hot. It looked like a tow job to me, but Dad jacked it up, took out a wire brush and cleaned up the fractured area. Then he and Mike started thinking of ways to join it back. At first Dad thought some bush welding, with two car batteries, might be the go, so he asked Mum and I to make a welding helmet out of a piece of welding eye filter material and a wine cask, which we did (and very nice it was too). However the two batteries when joined emitted an alarming boiling noise, so it was decided to try another method. Dad happened to have a star picket in the vehicle, so he and Mike cut that to size with the angle grinder, drilled some holes in the metal plates to bolt the star picket on, and reinforced it all with wire and the
tow chains.
Mike was humming
“Hey True Blue, can you bear the load, will you tie it up with wire, just to keep the show on the road....". The boys kept themselves occupied in the car with their Nintendo DS games and a movie, which was handy as we were on a desolate stretch of desert road with nothing for them to do. About a dozen cars passed during the 3.5 hour repair job, two of which stopped to see if we needed help (which as they did not have a welder, we didn’t really).
We decided Alice Springs was the best for caravan repairs, so Mum and Dad headed off gingerly towing the repaired rig, and we followed. The MacDonnell ranges looked lovely in the evening light, and we saw another camel. We camped at Ellery Creek Bighole (about 85km west of Alice Springs), arriving just on sunset. Luckily there were a couple of sites available. We had a campfire after dinner. Tomorrow Mum and Dad will go into Alice to organise the repairs, and we will go to Kings Canyon the long way over the bitumen. We’ll meet up in a
few days. Luckily Mum and Dad have seen Kings Canyon and Uluru fairly recently.
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